Copyright 1996 The Scotsman Publications Ltd. The Scotsman
August 29, 1996, Thursday
SECTION: Pg. 12
LENGTH: 435 words
HEADLINE: Payback in Korea
BYLINE: Leader
BODY:
HALF measures, it seems are alien to the Korean national character. A culture that in the half century since liberation from Japanese rule has countenanced some of the most voracious official corruption in East Asia - no small distinction - has turned the same energy on the most visible perpetrators of the great national swindle. A remarkable wind of change is gusting through the nation’s corridors of power
That the two men sentenced to death and to 22 years in prison this week happen to be former presidents, respectively Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, is a clear signal that the infant Korean democracy is determined to close the door on its murky past. The shock waves from this grotesque, media-amplified drama will be felt wherever acquisitive strongmen face down pro-democracy, anti-corruption forces; in Indonesia perhaps, in Burma also, and certainly across the 38th Parallel in North Korea.
There is no doubt that the violent and venal Korean experience will take some living down. Chun Doo Hwan was a ruthless general who took power by force following the assassination of Park Chung Hee, and among other excesses was responsible for the massacre of 200 demonstrators in the Kwangju incident of 1980. Roh Tae Woo, another military man, was hand-picked to succeed him in 1987, but despite leading the country towards democratic elections, now stands alongside his former mentor in the dock, found guilty of acquiring millions of dollars in political “donations” from the barons of the nation’s burgeoning industrial conglomerates. Nor have those who have given money escaped this spasm of house-cleaning. Many have been fined and are now languishing in prison. Many of the others must be anxiously wondering exactly where the ripples will finally come to rest.
There is much hypocrisy in the actions of the current President, Kim Young Sam, anxious as he is to plug into the vindictive mood of his compatriots and to harvest any available popularity from the recriminations. In his vendetta against the “Kyongsang mafia” (named after the defendants’ region of origin), Kim could also be accused in this clannish political culture of pursuing an old Korean theme of inter-regional rivalry.
President Kim is himself a scion of the political elite from a different part of south-east Korea, and through his appointment of regional cronies he has shown himself to be no political modernist. But as South Korea’s first President without a military background, his use of the rule of law - however spurious - represents a marked improvement from the use of tear gas and gunfire.
Document 51
Copyright 1996 The Daily Yomiuri The Daily Yomiuri
August 27, 1996, Tuesday
SECTION: Pg. 7
LENGTH: 665 words
HEADLINE: EditorialTrying the past on today’s yardstick
BYLINE: Yomiuri
BODY:
In the Kwangju incident in May 1980, at least 193 people were killed in a military crackdown on citizens and students who were staging large-scale demonstrations to protest martial law that had been imposed throughout the nation. Demonstrations were also held to protest the arrest of opposition leaders, including Kim Dae Jung. The court concluded that the incident should be considered military-engineered treason.
The court judged that both the 1979 coup and the Kwangju incident were parts of a scheme by Chun and Roh to illegally and premeditatedly seize control of the South Korean government.
This ruling was extremely severe, even though the final verdicts in South Korea’s “trial of the century,” which are to handed down by the nation’s highest court, will not come before spring of next year.
Even if the sentences handed down on Monday are upheld by the highest court, however, the administration of President Kim Young Sam is expected to grant amnesties and other penalty-mitigating measures in light of trends in public opinion and the country’s current political condition.
We cannot help but be stunned by the miserable ends that successive South Korean presidents have met with after serving their nation.
Chun, South Korea’s fifth president, was the first to serve a full term in office. He was also the first to preside over a peaceful transition of power after South Korea gained independence at the end of World War II.
Roh, for his part, was elected through a direct vote at a time when the nation’s population was aware of both the coup and the Kwangju incident. Roh’s administration has often been credited for its efforts in helping the country move toward democracy. Roh was replaced by Kim Young Sam in the nation’s second peaceful change of power.
It is difficult to deny that the process by which Chun assumed power in September 1980 was not a coup.
Acts of amassing personal property through wrongdoing naturally should be condemned, and military coups should not be tolerated in any country. A consensus has slowly formed on this matter since the end of the Cold War in the international community, as evidenced by the denial of the legitimacy of the coup in Haiti.
It seems extraordinary, however, that the players in a “successful” coup that took place in the midst of the Cold War are now on trial.
President Kim Young Sam himself went on record earlier saying as that the 1979-1980 incidents should be “left for history to judge.” The prosecution in the case initially was reluctant to make indictments regarding the coup and favored dropping charges in connection with the Kwangju incident.
Bribe-taking broadcasts
These moves were reversed, however, when the alleged bribe-taking by Roh was brought to light last autumn. The bribe-taking disclosure came when a television serial drama on Chun and Roh “wrongdoings” was broadcast. The two then came under a barrage of public scrutiny.
Toward the end of last year, President Kim Young Sam had a special law enacted to halt the statute of limitations on the coup and the Kwangju incident. A process of reinvestigation into the two incidents was subsequently launched, eventually leading to the trial.
The trial has been called one in which the nation’s “coup ghosts can forever be expelled.” Some analysts, however, have pointed out that the trial has something to do with President Kim Young Sam’s political agenda in his bid to strengthen his power base in a general election in April and maintain his say over his successor, who will be chosen in a presidential election in December 1997. The trial leaves us with the impression that a television drama, public opinion and a government sensitive to the times have combined to try the past with today’s sense of values as the yardstick.
Because of this, evaluation of the military coup and the Kwangju incident will be made subject to historical judgment sometime in the future.
(From Aug. 27 Yomiuri Shimbun)
Document 52
Copyright 1996 The Detroit News, Inc. The Detroit News
August 27, 1996, Tuesday
SECTION: NationWorld; Pg. Pg. A5
LENGTH: 365 words
HEADLINE: Two ex-S. Korean presidents found guilty
BYLINE: Detroit News wire services
BODY:
SEOUL, South Korea -- In a verdict welcomed by South Koreans who endured 47 years of authoritarian and occasionally bloody regimes, a former military president was sentenced to death Monday for mutiny and treason.
Chun Doo-hwan also was fined $ 270 million. His successor, Roh Tae-woo, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years and fined $ 350 million.
As a three-judge panel read the verdicts, thousands of South Koreans watching on televisions in railway stations, bus terminals and other public areas cheered.
“The decision is proof that all are equal before the law,” said Han Jong-Kook, a 36-year-old shop owner in Seoul.
The former presidents were convicted of seizing power in a 1979 military coup that led to Chun’s rule as presidency, and of ordering troops to crush a pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Kwangju six months later. At least 200 civilians were killed in the crackdown. Hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- were injured.
Chun ruled from 1980 to 1988, and Roh followed him. When Kim Young-sam, a civilian, was elected to the presidency in 1992, he instigated the charges against his military predecessors.
In addition to the treason and mutiny charges, the court also found Chun and Roh guilty of amassing millions of dollars in illegal political funds.
Only hours after the sentencing, the court handed down a two-year jail sentence for bribery against Kim Woo Choong, the globe-trotting founder and chairman of the Daewoo Group, a giant industrial conglomerate making everything from electronics to cars.
Altogether, nine business executives representing some of South Korea’s largest companies were found guilty of bribery. Five, including Lee Kun Hee, chairman of Samsung, South Korea’s largest industrial conglomerate, received suspended sentences and will serve no jail time. It was not clear whether the others would be jailed during the appeals process.
Nine former government officials were also found guilty of helping Roh or Chun take bribes.
South Korean newspapers reported today that government bureaucrats were expressing concern that the sentences of the businessmen could drag down the economy or deter foreign investment.
GRAPHIC: A relative of a victim of the 1980 Kwangju uprising slaps a guard outside the Korean court in Seoul Monday. Two former presidents were found guilty of charges in connection with the riots. <address> Photo by Associated Press
Document 53
Copyright 1996 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
August 27, 1996
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 1187 words
HEADLINE: S KOREA AVENGES MASSACRE; Court condemns ex-president to death and jails others for Kwangju crackdown and for corruption
BYLINE: Andrew Higgins In Hong Kong
BODY:
SOUTH KOREA took harsh retribution against a brutal and corrupt military past yesterday when a Seoul court ordered the execution of former president Chun Doo-hwan and prison for a prominent array of tycoons, generals and politicians at the summit of Korea Inc.
But jeers and tears greeted the decision of a three-judge tribunal to sentence a second former president, Roh Tae-woo, to 22 1/2 years in prison instead of death.
“Death to others,” chanted spectators, some of them relatives of pro-democracy demonstrators killed in the 1980 Kwangju massacre.
The sentencing was the climax of a nine-month attempt to confront South Korea’s dark past in court, a cathartic legal exercise designed to exorcise the demons of Kwangju and purge the bloodshed and graft that taint the country’s economic triumphs.
In addition to their convictions for mutiny and treason, the two former presidents were found guilty of pocketing some pounds 400 million in bribes and illegal “contributions” from businessmen.
Chun, a disgraced ex-general, was fined 225.9 billion won ( pounds 177 million) and Roh 283.8 billion won ( pounds 222 million) - the sum they extorted during their years in the presidential Blue House, from 1980 to 1992.
Much of the country came to a halt yesterday as people crowded around television sets in offices, stations and shops to watch the finale of what South Koreans call the “trial of the century”.
At the courthouse, a group of women dressed in white mourning clothes cheered the death sentence against Chun, but jeered the prison term for Roh. They later mobbed Roh’s son, Jae-hun, as he left the court, shouting: “Kill the murderer’s son.”
The drama at the Seoul district criminal court has sent shivers through authoritarian regimes across Asia. But despite the death sentence, it will disappoint demands for vengeance from relatives of the more than 200 people killed, and hundreds more wounded, in the Kwangju assault.
