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the’ United States and the Republic of Korea. The Republic of Korea granted
exclusive jurisdiction to the United States over "members of the United

States military establishment" in the so-called "Taejon Understanding" of

1950. The "Understanding" arose out.of prevailing combat conditions, .and

thus did not purport to be a perpetual waiver. Since the advent of the
Second Republic, there has been increasing agitation in the oréss” and
among student groups for the conclusion of a Status of Forces Agreement,
and, on 2 March 1961, the House of Representatives unanimously adopted a
resolution demanding the speedy conclusion of a Status of Forces Agreement.
2. Korean law is in a very unsettled state. Many institutions pro-
vided for under the original Constitution of the Republic of Korea were never
organized; others were reduced to ineffectuality by an increasingly author-
itarian regime. The official bureaucracy was characterized by corruption and
nepotism. Asa result, when the student revolution unseated the Rhee Govern-
ment in April, 1960, near-chaos resulted. Although most of the Rhee
judiciary were retained due to a lack of qualified replacements, most govern-
mental policy-makers and supervisors were purged. A single-minded government
with firm leadership and a tradition of adherence to legal forms might have
taken up the slack, but factionalism and favoritism, and constant sniping
from opposition legislators and pressure groups deprived the government of
needed momentum. The "April student groups," who manned the barricades so
valiantly against the National Police, wield a power vastly disproportionate
to their numbers, due to their militancy and concentration in the large metro-
politan centers. The four ex post facto laws discussed below were enacted

largely as 4 result of two violent demonstrations by student rioters in the

ET

1 ror example, an editorial in The Korea Times of 17 February 1961

stated that, in the absence of an Agreement, "one is apt to think of Korea
as reduced to semi-colonial status." (p. 2).

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