Word: koreas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Within sight of two tanks hidden discreetly behind the trees, thousands of mourners flocked in front of the capitol in Seoul last week, in a mass wake for South Korea's slain President Park Chung Hee. Day after day, uniformed schoolchildren, silk-clad housewives and bearded village elders disembarked from rickety country buses and surged through a choking cloud of incense past the dozen black-draped altars. There, Buddhist priests murmured their sutras while mourners prostrated themselves in grief. With a shrug, a government worker whispered the prevailing mood of sorrowful but stoical resignation: "Gone is gone...
...surface, at least, there was a semblance of stability and normality in Seoul. The 10 p.m. curfew ordered under martial law closed down the city's busy neon nightlife. Still wary that North Korea might use Park's death as a pretext for invasion, South Korea's own 600,000-man armed force, as well as the 39,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country, remained on alert. Stepped-up intelligence surveillance, however, detected no threatening military movements across the Demilitarized Zone. Most of all, South Korea's interim emergency government seemed to be functioning smoothly...
...fateful Friday, TIME's sources allege, Kim invited Chung to dinner for further talks on "basically changing the situation" in Korea. Around 4 p.m., the general turned up at the KCIA building. Park at this point abruptly invited himself to dinner with Kim. The President showed up two hours later at the KCIA building with Cha and his chief of staff, Kim Kae Won, who was known to be a friend of the intelligence chief but whose own role in the events remains mysterious. Thus because of his planned appointment with the KCIA boss, Chung happened...
...week's end there were rumors in Seoul that the top army brass had secretly agreed to scrap South Korea's 1972 constitution, under which Park was empowered to serve as President indefinitely, appoint one-third of the National Assembly and exercise emergency powers to detain his political opponents. It was not determined what mechanism for forming a government might replace the constitution, or how its abrogation would affect the political fortunes of the two most likely candidates to succeed Park. One was Kim Jong Pil, 53, a National Assembly member who helped organize Park...
...week's end South Korea buried Park with a somber, five-hour state funeral punctuated by wailing sirens. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and President Carter's son Chip joined representatives from 42 countries. The presence of the opposition party leader Kim Young Sam was evidence that the mourning period had brought South Koreans a time of political truce. A traumatic bloodbath was behind them, but they had every right to be apprehensive about its uncertain consequences...