The brutal crackdown established a pattern of repression repeated in Beijing and Burma in 1989 and - though with far less bloodshed - the Indonesian capital of Jakarta last month.
But Chun is unlikely to be executed. His death sentence will now be reviewed by the highest court and, if upheld, will probably be lifted by presidential decree.
Eighteen members of the business and political elite - ranging from the chairmen of the Samsung and Daewoo conglomerates to former cabinet ministers - were jailed for corruption. But the more prominent moguls are likely to spend little, if any, time in prison. The head of Samsung, Lee Kun-hee, was given only symbolic punishment - a two-year sentence suspended for three years.
Samsung, the country’s largest industrial conglomerate, and other business empires, form the backbone of the economy, and their representatives have argued throughout that they are victims of a corrupt political caste. Most of the nine jailed executives are expected to receive a presidential pardon.
Less mercy will probably be shown to 13 former military colleagues of Chun and Roh who were jailed for four to 10 years. Another former officer was cleared.
Both Chun and Roh, boyhood friends who led a military putsch in December 1979, have dismissed the trial as a “political circus” orchestrated by President Kim Young-sam. Elected in 1992 as the first civilian president in 32 years, Mr Kim has promised to “right the wrongs of history”. Critics say he is more interested in boosting his flagging popularity.
The two former presidents defended their coup as necessary to prevent anarchy after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee. The judges rejected the claim, describing the putsch as “ illegal and “responsible for inflicting enormous damage on the people”.
The judges denounced the decision to send troops to crush the Kwangju protests. But they said Roh would be spared death in recognition of his role in gaining the country entry to the United Nations in 1991 and other diplomatic achievements.
Document 54
Copyright 1996 Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
August 27, 1996, Tuesday, Home Edition
SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 6; Editorial Writers Desk
LENGTH: 314 words
HEADLINE: JUSTICE, MAYBE, IN SOUTH KOREA; GENERALS FALL, BUT SENTENCES IN CORRUPTION CASE MAY BE EASED
BODY:
South Korea’s long years of military rule ended just four years ago, and now the seal of justice has been put on that repressive era. Two former generals who between them held the presidency for a dozen years have been convicted in Seoul of crimes including mutiny, treason and corruption.
Chun Doo Hwan, who ruled until 1988 after seizing power following the 1979 assassination of the autocratic general Park Chung Hee, was sentenced to death. It was Chun who gave the orders in 1980 that led to the infamous Kwangju massacre, in which at least 200 civilians died at the hands of the army. Chun’s successor, Roh Tae Woo, was sentenced to prison for 22 1/2 years.
Both sentences are likely to be eased by President Kim Young Sam, to the distress of many of those who suffered because of the abuses of human and civil rights ordered by the two former leaders. Whatever the ultimate fate of Chun and Roh, the significance of their trial and conviction will continue to loom large. Finally, retribution has come to those who arrogantly and at enormous personal profit denied 40 million South Koreans freedom of political choice and expression.
Justice may yet falter, however, in dealing with leading businessmen who were simultaneously convicted of what the court called “collusive links” with the military regimes. Those links involved huge cash bribes in exchange for lucrative economic favors. Among the business leaders convicted are the heads of the Samsung and Daewoo conglomerates and the giant Dong-Ah construction company. But many expect those sentenced to prison to be quickly pardoned, out of concern that jailing them could rattle the Korean economy.
The convictions of Chun and Roh deservedly boost confidence in the integrity of South Korea’s justice system. Any overly generous leniency shown to their rich co-defendants would undercut that achievement.
Document 55
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company The New York Times
August 27, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 16; Column 1; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 483 words
HEADLINE: South Korea Judges Its Past
BODY:
So seamlessly did South Korea’s current civilian democracy evolve over the last decade from its violent and corrupt military dictatorship that it once appeared unlikely the leaders of the old regime would ever be held accountable for their misdeeds. Yesterday, however, a three-judge court in Seoul convicted former Presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo of reprehensible crimes and sentenced them to extremely severe punishments.
The verdicts are welcome, though the death sentence on Mr. Chun is unreasonable. Korea’s democracy is stronger for beginning to deal honestly with a difficult past.
Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh were convicted for organizing a military rebellion that began in 1979 and brought Mr. Chun to the presidency, where he remained until 1988. Mr. Roh won election as his successor and ruled until 1993. The rebellion led directly to a massacre in the city of Kwangju in 1980 in which hundreds of students demonstrating for democracy were machine-gunned and clubbed to death by troops. The two men were also convicted of amassing political slush funds by collecting bribes from some of Korea’s biggest industrialists.
Mr. Chun, found guilty of mutiny, treason, murder and corruption, was sentenced to death. Mr. Roh, also convicted of mutiny, treason and corruption, was sentenced to 22 years’ imprisonment. His sentence was reduced from the life term sought by prosecutors in acknowledgment of his role in restoring democracy. More than a score of close associates of the two former Presidents were also convicted and sentenced to lesser terms, as were several leading business executives. Regrettably, the trial failed to establish exactly who gave the orders for the Kwangju massacre, although Mr. Chun’s conviction on murder charges is linked to those events.
The sentences are certain to be appealed. Whether they are actually carried out may depend, in large measure, on current political calculations.
President Kim Young Sam, who has the final decision on granting clemency, has a complicated history with the two ex-Presidents. Though persecuted by Mr. Chun, he made an opportunistic political deal with Mr. Roh, and was elected President as the nominee of the party founded by the two ex-Presidents to legitimize their rule. More recently, however, as his own political fortunes have sagged, he has turned sharply against his two predecessors, promising to “right the wrongs of history.”
Many Koreans now anticipate yet another shift, with Mr. Kim granting clemency to the two ex-Presidents to shore up support in their home area as next year’s presidential elections approach. He should spare Mr. Chun’s life because capital punishment brutalizes a society rather than redeeming it. But he should otherwise honor the final decisions of the courts. On so vital a matter of historical accountability, the last word should belong to justice, not politics.
Document 56
Copyright 1996 South China Morning Post Ltd. South China Morning Post
August 27, 1996
SECTION: Profile; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 600 words
HEADLINE: Fall from grace of a high-flier
BODY:
Roh is now a disgraced politician, but a decade ago he was a political record -setter.
In 1987, he became the first directly elected president since Syngman Rhee in 1948.
Roh made a declaration in 1987 allowing direct and free elections. His speech brought an end to South Korea’s military dictatorship and signalled a first step towards democracy.
“Please trust me,” urged Roh during his presidential campaign. “I am a commoner.”
Roh won the election over Kim Young-sam and had the honour of opening the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
Roh, also an ex-general, is a lifetime friend of Chun, his classmate from the Korean Military Academy.
Roh (pictured) has shadowed Chun, allegedly becoming an accomplice to the 1979 coup d’etat and the 1980 Kwangju massacres, where students and citizens fighting for democracy were crushed.
But it was money that brought Roh down, and he subsequently confessed to acquiring US$ 650 million (HK$ 5 billion) during his presidency through what he calls “political donations” by Korea’s conglomerates.
Roh’s confession came when his secret slush fund was on the verge of being revealed.
President Kim Young-sam, as one of his anti-corruption measures, announced a law banning false name accounts. Roh quickly transferred much of his funds into accounts of his collaborators. But when Ha Jong-wook, a small business owner happened to complain to friends that he would have to pay the taxes on Roh’s money in his account, Park Kye-dong, an opposition MP, brought the matter to the attention of National Assembly.
Mr Park, holding up an account balance sheet, said it was evidence of a rumoured slush fund which the Government should investigate.
By November 16, Roh was confined to a cell at the Seoul Detention House after being indicted for bribery.
Document 57
Copyright 1996 South China Morning Post Ltd. South China Morning Post
August 27, 1996
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 614 words
HEADLINE: Just desserts
BODY:
When military strongmen get their just desserts it is more often by the sword of a vengeful opposition than by the sword of blind justice. But, despite national outrage over South Korea’s 1980 Kwangju massacre and the military coup the year before, the body which sentenced former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan to death and his successor Roh Tae-woo to 221/2 years in prison yesterday is not a kangaroo court.
The hand of the incumbent president, Kim Young-sam, may have been on the hilt of the judicial weapon when the two men were put on trial for treason and mutiny.
But the verdict of the Seoul District Criminal Court was based on clear evidence of the former leaders’ wrongdoing both in the manner of their coming to power and the venality of their regimes. Both men still have the right of appeal and recourse to whatever remedies the judicial system holds. Those remedies should be delivered through the courts, not for the political benefit of the ruling party.
President Kim himself, and other Asian leaders watching the proceedings from their own capitals, must be wondering uneasily what the future holds for them once they leave the safety of high office. So too will the corrupt businessmen for whom massive bribes to politicians are an everyday investment. Many Koreans were disappointed that the trial did not examine more closely Mr Kim’s claims never to have taken political payments from the businessmen sentenced for bribing his predecessors. But for the man on the street, the conviction of two of the most hated figures of recent Asian history will be a victory and a relief.
The trial proves clearly that the mighty can fall and their past misdeeds need not go unpunished. It also proves that retribution can be ordered through a properly constituted court of law and need not rely on the arbitrary whims of the next dictator.
And last, but not least, the conviction of some of the nation’s most powerful business leaders sends a strong signal to South Korea’s giant conglomerates that political favours cannot be bought without risk.
If that message is not to be diluted, however, President Kim should think twice before granting clemency for transparent political motives. Most Koreans expect he will act to reduce the sentences before he steps down next year to win support for his chosen successor from his party’s right wing. It would be a greater token of his own and his party’s integrity if he were to allow the courts to decide without interference.
