April 11, 1986

Because of an editing error, an article in Business Day on Monday about manufacturing in South Korea misstated the extent of assembly-line use there. While fully automated lines are still rare, assembly lines are common.

ELEPHANTS are O.K., and camels, giraffes and lions have their place, but in springtime there is nothing like a bird. That is why bird watchers are out in force now, keeping tabs on the migratory species as they come north with their bright colors of blue, yellow, orange and red. But most bird watchers (they prefer to be called birders) usually lead lives of quiet desperation, forced to watch the birds in their backyards or their own towns, unless they can afford to travel frequently. There is one place, however, where you can see, on the same day and in the the same place, a common mallard duck and a South African shelduck, or a native scarlet tanager and a silver-beaked mountain tanager from South America -and that is the Bronx Zoo.

The House of Representatives today approved a bill making it easier to buy, sell and transport firearms across state lines, but supporters of gun control succeeded in preserving the Federal ban on the interstate sale of pistols. The dual actions came after an impassioned lobbying campaign, which continued until the end and enabled each side to claim a victory. If the bill becomes law it will bring the first significant changes in Federal gun control since the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed in the wake of the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Rifle Association Achieves Aims The bill would end that law's ban on interstate sales and transportation by individuals of rifles and shotguns, would diminish Federal record-keeping requirements on all guns for dealers and would allow owners to take unloaded firearms across state lines, accomplishing many of the objectives of the National Rifle Association.

At 3 o'clock on a dusty weekday afternoon, little stirred in the final assembly building of the Beijing Jeep Corporation Ltd., one of the bellwether American investments in China. Now and then a worker moved to sandpaper a door panel, or drove a completed Cherokee vehicle through a carwash. On the assembly line, a worker on a wooden bench finished reading his paper, thrust both legs onto a conveniently placed locker, and fell asleep. Nearby, a Chinese manager drew a knot of workers as he complained to a visitor about the harmful ''propaganda'' being aired about the venture by his American colleagues. Barely six months after Vice President Bush ceremonially inaugurated the operation, the American Motors Corporation is in deep trouble with its pioneering venture into the Chinese automotive industry. Production is far below planned levels, and nearly 300 of the 780 vehicles assembled so far remain unsold, hostages to an acrimonious financial dispute with Communist state enterprises that involves millions of dollars of unsettled bills.

FORTY years ago, the once-great city of Nuremberg was held in universal execration. People remembered the Nuremberg rallies of 1933-39. They remembered the despicable Nuremberg Laws of 1935. They had under their eyes and noses the Nuremberg trials, during which crimes as hideous as any ever recorded were spelled out in open court. How could they think well of Nuremberg, or be sorry that, as of the end of World War II, the destruction of the city was virtually complete? That particular picturesqueness at that particular time had too many associations of recent date.