한국군, 게릴라 소탕 춘계공세 개시

DRIVE UPON REBELS IS OPENED IN KOREA Army Ordered to Take or Wipe Out Communist-Led Groups That Cause Starvation By RICHARD J. H. JOHNSTON Special to The New York Times. SEOUL, Korea, March 14—Ko-rean Army forces have opened a spring offensive against Commu-nist-led guerrilla bands that are terrorizing South Korea. President Syngman Rhee issued orders yesterday to Army com-manders to capture or wipe out insurgents who, under North Ko-rean Communist orders, have been burning villages and confiscating food from rural settlements. At the same time President Rhee sent Premier Lee Bum Suk, who is also Defense Minister, and Sihn Sung Mo, Minister of Home Affairs, to ravaged Cheju Island, fifty miles off Korea's south coast to step up the offensive against several thou-sand rebels. Government sources said today that insurgent activities had para-lyzed the island and had forced most of its quarter of a million in-habitants from remote inland areas to the coastal towns. A Govern-ment spokesman said that the toll of islanders killed by Communists since last summer was 15,000. About 10,000 houses have been de-stroyed by fire, he said. Father Austin Sweeney, a Cath-olic missionary of the Columbian order, reported by a letter that reached Seoul yesterday that a majority of Cheju's population was suffering from starvation. In some areas, Father Sweeney wrote, the people are living on a single sweet potato a day. A resident of the island for more than ten years, Father Sweeney, who is an Aus-tralian, reported that the farmers had abandoned the inland farms and had moved into the island's few large coastal towns. The island rebels appear to be well supplied by small boats that shuttle secretly from Communist-operated bases on the mainland. . The Communist-controlled North Korean radio continued over the week-end to boast of the successes of insurgent activities on Cheju Island, saying that "the people's resistance is growing." Meanwhile the Korean Army reported 'a· skirmish with a main body of a rebel force in the vicinity of the Chiri Mountains in South Cholla province on the mainland. near the south coast. In extensive operations a Korean Army task corps was reported to have killed fifty-three rebels last week and to have captured quantities of arms and ammunition. However, the insurgent hit and run tactics continued to harass the rural villages where the rebels were striking out from mountain fastnesses in lightning night raids. The center of the fighting was reported by the Korean Army to be forty miles north of Sunchon, scene of the October Communist-led Korean Army uprising.