Document 58
Copyright 1996 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
August 27, 1996, Tuesday, METRO EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A18
LENGTH: 570 words
HEADLINE: South Koreans cheer sentences against former military dictators
BYLINE: (AP)
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:
SEOUL (AP) - Thousands of South Koreans watching television in railway stations, bus terminals and other public areas cheered and shouted as two of South Korea’s former military dictators were sentenced for treasonous crimes.
The sentence yesterday against Chun Doo-hwan, a former army general who made himself president, was death for mutiny and treason - welcome news to many South Koreans.
But Chun’s death sentence is subject to automatic appeal. Even if upheld, it probably won’t be carried out. Presidential decrees spare most people on death row. Executions are rare.
His successor, Roh Tae-woo, who played a secondary role in Chun’s coup, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years.
On top of the treason and mutiny charges, the three-judge panel found Chun and Roh guilty of amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal political funds during their presidencies and fined them $370 million and $480 million, respectively.
“The decision is proof that all are equal before the law and has great meaning in finally putting history to rest,” said Han Jong-Kook, 36, a shop owner in Seoul.
Roh’s attorneys are expected to appeal his sentence, which the court said was mitigated by his secondary role in the coup.
Charges against the former presidents related to their seizing power in 1979 and ordering troops to crush a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju six months later that killed at least 200 civilians and injured hundreds - perhaps thousands.
Kwangju was the low point in 47 years of largely military rule that began when South Korea gained independence from Japan at the end of World War II.
Chun ruled from 1980 to 1988, and Roh followed him.
When Kim Young-sam, a civilian, was elected president in 1992, he instigated the charges against his predecessors.
In a statement, Kim’s ruling party said of the verdicts: “It is unfortunate that such a thing should happen to a former president but it is fortunate that history has been set right.”
Some Koreans - especially relatives of those killed in the Kwangju uprising - were upset Roh’s sentence was not greater.
“It is incomprehensible how Roh was given only 22 1/2 years,” said Kim Chang-ja, a student activist from Kwangju. “Judgment must be impartial.”
“Where can I find justice for my son now?” screamed a woman as the defendants were led out of court. The woman said her son was killed in 1980.
Some in Taegu, the city where Roh and Chun grew up, said the verdicts were unfair. “Putting a former president in jail seems too much,” one resident told KBS-TV.
The trial was seen as South Korea exorcising its past, marred by the massacre and the jailing of thousands of government opponents.
The chief judge said Chun and Roh put down the pro-democracy movement “to clear the way for their rise to power, and used martial law for their own political purposes.”
Chun and Roh have claimed their indictments were a “political circus,” engineered by a president trying to boost his popularity.
Thirteen other ex-generals sentenced yesterday got terms ranging from four to 10 years for their roles in the coup and Kwangju crackdown. One former general, Park Jun-byung, was acquitted.
Eighteen ex-presidential aides and businessmen got terms from 10 months to 2 1/2 years for giving or arranging to bribe Roh. Among them were heads of powerful corporations, including Daewoo and Samsung.
GRAPHIC: AP color photo (AHN YOUNG-JOON): BITTER BLOW: A woman in traditional mourning garb slaps police officer yesterday outside court where two ex-dictators were sentenced for treasonous crimes. The woman lost a relative in 1980 Kwanju uprising
Document 59
Copyright 1996 The Washington Post The Washington Post
August 27, 1996, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1233 words
HEADLINE: Seoul Court Convicts Top Industrialists
BYLINE: Sandra Sugawara, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: SEOUL, Aug. 26
BODY:
Just hours after finding two former South Korean presidents guilty of sedition and corruption, a court here convicted industrialist Kim Woo Choong on bribery charges and imposed a two-year prison term on the founder of the Daewoo Group, a giant conglomerate that makes everything from electronics to cars.
Kim and eight other executives representing some of South Korea’s largest companies were found guilty of bribing former president Roh Tae Woo. Four of the businessmen were handed jail sentences of two or 2 1/2 years. Five others, including Lee Kun Hee, chairman of Samsung, South Korea’s largest industrial conglomerate, received suspended sentences and will serve no prison time.
The specter of some of these titans of industry being imprisoned for practices they said were common is seen by many as a repudiation of the way Korea Inc. was built.
The unprecedented court decisions stunned the business community and government officials at a time when they are trying to revive the Korean economy. The convictions followed an extraordinary investigation that was spurred by President Kim Young Sam’s campaign to “right the wrongs of history.”
Nine former government officials were also found guilty of helping Roh or Chun take bribes.
The sentences were delivered just hours after the Seoul District Criminal Court sentenced former president Chun Doo Hwan to death for masterminding a 1979 coup that brought him to power and an army massacre of at least 200 demonstrating for democracy in 1980. He was also found guilty of corruption. Roh, Chun’s successor, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for his supporting role in those events and for accepting bribes. Both men are expected to appeal.
The nine-month proceedings, dubbed South Korea’s “trial of the century,” sought to close a door on a history of repressive military rule and marked a major step in the establishment of the rule of law in the country’s tumultuous transition to democracy.
In a statement, President Kim’s ruling party applauded the verdicts. “It is unfortunate that such a thing should happen to a former president, but it is fortunate that history has been set right,” the party said.
The corruption trial, centering on the relationship between Roh and eight of the nine executives, exposed the darker side of the close partnership between business and government in South Korea that led to the creation of some of the world’s exporting powerhouses.
But despite testimony that the corporations gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the two former leaders, it had been widely expected here that the executives would get suspended sentences or very brief jail terms. Eight of the nine businessmen headed chaebols, the powerful industrial groups that are the foundation of the South Korean economy, and several of the men were considered key to the country’s economic growth, which has sputtered recently.
None of the executives was taken into custody, and it was not clear whether they would be jailed during the appeals process. All refused to comment as they entered and left the courtroom, but it is assumed they will appeal their sentences.
“The heavy sentences are given despite the businessmen’s contributions to the national economy and development of their groups, because it should not become a precedent to receive a light sentence because of contributions to the economy,” presiding judge Kim Young Il said at a news conference. However, he did not call for the executives’ immediate arrest, he said, because “There’s no possibility they would run away, and they need to continue their business activities.”
Although it is widely expected among financial analysts that the executives eventually will get suspended sentences, they said one of the companies that is likely to be most affected if its executive is jailed is Daewoo. Kim, its chairman, is a hands-on executive who is involved in negotiating major deals and is thought to make all key decisions.
In some of the other companies, analysts said, the chairmen delegate much more authority, and therefore, their absence would have less effect on day-to-day operations, but the larger concern is that foreign business partners and investors might panic and avoid these companies if their chairmen are jailed.
In addition to Daewoo’s Kim, three other executives received jail terms. Choi Won Suk, the head of Dong Ah Group, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years; Chang Jin Ho, the head of Jinro Group, and Chung Tae Soo, who heads Hanbo Group, both received two-year sentences.
Government bureaucrats were concerned about the impact the convictions could have on Korea’s economy because among those given the harshest sentences are owners of some of the country’s leading manufacturers of autos, electronics and steel, or major overseas builders.
The executives who were ordered to serve jail terms were found guilty of paying off Roh, with expectations of favorable treatment in specific business deals in exchange. The court handed down suspended sentences in cases where the prosecution failed to link money to specific deals, Judge Kim said.
The two former presidents were also fined: Chun must pay $ 270 million; Roh, $ 350 million.
Through their powerful, highly centralized government, Chun and Roh oversaw the spectacular economic rise of South Korea that began more than 25 years ago. By funneling resources and favorable treatment to a handful of companies, they helped create corporations wealthy enough to take on Japanese, American and European multinationals in fields ranging from electronics to automobiles. But in return for bestowing favors, the two former generals expected cash payoffs, according to various news reports.
Prosecutors alleged that the bags of cash delivered to the two leaders were bribes. Chun and Roh have said they were political donations.
Public reaction to today’s sentencing was generally favorable. Kim, the presiding judge, is widely respected and considered tough and independent.
There were protests, however, the largest of which came from residents of the southern city of Kwangju, where at least 200 civilians were massacred in 1980. Chun was convicted of plotting and ordering the crackdown on people demonstrating for democracy, but he was not convicted of murder in connection with the deaths, which angered residents.
Observers said the failure to convict Chun on the murder charge leaves the emotional issue of the Kwangju massacre unresolved.
“After a prolonged court case, we still don’t know who gave the order to shoot, or who first fired the gun or what the exact casualties were in the 1980 Kwangju massacre,” said Yi Daehoon, chief coordinator of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a nonpartisan civic group in Seoul. “It is mainly because the prosecutors did not aggressively prove the charge with solid, hard evidence.”
Kim Gyong Chon, from a Kwangju-based committee of relatives of victims of the massacre, angrily denounced the ruling.
“They are murderers. How could murderers be pardoned in this way?” she asked.
Thirteen other ex-generals were also sentenced to prison terms ranging from 4 to 10 years for their roles in the government takeover and the subsequent crackdown in Kwangju. One former general, Park Jun Byung, was acquitted.
Special correspondent Lee Keumhyun contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC: Former presidents Chun Doo Hwan, right, and Roh Tae Woo await their sentencing in a Seoul courtroom. (Photo ran in an earlier edition)
Document 60
Copyright 1996 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
August 26, 1996, Monday, FIVE STAR LIFT Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A
LENGTH: 319 words
HEADLINE: EX-PRESIDENT CHUN OF S. KOREA SENTENCED TO DIE; ROH GETS PRISON
SOURCE: Compiled From News Services
DATELINE: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
BODY:
South Korea’s ex-president Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death today after being convicted of mutiny and treason. His successor, Roh Tae-woo, was also found guilty and received 22 1/2 years in prison.
A three-judge panel found the two ex-presidents guilty of staging a coup in 1979, then causing hundreds of deaths in a crackdown on a pro-democracy demonstration in Kwangju, in the southern part of the peninsula, six months after assuming power.
