The Potters Herald

Korean Labor Specialist Tells Of Experiences With Communists

Washington (LPA) - "We in Korea will be firm and contribute to our fullest extent to the war against Communist invaders of our country-till we die," Dai Wi Lee, manager of the government-owned Sam Chok coal mine in South Korea, and former Secretary of the South Korean Department of Labor, declared to reporters in Washington, three days after Communist forces invaded his country.

In Washington on a State and Labor Department sponsored mission to study labor-management relations here, the visitor heard news of the fall of Seoul, where his mother, wife and two small children are, in a dramatic interruption of the press conference.

The 52-year-old veteran of the struggle for Korean independence spent three years in a Japanese prison camp and was recently tried for his life by a "people's court" after being held up by Communist bandits near the North Korean border. The court freed him only because workers in the countryside considered him their friend.

The United States and the UN have taken the only possible course, Mr. Lee said, pointing out that Communist tactics are the same everywhere. "It is like the Chinese rick-shaw coolie. You want to go to a certain place, a rickshaw coolie looks at you and sees you are well dressed. He tells you it will be two dollars. If you are a poor man, it will be ten cents. That is how it is with Russia. If they think you do not know the price, they keep charging you, but if you know the price, you tell them, and they will accept what you firmly offer."

Lee thinks 90 per cent of the people in north Korea are non-Communists and that his country someday will unite to build a strong and independent Korea. "We cannot live broken in two," he said.

The greatest help has been ECA, and before that UNRRA, Lee said. There has not been enough bread, not enough rice, not enough clothes. "The Communists have used this situation to disturb and disrupt our people. We could not go ahead to solve our problems."

The Communists were outlawed when the republic took over in South Korea. Since then they have been underground. "They have harassed us in every way," Lee said. "Three times in a year great fires broke out that were set by Communists. It has been no peace really."