In the last few months South Vietnam has undergone the heaviest fighting since the “cease-fire” agreement went into effect in January 1973.

In the Iron Triangle area north of Saigon, clashes have occurred since May 17, when three militia outposts near Bencat were captured by the liberation forces. Two have still not been retaken. Skirmishes have taken place only sixteen miles from the center of Saigon, and Bienhoa airfield, the largest military airfield in South Vietnam, was said to have been threatened at one point.

The South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee has exploited to the full the attempt on his life August 15 in which his wife was killed.

He has tried to blame the assassination attempt on the North Koreans, claiming that they masterminded the plot. He has pointed to the Japanese government, blaming it for allowing pro-North Korean political activity and for unwittingly issuing a passport to the assassin, who was identified by the Korean police as Mun Se Kwang, a Korean living in Osaka.

The big-character wall posters that were such a feature of the 1966-69 Cultural Revolution have proliferated anew on the streets of China’s cities in recent months. Although neither so extensive nor so frenzied as the campaign during the Cultural Revolution, the current poster campaign once again has all the earmarks of having been instigated by the dominant Maoist wing of the bureaucracy.