Chun’s death sentence is subject to automatic appeal. Roh’s attorneys were also expected to appeal.
Even if Chun’s death sentence is upheld by the country’s highest court, execution is rare in South Korea, and it is unlikely the sentence would be carried out.
The trial, which opened in December, is seen as South Korea’s attempt to come to terms with its militaristic past. Chun became president in 1980 and was succeeded by Roh in 1988, and the nation continued as a military dictatorship until President Kim Young-sam took power in 1992 and began reforms to abolish the military influence in the country’s government.
Chun and Roh were also found guilty of amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal political funds during their terms. Chun was fined $ 270 million and Roh $ 350 million.
Both have claimed their indictments were a “political circus” by the president to boost his sagging popularity. Thirteen other ex-generals were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to 10 years for their roles in the government takeover and subsequent crackdown in Kwangju. One former general, Park Jun-byung, was acquitted.
Chun, helped by Roh, a childhood friend and later an army colleague, seized power in a coup in 1979, the event that brought the mutiny charges. The treason charges stemmed from what came to be known as the Kwangju massacre, a pro-democracy uprising six months later that left hundreds of people dead or injured.
Document 61
Copyright 1996 The Washington Post The Washington Post
August 26, 1996, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1055 words
HEADLINE: South Korean Court Sentences Ex-Rulers To Prison, Death
BYLINE: Sandra Sugawara, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Monday)
BODY:
A Seoul court sentenced former South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan to death after finding him guilty on mutiny, treason and corruption charges. His successor as president, Roh Tae Woo, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison on similar charges.
Chun and Roh, standing in short-sleeved blue prison garb before a three-judge panel, listened grimly in a courtroom packed with 200 people as the presiding judge read out the verdict and sentences. Media access to the proceeding was limited so the reactions of the two men could not be immediately discerned by reporters assembled outside.
The two men have a week to appeal the sentences, although there was speculation today that they will not, given the widely held surmise that President Kim Young Sam will pardon them. Such a move could gain Kim, the first South Korean president in three decades without a military background, support among political conservatives. It also would spare the country the possibly divisive anguish of having its former presidents severely punished, analysts said, noting that many people here feel that the shame of a conviction would be punishment enough for the two men.
Although prosecutors had requested the death sentence for Chun, some legal analysts had predicted that the sentence would be less severe. Presiding judge Kim Young Il declared, however, that the crimes committed were serious enough to warrant the most severe punishment.
Roh was spared the punishment of life imprisonment demanded by prosecutors on grounds, Judge Kim said, that Roh had only been following Chun’s lead. Kim said also that Roh’s efforts to promote democracy in South Korea had been taken into account.
The two were found guilty of amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal political funds during their terms. Chun was fined $ 270 million and Roh $ 350 million.
The verdict represents an ignominious ending for the two former army generals who ruled South Korea during the 1980s and early 1990s and were instrumental in shaping its emergence as an Asian economic powerhouse. Indeed, the spectacle of the two former rulers, dressed in prison uniforms like common criminals and standing powerless before the three judges, riveted the nation. South Koreans gathered around television sets in homes, stores and offices to watch the unfolding of a drama that has become a symbol of the political transformation that South Korea has undergone in the past three years.
The trial has been viewed by many South Koreans less as a hearing on the specific crimes committed more than a decade ago by aging military leaders than as a pivotal step toward the establishment of the rule of law by a country trying to cleanse itself of its brutal and corrupt past. For their part, Chun and Roh have criticized the trial as a political circus by the president to boost his popularity.
The two former presidents were convicted on mutiny and treason charges stemming from their staging of a 1979 coup within the military following the assassination of President Park Chung Hee.
The two men were also found guilty of treason in the 1980 massacre of 200 people as security forces fired on demonstrators in the city of Kwangju, but the judge said there was insufficient evidence to find Chun guilty on a separate murder charge in connection with the same event. In that incident, students and others protesting martial law imposed by the Chun-led military were gunned down in a slaughter that remains a rallying point for many South Koreans to this day.
Thirteen other former generals who were tried along with the ex-presidents on sedition and treason charges were also convicted today. All except Chun received lesser sentences than sought by the prosecutors; one ex-general was found not guilty. Later today, the court will render verdicts and hand down sentences in political corruption cases involving other top officials and business executives.
Chun and Roh have admitted taking hundreds of millions of dollars from South Korean businessmen, but they have maintained that the money represented political donations, not bribes. Such donations were an accepted way of doing business then, according to South Korean businessmen.
The two former presidents had also maintained their innocence on the treason charges, arguing that they acted in the interest of national security and that the crackdown in Kwangju was necessary to avert instability that might prompt a North Korean invasion.
Chun ruled South Korea with an iron fist from 1980 to 1988. An aloof man with a military bearing, he was widely unpopular. As Chun’s protege, Roh shocked South Korea when in 1987 he agreed to presidential elections after weeks of student democracy demonstrations that had the support of the middle class. But anger over the Kwangju incident and an alleged culture of political corruption in South Korea continued to plague the reputations of both men.
Prosecutors took aggressive aim at the former leaders last fall after an opposition lawmaker charged that Roh had amassed $ 492 million in secret accounts. On Oct. 27, a tearful Roh apologized to an astonished nation on television, confessing that he had created and maintained a political slush fund of more than $ 600 million, which he said he raised from corporations.
Roh was arrested on bribery charges the following month, and prosecutors then decided to reopen an investigation into the coup and the Kwangju incident. In December, Chun was arrested in connection with the coup and began a 26-day hunger strike. Later, he was accused of taking bribes, and Roh was charged with treason and sedition for his role in the coup and massacre.
In the afternoon court session, the panel was to pass judgment on former military associates of Chun and Roh; senior officials who served during their administrations; and some of South Korea’s top business tycoons, including the chairmen of the mighty Samsung and Daewoo corporate groups.
It has been widely predicted here that the business leaders, charged with buying government favors by showering Chun and Roh with cash, would get off lightly because of their key roles in the economy.
The businessmen have acknowledged making political payments, saying it was common practice at the time, but they deny receiving favors in return.
GRAPHIC: Photo, afp;ph,,agate file photos/reuter, Former South Korean presidents Roh Tae Woo (far left) and Chun Doo Hwan are escorted into a Seoul court wearing prison garb to hear verdicts in their trial on mutiny, treason and corruption charges. Chun was sentenced to death and Roh to 22 1/2 years in prison.
Document 62
Copyright 1996 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
August 21, 1996
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 1040 words
HEADLINE: RIOT POLICE END SEOUL CAMPUS OCCUPATION
BYLINE: Andrew Higgins In Hong Kong
BODY:
THOUSANDS of battle-scarred students clogged South Korea’s detention cells yesterday after riot police stormed the campus stronghold of protesters demanding that United States troops withdraw and the divided peninsula be reunified.
A frenzied dawn assault by 5,000 helmeted police backed by helicopters ended a week-long occupation of Seoul’s Yonsei University, the focus of the worst confrontation between students and the state since a campaign for democracy in the late 1980s.
After battles that left part of the university in flames and engulfed the campus in clouds of tear gas and smoke, more than 3,000 students were hauled away - bringing the number detained in a week of clashes to about 5,500.
The assault, in which more than 1,000 police and students were injured, was a bloody conclusion to what began as a peaceful three-day festival calling for unification. The authorities outlawed the gathering and blocked a planned march towards the heavily militarised border that has divided the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean war.
Some 37,000 US troops help South Korea guard the frontier, which lies only a short drive from Seoul and marks the boundary between one of Asia’s most successful economies and the continent’s last doctrinaire Marxist regime.
The government of President Kim Young-sam, a veteran of past anti-government dissent, has branded the students as stooges of North Korea, an accusation often used by the former military rulers to stifle dissent.
Yesterday’s assault came hours after students rejected a government offer of surrender in exchange for leniency. The protesters refused to move until the authorities promised to lift all threats of prosecution and guarantee a safe return home. It is illegal in South Korea to side with the North in word or deed.
Although the protests were initially organised by a small core of radicals, the passions of thousands of fellow students were galvanised when the government threatened to crack down hard. The students, exhausted after four days under police siege with little sleep, food or water, hurled firebombs and stones and erected a barricade of flaming desks but were no match for the riot squad.
It took only two hours for the authorities to regain control of the university’s main building and seize its 1,000 or so defenders. A further 2,000 students entrenched in a nearby science building tried to flee but were caught.
North Korea’s economic collapse and the spectre of mass starvation after two years of floods have heightened fears about Pyongyang’s intentions. Such nervousness might explain the seemingly counterproductive ferocity with which the authorities responded to the unrest.
The crackdown reflects Seoul’s determination to fix its own pace and terms for any move towards reconciliation with Pyongyang. Still technically at war, the two sides have had no official government contacts since the death of North Korea’s “Great Leader”, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.
Student protests, an often violent ritual of South Korean politics, have enjoyed popular support in the past. But the end of military-backed rule with the election of Mr Kim in 1993 has left campus protesters increasingly isolated.
South Korea’s former military strongman, Chun Doo-hwan, and his successor, Roh Tae-woo, are in jail awaiting the verdict of a trial for corruption and treason. The prosecution has demanded that Mr Chun be executed for his role in suppressing a pro-democracy protest in 1980, a crackdown remembered as the Kwangju Massacre.
Leader comment, page 14
Document 63
Copyright 1996 The Straits Times Press Limited The Straits Times (Singapore)
August 19, 1996
SECTION: Comment/Analysis; Pg. 26
LENGTH: 880 words
HEADLINE: Justice in South Korea
BODY:
SO MUCH controversy already surrounds what is described as South Korea’s Trial of the Century that President Kim Young Sam’s decision to restore the civil rights of several former aides to disgraced former President Roh Tae Woo, and to free 586 political prisoners, including former Cabinet ministers and other high-ranking officials, is only one more strand of contention. However, the opposition National Congress for New Politics and United Liberal Democrats Party are mistaken in condemning the presidential amnesty as a denial of justice. For, whatever political signal Mr Kim’s action might send out, the decisions themselves do not exonerate convicts like Mr Roh’s former security adviser Kim Chong Whi, former finance minister Rhee Yong Man or former labour minister Lee Hyung Koo, who were all found guilty of various offences and sentenced to prison.
