Park Chung-hee had an in built distrust of reporters. When he had been deputy commander of the 2nd army, lieutenant-colonel Chang Dong-woon, the commander of the Taegu engineering battalion had beaten up a reporter, who had threatened to write about him selling gasoline supplies to raise money. Reporters protested this to lieutenant-colonel Bang Ja-myong commander of the local CID. Bang reported the affair to Lee Joo-il, chief of staff who was concerned over the matter. When Bang informed Park, he got a totally different reception as Park appeared to delight in the fact. He said laughing,

"It's superb. Young officers have such guts. These days reporters are too arrogant. Well done. Really well done."

Right after the revolution, Park visited Pusan and held a meeting with generals in the area and ordered them to clear out bad reporters. Kim Jong-shin, a reporter at the Pusan Ilbo at the time remembered Park's words.

'We must arrange for the massively increased poor media reporting that is damaging the government's work to be curtailed. In Pusan there are many reporters who pry money away from soldiers on the ordinance and supplies bases. They are not reporters, you should punish them without mercy.'

Kim said that when Park was talking he looked at him and said that he was an exception.

At the beginning of June, political reporters of the 'Dong-a Ilbo' Lee Man-seop and Lee Jin-hee were arrested after reporting that president Yoon Bo-sun wanted an early return to a civilian government. In early July, when there was a test run of the Seoul suburban railway, presidential secretary Kim Joon-ha advised Yoon to ask Park to release the two.

Yoon and Park were in the same compartment of the inaugural train and Yoon asked him about the reporters. Park called Kim Jong-pil from the next compartment.

"Kim, have you arrested some Dong-a Ilbo reporters?"

"Yes sir. Political reporters at the Chongwadae news conference..............."

"Release them immediately as the president has requested it."

On the morning of July 15, Won Choong-yon, chief of information at the Supreme Council visited the army prison in Sobingo-dong apologized and drove the two reporters to their houses. Two years later Lee Man-seop joined Park's Republican Party just before the presidential election and attacked Yoon Bo-sun on his behalf.

On June 18, Cho Sae-hyon, political editor of the 'Minkook Ilbo' was arrested because of an incident related to the sixth clause of the revolutionary pledge. The clause said,

'When our task has been completed we will turn over government to a new and clean civilian administration and return to our original mission.'

This clause was subtlely changed to,

'We will do our best with body and mind to build a strong base for a democratic republic.'

When the 'Minkook Ilbo' reported the change, the Supreme Council ordered Cho's arrest saying that the latter version was the civilian one. Cho was detained at Chungbu police station and found eight other people there including Kim Dae-jung, public relations head of the Democrat Party; Cho Yong-soo, head of the 'Minjok Ilbo' and Professor Lee Keon-ho of Koryo University.

Later Cho was transferred to Sodaemun prison and shared a cell with Shin Hyon-don, home affairs minister of the Chang Myon government and Chang Jae-sol, agricultural minister under Syngman Rhee. Shin complained about Cho and other media representative's reporting on the Chang Myong government. Chang said that the media had excessively attacked the democratic government as if it were like Rhee's dictatorship, and this had been raised at cabinet discussions where Chang had said that he could not attack the freedom of the press, even if it meant the end of his government. Shin said that he hadn't realized that democracy in a politically naive country was so difficult and the media should look at themselves and behave responsibly. Even though he was areprsentative of the media, Cho could not challenge this. He wrote a retrospective in the December 1985 'Monthly Chosun'.

'Every day there were heated political discussions in a cell with a liberal, a democrat and a reporter. We all blamed each other, but finally came to the conclusion that we had all made mistakes and therefore invited a coup d' etat, resulting in us ending up in prison. We lamented the fact that if Rhee had performed better and established the foundations of democracy, or if Chang's government had been more consistent, or if the media had encouraged the hard won democracy, this thing would not have happened. On July 20, thirty-one days after I had been arrested, I was released. Colonel Won Choong-yon drove me from the prison to the newspaper. I still remember the faces of the former ministers, who saw off a reporter carrying a blanket, with sad expressions. They were released after several more months, but the civilian government to which they belonged had been blown away by the march of history.'

(The photograph is of Lee Man-seop, reporter for the 'Dong-a Ilbo'.)

(By Cho Gab-je, mongol@chosun.com ; Lee Dong-wook, done@chosun.com )