Nor is such clemency without precedent. Former trade minister Ahn Byong Hwa, who was sent to jail for three years in 1994 on corruption charges, was granted a special pardon a year ago on the 50th anniversary of South Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule. Now, his civil rights have been restored, which means that he is no longer barred from voting or running for public office. It would appear that the disqualification would still apply to most of (if not all) the 586 released prisoners. For, those who are freed before completing their prison terms, or whose sentences are suspended, remain bereft of civil rights under the law, until these are specifically restored. In making use of this nuanced process, Mr Kim must have taken into account the public mood in his country, the problem of thousands of rebellious students, the delicate situation vis-a-vis a still unpredictable North Korea, as well as the needs of stability and continued economic growth.
To his credit, it must be said that the President has not prevented the law from taking its course. There is no reason to suppose that he will do so in the bigger test of all political and governmental systems that lies ahead: the “sentencing session”, now scheduled for Aug 26, of Mr Roh and his predecessor, former President Chun Doo Hwan. But all this talk of sentencing, with the prosecution demanding death for Mr Chun and life imprisonment for Mr Roh on charges of bribery, treason and mutiny, may be a little premature. The Seoul district criminal court is yet to pronounce its verdict. If, as many expect, the court does convict the two men, they are bound to appeal immediately, extending the trial by another four months. Any abridgement of that process can only play into the hands of those who complain that the trial has already been hustled to circumvent a criminal law provision that the accused should be freed from custody if the proceedings take longer than six months.
It is an extremely delicate situation, in fact, that Mr Kim has to cope with. The contribution of the industrial conglomerates to the national economy cannot be overlooked. Mr Chun may have been a little off the mark in accusing the government of trying to “tailor the reality of history to suit present perspectives”, but it is undoubtedly true that issues and events can only be judged in a contemporary context. Subjecting them to scrutiny on the basis of the values and norms of a later period, when different objective conditions prevail, cannot always guarantee a fair assessment.
Matters are further complicated by the continuity of South Korea’s political process: originally a protege of Mr Roh’s, Mr Kim is suspected of taking money from him for his 1992 election campaign. At the same time, the passions aroused by the 1980 Kwangju massacre have not died down. Many South Koreans fear, too, that a healthy public life demands the end of corruption on an apparently mind-boggling scale. The opposition, which demonstrated its power recently by paralysing parliament for a month, can be relied on to exploit all these factors. Mr Kim cannot afford to give it a handle, just as he cannot ignore public sensitivities. Both should be satisfied if the law takes its course; neither can complain if justice is tempered with mercy after the courts have spoken.
Document 64
Copyright 1996 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
August 12, 1996, Monday, METRO EDITION
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. A13
LENGTH: 668 words
HEADLINE: Trials resonate beyond South Korea’s borders
BYLINE: By Gwynne Dyer
BODY:
“We need a new history,” said Sohn Hak Kyu, official voice of South Korea’s ruling New Korea Party. “This means not only redefining Kwangju as a democratic movement, but also punishing those who suppressed it.”
Sohn was explaining why South Korea’s two living ex-presidents were both going to be tried for sedition and massacre. Now it is actually happening: A week ago, senior prosecutor Kim Sang Hee demanded the death penalty for Chun Doo Hwan (president from 1980-89), and life imprisonment for his successor Roh Tae Woo (1988-93).
The two ex-generals are also accused of taking enormous bribes, but it was their role in organizing the Kwangju massacre of 1980 that has cast them as the leading villains of South Korea’s modern history. “The old regime had a birth defect,” explained Bae Ho Hahn of the Sejong Institute, a Seoul think tank. “It came to power with blood on its hands. This was an incurable disease.”
South Korea is a democracy now, and the time of reckoning is at hand for its former dictators. But this is not just a South Korean issue. You may be sure dictators in other Asian countries where the regimes have perpetrated similar acts are watching the proceedings in Seoul with close attention.
Only a few hundred people died in Kwangju in May 1980, a thousand at most. But it put off for 13 years the day when the country would become a democracy.
In 1979 the military dictator who had ruled South Korea since 1961, Gen. Park Chung Hee, was assassinated by fellow army officers. (Chun Doo Hwan, then the chief of military intelligence, is widely suspected of having been the mastermind behind the plot.) In the ensuing turmoil many Koreans struggled to found a new democratic regime, but Chun and his protege Roh Tae Woo, who enjoyed U.S. backing, gradually gained the upper hand.
In May 1980 they felt strong enough to impose martial law on the whole country, citing a threat from Communist North Korea. The citizens of the city of Kwangju, capital of the traditionally rebellious province of Cholla, rose in protest, and for 10 days they held the city. Then Chun sent special forces troops into the city, and in a single day, using machine-guns and even flame throwers against civilians, they drowned the revolt in blood.
Chun Doo Hwan emerged as South Korea’s undisputed ruler, and thousands of democrats were jailed or fled into exile. But no sentient South Korean ever believed their excuse that Kwangju was a Communist uprising instigated by North Korea.
During the delicate transition to democracy in 1993, no legal action was taken against the former dictators. But last December they were arrested, along with a half-dozen other former senior officers, and charged with corruption, sedition and massacre.
In an Asia where many regimes still try to use rapid economic growth as an excuse for tyranny, but where democracy has been spreading inexorably for the past decade, the trials of Chun, Roh and their colleagues resonate far beyond South Korea’s borders.
In the short run, they are bound to heighten resistance to change in places like China, North Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma. But in the longer run they weaken those regimes, by showing that nobody is beyond the reach of the law.
Chun will not really be executed for his crimes, and Roh will not spend the rest of his life in prison. They will probably both be found guilty later this month, but they will most likely be handed more modest prison sentences, and then be pardoned and freed by President Kim Young Sam after serving only a few months in jail. They may not even have to give back the fortunes they amassed through taking bribes while they were in power.
But the point is not so much to punish these old men as to show that dictators are not above the law.
It may seem unsatisfactory to the citizens of Kwangju. But it will be a very worrisome precedent for many powerful autocrats elsewhere in Asia.
Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian journalist based in London.
Document 65
Copyright 1996 Southam Inc. The Gazette (Montreal)
August 10, 1996, Saturday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL / OP-ED; Pg. B5
LENGTH: 934 words
HEADLINE: Dictators face justice: South Korea sets an encouraging precedent
BYLINE: GWYNNE DYER; FREELANCE
DATELINE: LONDON
BODY:
“We need a new history,” said Sohn Hak Kyu, official spokesman of South Korea’s ruling New Korea Party. “This means not only redefining Kwangju as a democratic movement, but also punishing those who suppressed it.”
Sohn was explaining why South Korea’s two living ex-presidents were both going to be put on trial for sedition and massacre. Now it is actually happening: on Monday, senior prosecutor Kim Sang Hee demanded the death penalty for Chun Doo Hwan (president from 1980-88), and life imprisonment for his successor, Roh Tae Woo (1988-93).
The two ex-generals are also accused of taking enormous bribes, but it was their role in organizing the Kwangju massacre of 1980 that has cast them as the leading villains of South Korea’s modern history. “The old regime had a birth defect,” explained Bae Ho Hahn of the Sejong Institute, a Seoul think-tank. “It came to power with blood on its hands. This was an incurable disease.”
South Korea is a democracy now, and the time of reckoning is at hand for its former dictators. But this is not just a South Korean issue: you may be sure that dictators in other Asian countries where the regimes have perpetrated similar acts, such as the Burmese generals who massacred civilians in the streets of Rangoon in 1988, or the Chinese Communist gerontocrats who carried out the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989, are watching the proceedings in Seoul with close attention.
The role that the open wound of Kwangju plays in the modern Korean psyche is illustrated by a survey carried out recently by a professor at Seoul National University. He asked students to identify the greatest tragedy in Korean history since 1945, assuming that most would choose the Korean War of 1950-53, which killed several million Koreans. But overwhelmingly, they chose Kwangju.
Only a few hundred people died in Kwangju in May 1980, a thousand at most. But it put off the day when the country would become a democracy for 13 years.
In 1979 the military dictator who had ruled South Korea since 1961, General Park Chung Hee, was assassinated by fellow army officers. (Chun Doo Hwan, then the chief of military intelligence, is widely suspected of having been the mastermind behind the plot.) In the ensuing turmoil many Koreans struggled to found a new democratic regime, but Chun and his protege Roh Tae Woo, who enjoyed U.S. backing, gradually gained the upper hand.
In May of 1980 they felt strong enough to impose martial law on the whole country, citing a threat from Communist North Korea. The citizens of the city of Kwangju, capital of the traditionally rebellious province of Cholla, rose in protest, and for 10 days they held the city. Then Chun sent special forces troops into the city, and in a single day, using machine guns and even flame-throwers against civilians, they drowned the revolt in blood.
Chun Doo Hwan emerged as South Korea’s undisputed ruler, and thousands of democrats were jailed or fled into exile. He presided over the peak years of the economic miracle that made South Korea an industrialized country, and was even able to pass on the presidency to Roh Tae Woo in 1988. But no sentient South Korean ever believed their excuse that Kwangju was a Communist uprising instigated by North Korea.
During the delicate transition to democracy in 1993, no legal action was taken against the former dictators. They must have assumed that, as in other former tyrannies from Chile and South Africa to Russia and Thailand, leading members of the old regime would benefit from an amnesty, formal or tacit, on their past crimes. But last December they were arrested, along with a half- dozen other former senior officers who were their closest collaborators, and charged with corruption, sedition and massacre.
In an Asia where many regimes still try to use rapid economic growth as an excuse for tyranny, but where democracy has been spreading inexorably for the past decade, the trials of Chun, Roh and their colleagues resonate far beyond South Korea’s borders.
In the short run, they are bound to heighten resistance to change in places like China, North Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma. But in the longer run they weaken those regimes, by showing that nobody is beyond the reach of the law. Those outside the regimes can hope for justice eventually, and the rulers’ own willingness to defend their power with deadly force is undermined.
In practice, of course, there is no country in the world where the law is the same for the rich and the poor, for the powerful and the weak. But that is the ideal on which democratic countries are based, and the harder they try to make it real, the stronger their democracy becomes.
Chun will not really be executed for his crimes, and Roh will not spend the rest of his life in prison. They will probably both be found guilty later this month, but they will most likely be handed more modest prison sentences, and then be pardoned and freed from prison by President Kim Young Sam after serving only a few months in jail. They may not even have to give back the fortunes they amassed through taking bribes while they were in power.
This will be a distressing outcome for the survivors of the Kwangju massacre and the relatives of those who were killed, but the essential purposes of justice and democracy will be served. The point is not so much to punish these old men as to show that dictators are not above the law.
It may seem unsatisfactory to the citizens of Kwangju. But it will be a very worrisome precedent for many powerful autocrats elsewhere in Asia.
GRAPHIC: Photo: GAZETTE FILE PHOTO / Former president Chun Doo Hwan, arriving for a court appearance.
Document 66
Copyright 1996 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
August 6, 1996, Tuesday LONDON EDITION 1
SECTION: NEWS: ASIA-PACIFIC; Pg. 03
LENGTH: 390 words
HEADLINE: Death penalty sought for Chun by prosecutors
BYLINE: By John Burton in Seoul
DATELINE: Seoul
BODY:
South Korean prosecutors yesterday asked that former president Chun Doo-hwan be sentenced to death and his successor, Roh Tae-woo, receive life imprisonment for alleged sedition.
Even if the Seoul district court upholds the suggested punishments at a sentencing session later this month, most analysts believe Mr Kim Young-sam, the South Korean president, will eventually use his executive privilege to reduce the penalties to shorter prison terms.
The proposed sentences, which were expected, followed a six-month trial that focused on their roles in a 1979 coup that brought them to power, and the subsequent 1980 massacre of at least 200 pro-democracy demonstrators in the south-western city of Kwangju.
The ex-presidents are also facing charges of allegedly accepting a combined total of almost $ 2bn (£1.3bn) in corporate bribes during their consecutive terms of office between 1980 and 1993.
Fourteen other persons, most of them former military colleagues of the two ex-presidents, face possible prison terms of 10-15 years. The suggested death penalty for Mr Chun reflected his role as the leader of the 1979 army coup and his position as martial law commander when the Kwangju massacre occurred in May 1980.
Mr Chun, who subsequently became president in August 1980, is an unpopular figure in Korea because of his seven years’ rule. In contrast, Mr Roh, who succeeded him in 1987, was considered to have had a subservient role in the army coup and is credited with paving the way for democratic rule as president.
It was Mr Roh’s admission last October that he accepted $ 650m in corporate payments that triggered a series of events that led to the trial of the two ex-presidents. His arrest last November on corruption charges provided an opportunity for Mr Kim, a former political dissident, to pursue Mr Chun as well, on sedition charges.
Their trial has been marked by controversy, with lawyers for most of the defendants having resigned in the past month to protest at what they claimed was the prejudicial attitude of the court judges.
Supporters of Mr Chun have also accused Mr Kim of conducting a vendetta to wrest control of the ruling party from allies of the two ex-presidents, while trying to divert attention from allegations about the financing of Mr Kim’s presidential campaign in 1992.
Document 67
Copyright 1996 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
August 6, 1996
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 720 words
HEADLINE: LEADING ARTICLE: SEEKING JUSTICE FOR THE TIGERS; South Korea’s indictment of past leaders is only the start
BODY:
WHEN MURDEROUS and corrupt leaders are brought to book - as is now happening in a Seoul courtroom - the balance of past injustice tips a little the other way. It is 16 years since hundreds died in the Kwangju massacre which former presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae-woo are accused of masterminding. Graft on an epic scale, funded by South Korea’s giant chaebol conglomerates, has been around for even longer. However late, accounts must be settled before any democratic transition can be completed. Optimistically, the fate of these two once immune powerful figures will (as our Far East correspondent predicted yesterday) cause Asian autocrats from Beijing to Burma to quake with apprehension.
There is a sense in which some kind of regional trend may begin to be discerned. The end of the cold war weakened the conventional case for Western-sponsored dictatorship and also placed into question Japan’s one-party democracy. Rising living standards, whether in Taiwan, Korea, or Indonesia, create new middle classes which chafe at old-fashioned repression. The downside of globalisation - a widening gap between rich and poor and expanding areas of exploitation - also leads to unrest. (This is an important, though under-rated, factor now in Indonesia’s social ferment). Voices of protest, from within these countries as well as from outside, are transmitted more clearly. Horrendous events such as the Beijing, Rangoon and Dili massacres have sensitised public opinion and the international media. The “dinosaurs” who still rule are more clearly exposed.
Yet we should be cautious about declaring an outbreak of economic and political justice across Asia. The news from Indonesia only wins headlines because the Suharto regime has remained unchallenged for so long: his critics are still vulnerable to jail and worse. The Burmese junta may have eased the pressure on itself by releasing Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. While hundreds of her supporters remain in prison, only a few foreign companies are thinking twice about inward investment. And in South Korea, the drive against the former presidents is not unconnected with the desire of the present incumbent, Kim Young-sam, to improve his own image which has also been tarnished by the receipt of chaebol funds.
Oppression in Asia no longer takes the invariable form of military repression: the market for juntas is diminishing. But the doctrine of neo-authoritarianism, mediated through tame political institutions, has powerful appeal. Western governments have come to terms with China’s version of it: next year could see a Clinton-Jiang summit. For millions of Asians, the real issues are not so much formal democracy or its absence. They are those of everyday corruption, unsafe working conditions, mounting drugs and crime, and a huge rich-poor gap. To tackle all these will require a real Asian miracle.
Document 68
Copyright 1996 Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
August 6, 1996, Tuesday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 8; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 745 words
HEADLINE: DEATH SOUGHT FOR S. KOREA’S CHUN; JUSTICE: PROSECUTORS AT EX- PRESIDENT’S SEDITION TRIAL DEMAND HIS EXECUTION AND A LIFE TERM FOR HIS SUCCESSOR.
BYLINE: SONNI EFRON, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TOKYO
BODY:
As the unprecedented trial of two former South Korean strongmen drew to a close Monday, prosecutors demanded the death penalty for former President Chun Doo Hwan and life in prison for his successor, Roh Tae Woo.
The two men are charged with sedition and treason in connection with the 1979 mutiny that brought Chun to power and the massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in the southwestern city of Kwangju in 1980.
“It is the duty of our generation to settle the legacies of a wrongful past,” the prosecution said in a statement that echoed President Kim Young Sam’s promise to “right the wrongs of history” by putting his two archenemies on trial.
Roh and Chun are also accused of accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from South Korea’s most powerful businesses--triggering an explosive investigation into entrenched corruption at the highest levels of society.
Neither of the retired generals has been found innocent or guilty; under South Korea’s legal system, however, the prosecutor seeks a sentence before the three-judge panel announces its verdict. Convictions in this case are seen as a preordained formality when the court reconvenes Aug. 19.
Although courtroom spectators in Seoul clapped and cheered when the prosecutor asked for the death penalty for Chun, an execution is considered unlikely.
Public opinion was divided Monday as to how severely South Korea’s former leaders should be punished. But political analysts and ordinary citizens agreed that Kim would probably find an opportune moment to commute any sentences of Chun and Roh and try to bind South Korea’s political wounds before next year’s presidential vote.
“I welcome the punishment,” said Kim Mi Kyong, 23, a trading company worker. “They should be executed . . . to prevent similar crimes in the future, but I am afraid that they will somehow be spared.”
Seoul traffic policeman Choi Byung Gi, 26, favors amnesty. “They should be pardoned, for they were, after all, chief executives of this country, and it is bad for Korea’s image if we execute former chief executives,” Choi said, adding: “Let history judge.”
Although the trials are aimed at purging South Korean politics of blood and bribery, many citizens view them as political theater. “It is certain that they will get pardons, so why all these shows?” asked Chung Ki Yong, 31, who works for the Samsung business group.
The subject of the trial, one of the darkest episodes in Korean history, began with a December 1979 army mutiny led by Chun and supported by his friend Roh. In May 1980, Chun declared martial law and troops moved into Kwangju to squash a protest movement, killing at least 240 people--and by some estimates up to 1,000.
On trial with the two former presidents are 14 other top military officers accused of helping Chun seize or consolidate power. Prosecutors asked for life sentences for Chung Ho Yong, who commanded the special troops that fired on the Kwangju protesters, and for Hwang Young Si, deputy commander.
South Korea is struggling toward democracy after decades of rule by authoritarian juntas and military-backed leaders. Chun was president from 1980 to 1988; Roh led from 1988 to 1993. When Kim Young Sam was elected in 1993, he became the country’s first civilian leader in 32 years. A former democracy activist, Kim at first declined to take on his old foes and refused pleas for a full investigation of the Kwangju incident. Last year, he reversed himself and initiated a probe.
Kim has been under attack from families of those killed at Kwangju for being too timid in taking on the generals. On the other side, a sympathy vote for Chun and Roh in their home regions cost Kim’s party dearly in recent elections. Meanwhile, the eight defense lawyers for Chun and Roh resigned last month to protest what they termed the court’s railroading of their clients to please the president.
Chun, 65, has maintained he was not responsible for the use of force in Kwangju and that he was unaware of the crackdown until the day after it began. He and Roh have said they felt they had to restore order or risk a military intervention by North Korea.
In his final statement, Chun accused his successors of trying to rewrite history.
“I have no fear of punishment or intention to cling to life,” the former general said. “I hope I am the last to stand political trial.”
Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Students outside Seoul court shout for death for two ex- presidents. PHOTOGRAPHER: Associated Press
Document 69
Copyright 1996 The Washington Post The Washington Post
August 06, 1996, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A12
LENGTH: 722 words
HEADLINE: Seoul Asks Death for Ex-Leader
BYLINE: Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: TOKYO, Aug. 5
BODY:
South Korean prosecutors demanded the death penalty today for former president Chun Doo Hwan and life imprisonment for his successor, Roh Tae Woo, for presiding over some of the bloodiest days of South Korea’s authoritarian past.
Chun and Roh, both former army generals, face charges of treason for their roles in a bloody military coup in December 1979 as well as a 1980 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, in which at least 200 people died. Both men are also accused of using bribes to amass hundreds of millions of dollars in secret political slush funds.
Senior Prosecutor Kim Sang Hee told the Seoul court today that Chun, president in 1980-88, and Roh, who served in 1988-93, should be found guilty and severely punished so that “this trial will serve as a historic landmark by showing that laws and justice rule this land.”
“It is the duty of our generation to settle the legacies of a wrongful past,” Kim said. “We must make sure the criminal acts of destroying the constitution, repressing the freedom of the people or corrupting the national economy by accepting bribes should never be repeated.”
Chun and Roh have denied the charges against them. No date has been set for a ruling by the three-judge panel hearing the case, but analysts said it could come in the next few weeks.
Both men are widely expected to be convicted. But despite Kim’s calls for heavy sentences, few in South Korea believe the two former presidents will receive such harsh penalties. South Korean judges often impose lighter sentences than those sought by prosecutors.
More importantly, many South Koreans worry about the spectacle of the government executing one former president and locking up another for life.
One government official, who asked not to be identified, said both former presidents would probably receive moderate prison sentences from the judges. But, the official said, both would probably be pardoned by President Kim Young Sam and released from prison after serving a few months.
“This is a political matter,” the official said. “Their political careers are over. Nothing more would be gained by having these men serve long prison sentences.”
The trial of Chun, 64, and Roh, 63, longtime friends and classmates at the Korea Military Academy, has come to signify South Korea’s attempt to purge the excesses of its bloody military past.
South Korea was ruled by a succession of hard-line military leaders until 1992, when Kim became the first non-military candidate to take office through free elections in more than three decades.
Testimony in the trial has suggested that South Korea’s military leaders for decades lavished government contracts on reliable contributors to their slush funds and used their offices to financially choke those who did not contribute.
Roh was arrested in November after admitting on national television that he had accumulated a secret slush fund of more than $ 600 million. Chun was arrested in December on charges connected to the coup and the 1980 massacre in the city of Kwangju. Prosecutors later charged him with accumulating a slush fund even larger than Roh’s.
Both men have admitted amassing the funds but deny that bribes were involved. They testified that they received money from leading industrialists but that it was simply political donations. Both men said large unreported cash donations were a widely accepted practice in South Korean political circles at the time.
Chun and Roh have also denied the treason charges against them. They said they took their actions in the interest of national security and that the coup and the Kwangju crackdown were necessary to avoid political instability that might have tempted North Korea to mount a military invasion.
Outside the courtroom today, relatives of victims of the Kwangju massacre were among about 80 protesters demanding the execution of both men, the Reuter news agency reported.
“Justice will be served only when Chun and Roh are sentenced to death,” said Kim Bom Dong, 50, who was wounded when soldiers opened fire on the Kwangju demonstrators, Reuter reported.
The prosecution also asked today for prison terms ranging from 10 years to life for 14 other former generals who took part in the 1979 coup and helped Chun consolidate power in the months that followed.
Document 70
Copyright 1996 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
August 5, 1996
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN PREVIEW PAGE; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 467 words
HEADLINE: INTERNATIONAL: AUTOCRACY IN THE DOCK; Trial of Seoul’s ex-leaders nears its conclusion
BYLINE: Andrew Higgins
BODY:
SIXTEEN years after the Kwangju massacre, a court in South Korea this week sets the price of retribution - and sends an unnerving message to Asian autocrats.
In the final stage of an eight-month-long trial that has put two former presidents in the dock, state prosecutors today demand harsh penalties against the architects of South Korea’s corrupt authoritarian past.
Billed in Seoul as the ‘trial of the century,’ the proceedings resonate far beyond South Korea, demolishing claims of an axiomatic link between brutality and prosperity - the cornerstone of an ‘Asian model’ defended with troops in Tiananmen Square, Rangoon in 1989 and in Indonesia just over a week ago.
The charges against disgraced South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan and his successor Roh Tae-woo range from corruption to sedition and treason. Both admit to amassing slush funds totalling hundreds of millions of pounds. More contentious is their role in a December 1979 military coup and an army massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in the southern city of Kwangju the following May. The official death toll is around 200 but other estimates range much higher. The prosecution is expected to seek life imprisonment for Roh and the death sentence against Chun.
Responsibility for the Kwangju killings, the pivotal event of South Korea’s modern history, remained a taboo issue until the country’s current president Kim Young-sam declared a campaign to ‘put history to rights’, setting a precedent that terrifies many fellow Asian leaders fearful that they too could end up out of power and in the dock.
Andrew Higgins
Document 71
Copyright 1996 Gannett Company, Inc. USA TODAY
July 16, 1996, Tuesday, INTERNATIONAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
LENGTH: 927 words
HEADLINE: Bosnia election on hold until Karadzic is ousted
BODY:
International organizers said on Monday the campaign for elections in Bosnia, delayed at least until Friday, could not begin until separatist Serb leader Radovan Karadzic left political life. Robert Frowick, a U.S. diplomat in charge of the Sept. 14 ballot, said a “mutually acceptable” solution must be worked out with the Serbs before the campaign could begin. Also, a former top State Department official is being called upon to help negotiate the ouster. Richard Holbrooke plans to meet this week with Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia. Washington would like to see Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader, brought to trial on charges of overseeing the killings of Muslim civilians in Bosnia. Meanwhile, the police chief in the Bosnian Serb base town Pale has threatened to harm NATO troops and U.N. police if Western forces try to arrest Karadzic.
INDIAN STAMPEDES: At least 58 Indians were killed during stampedes at two Hindu shrines during a religious festival. Thousands of people were pushing into a temple in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh state when the crowd went out of control. Another stampede occurred in Hardwar, 125 miles north of New Delhi, where some 1.5 million Hindus gathered for ritual bathing in the Ganges River.
FOOD POISONING: Health workers battled to contain a food poisoning outbreak from school lunches that made nearly 4,000 children ill, forced cancellation of classes and caused near-panic in Japan’s second-largest city, Osaka. The food poisoning, the worst in Japan’s postwar history, has sent more than 200 students to hospitals since Friday. Hospitals in Osaka and neighboring Saki, where the outbreak was concentrated, reported being overwhelmed.
S. KOREA TRIAL: South Korean prosecutors may have decided to seek the death sentence for former president Chun Doo-hwan for his role in a military coup and the Kwangju incident, a South Korean newspaper reports. Prosecutors will likely seek a lifetime prison term for former president Roh Tae-woo, who played a lesser role in the incidents, the Chosun Ilbo said. At least 189 people died at Kwangju and 380 others were injured.
NAZI TRIAL: The prosecutor at the war-crimes trial of former SS captain Erich Priebke asked an Italian military court to sentence the defendant to life in prison. Priebke, 82, is accused of complicity in the massacre of 335 men and boys at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome in 1944. The prosecution alleges that Priebke, who was extradited from Argentina, played a significant role in organizing the killings, the worst World War II atrocity in Italy.
DIPLOMAT DEATH: A commentary in an official Burmese newspaper said an honorary consul for Norway, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland who died in jail last month was an unimportant crook who met his due fate. James Leander Nichols, a close friend of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was jailed for operating telephones and fax machines without permission. The New Light of Myanmar newspaper ridiculed Western nations’ condemnation and demands for details of Nichols death. “I cannot find a reason why there is such exaggeration and fault-finding over the death of an unimportant crook,” it said. “The bad-hat must have died because of destiny, as a retribution.”
HANDOVER: Gov. Chris Patten of Hong Kong disputed a report that his second-in-command Anson Chan would shed her official duties at the end of the year to work on the territory’s transition to Chinese rule. The Oriental Daily News reported that Chan would work full-time with Patten’s successor, to be named by Beijing by the year’s end. Patten also said Hong Kong residents face an uphill battle to persuade Europe to grant them visa-free entry after the handover.
INDIA POLITICS: A New Delhi court rejected demands by a group of lawyers that former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao be arrested in connection with a cheating case. An independent group of lawyers had petitioned the court to issue an arrest warrant for Rao, saying a lower-court judge’s summons against Rao in the case was not good enough. The case, which has sparked a challenge to Rao’s leadership of the Congress party, involved an expatriate Indian who says he paid money to Chandraswami, a Rao acquaintance, in a failed attempt to win a state contract.
REWARD OFFERED: Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov offered a $ 1 million reward for information on the perpetrators of two trolleybus bombings in the Russian capital. Thirty-three people were wounded in the explosions last week.
ALSO . . .
-- NICKNAME: Syria’s official media, reflecting displeasure at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have begun calling him “rotten.” Stories on the state-run news agency SANA refer to Netanyahu as “Netan” -- which in Arabic means “rotten” or “something that has a bad smell.” Netanyahu in Hebrew means “given by God.”
-- HEADQUARTERS MOVED: The U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees transferred its headquarters from Vienna to the Gaza Strip to save money and be closer to the people it serves.
-- BURUNDI PROTESTS: Several thousand Tutsi youths demonstrated in the streets of the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, chanting slogans against foreign military intervention intended to stem spiraling ethnic violence in the central African nation. Police made a half-hearted effort to control the demonstrators.
Compiled by Smita P. Nordwall
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, B/W, AP; Patten: Denies reports about deputy
Document 72
Copyright 1996 Wellington Newspapers Limited The Dominion (Wellington)
May 28, 1996
SEOUL RIOT: South Korean students confront riot police on a central Seoul street during an anti-United States protest. About 3000 students were protesting to denounce what they say was the role the United States played in the bloody 1980 Kwangju uprising and subsequent massacre by the Korean military.
Document 73
Copyright 1996 Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation The Toronto Sun
May 18, 1996, Saturday, Final EDITION
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 31
HEADLINE: WILD ART
GRAPHIC: photo by Reuter DEJA VU ... Students in South Korea battle riot police with firebombs in central Seoul on the 16th anniversary of the bloody Kwangju massacre, in which the military killed hundreds of citizens in a popular uprising.
Document 74
Copyright 1996 Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
May 13, 1996, Monday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 2206 words
HEADLINE: COLUMN ONE; S. KOREA RIFE WITH REGIONAL RIVALRIES; MANY SEE NEED TO EASE TENSIONS THAT ROIL PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS AND BURDEN DAILY LIFE WITH BIASES ABOUT EVERYTHING FROM MUSIC TO HIRING CHOICES.
BYLINE: DAVID HOLLEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:
Kim Mu Young, a Christian evangelist, hails from the mountainous Kyongsang region, famed for its rugged individualism rooted in a history of isolated farmers scratching a living from a harsh environment.
But he works in the Chungchong area south of Seoul, renowned for refined manners and cautious ways that reflect a tradition of close links to dynastic rulers.
“If you’re a hotheaded person like me, you can barely live here because people are so tedious, so slow,” he complained. “In Kyongsang, if you urge someone to come to church, they say yes or no. If they say yes, they come. Here, people say, ‘Yes, that’s wonderful.’ . . . But then they don’t come. So I go visit them many times. And they just keep saying, ‘Yes, that’s wonderful.’ If they’d tell me no right away, I’d give up. But they don’t.”
Kim is butting his head against one of the myriad differences that divide the three major regions of South Korea in everything from social relations and politics to music, food and dialect. These regional variations give a rich texture to Korean society. But they also burden the nation’s politics with explosive antagonisms.
The imprisonment and ongoing trials of two former presidents from Kyongsang--the southeastern region of the nation--plus the expression of sharp regional divisions in legislative elections last month have placed provincial resentment and the issue of how to cope with it high on South Korea’s public agenda.
Many people recognize a need to lessen old rivalries and prejudices for the sake of greater national unity. This task has become more urgent as hopes--and fears--rise here that the Communist regime in North Korea may be on the verge of collapse. That could mean that South Korea will face the daunting task of national reunification--and the need to cope with much-greater north-south differences--before it has come to terms with its internal conflicts.
Yet Korean politics today is more than ever dominated by regional political machines. These are built around the personalities of the “three Kims”--President Kim Young Sam, whose base lies in the southern part of Kyongsang and the nearby city of Pusan; opposition leader Kim Dae Jung of the southwestern Cholla region; and conservative leader Kim Jong Pil, a dominant figure in the central Chungchong area.
Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Pil are considering runs for the presidency next year. President Kim, constitutionally barred from a second term, is determined to support his own candidate. So there is little doubt that rival politicians will continue to exploit and reinforce regional differences.
But there also are signs of progress toward defusing the most bitter emotions that poison relations among residents of different regions. The arrests of former presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo are helping to heal the psychological wounds from the worst event of recent decades triggered, in part, by regional rivalries: the 1980 army massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Kwangju, the key city of the Cholla region.
That incident pitted supporters of the Cholla’s favorite son, longtime democracy activist Kim Dae Jung, against Chun, then a general whose imposition of martial law and arrest of opposition leaders triggered the civilian uprising in Kwangju. Chun assumed the presidency later that year. He is on trial on sedition charges for his power grab and on corruption charges for his behavior in office. Roh, Chun’s military colleague and political successor, also is imprisoned on sedition and corruption charges. Thus, the decades-long dominance of South Korea by cliques of Kyongsang military men has been decisively ended.
*
History books are now likely to be rewritten to praise the Kwangju protesters and condemn those who ordered the crackdown, which left at least 240 dead. This could mark a key step toward easing the especially bitter feelings that divide Cholla and Kyongsang.
In the short run, however, many in northern Kyongsang are upset by what has happened to Chun and Roh. “Many people believe Kim Young Sam imprisoned politicians from this area for his own political reasons,” said Sok Jae Dok, 36, a resident of Taegu, the key city of the northern part of Kyongsang.
Regional antagonisms also fester because of common prejudices that are so clearly unfair they are recognized as such even by people who cannot free themselves from them. In Kyongsang, for instance, children are brought up with largely unexplained warnings not to trust people from Cholla.
“I know immediately from their accent if someone is from Cholla, and then right away my guard is up,” said Lee Sung Ho, 36, a Taegu taxi driver. “We’ve been told as I was growing up that you don’t trust Cholla people or mix with Cholla people. . . . I don’t know, it may go back to the Three Kingdoms era. . . . What’s said most frequently is they are clever and may take advantage of you.”
Lee’s casual reference reflects how life is still affected by truly ancient history: The Three Kingdoms period ran from 18 BC to AD 660, but its division of the Korean nation still resonates.
The historical record of political discrimination against the people of Cholla, according to Oh Soo Sung, a professor of social psychology at Chonnam University in Kwangju, began with the first king of Koryo, Wang Kon, who unified Korea in the 10th century.
“Wang Kon gave an order that the government should not employ people from south of the Charyong Mountains, which run along the border of Chungchong and Cholla,” Oh said. “That was the origin of discrimination against Cholla people. . . . He had a very difficult time defeating a Cholla-based kingdom , and it was quite natural for him not to want to employ anyone from that area.”
A millennium later, during Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 occupation of Korea, Cholla remained an out-of-favor backwater. Industrial development was largely concentrated in Kyongsang, partly because a railway was built through the area from the southeastern port of Pusan to the Chinese border and beyond to serve Japanese economic and political goals in Manchuria.
President Park Chung Hee, who ruled from 1963 to 1979, was a Kyongsang native son who launched South Korea’s modernization. He continued the pattern, boosting Kyongsang, as did Chun and Roh.
Decades of favoritism toward Kyongsang was matched by pervasive discrimination against Cholla, not only by the government but by individual Koreans, in everything from rental housing to employment.
After the Kwangju massacre, the situation worsened: Cholla people were viewed as wildly anti-establishment, so they suffered job discrimination. That made them even more bitter.
“Businesses are reluctant to hire our students because of their reputation of being prone to demonstrate, in addition to their being from Cholla,” Oh said. “That leads them to neglect their studies, and that further deepens the problem.”
When he joined the faculty in 1979, Oh said, Chonnam University “was quite reputable, perhaps third in the nation.”
“Now it’s a third-rate university, because parents want to send their children to university in Seoul. Now it even reaches to high school. Parents send their children to Seoul for high school because when you look for work, you have to write down where you went to school.”
Antagonism between Kyongsang and Cholla became so severe after the 1980 massacre that people from one region visiting the other sometimes felt as if they were entering enemy territory. Tight media control and government propaganda under Chun’s 1980-1988 rule left many Koreans outside Cholla blaming the people of Kwangju for rebelling. Kwangju people, on the other hand, considered themselves heroes of democracy and resented the lack of understanding elsewhere.
Lee Sung Soo, 62, of Pusan, which is President Kim’s home base and is closely associated with southern Kyongsang, told of visiting a gas station in Cholla some years ago. The young attendant commented on his Pusan license plates, Lee said, and demanded that he give “three cheers” for Cholla’s local hero, Kim Dae Jung.
“I can understand the regional feelings of the Cholla people because so many of them died mercilessly,” Lee said. “But forcing an old man to say three cheers for Kim Dae Jung was too much. I refused. So he refused to fill my tank. After that experience, even if I’d wanted to vote for Kim Dae Jung, I’d have changed my mind.”
*
All across South Korea, even among those with prejudices against Cholla people, almost everyone agrees that Cholla food is justly famous as the country’s best in both flavor and variety, with meals often including a dozen or more side dishes. Cholla also is seen as the nation’s greatest center of traditional arts. Its continuing cultural richness is sometimes attributed to the constant discrimination it suffered.
“People had no way to express their choked-up feelings except in art, music and dance,” Oh said.
Park Hwan Sung, 57, a Kwangju dealer in Korean paintings, said his business’ survival depends on the Cholla people’s love of traditional art. “Whenever you enter a teahouse or a home, there is almost always a Korean painting on the wall,” he said. “This is unique to the Cholla area.”
Cholla people’s desire to preserve traditions is rooted in the pride they have in their region’s ancient contributions to Korean culture, said Moon Byung Ha, 46, a Kwangju calligraphy teacher.
Television shows and a much-talked-about new movie, “The Petal,” are fostering greater understanding of Kwangju’s suffering. In “The Petal,” which includes historical footage from the 1980 massacre, a teenage girl traumatized by the shootings mistakes an uneducated worker for her brother and refuses to leave him--even when he rapes and beats her. Eventually, he realizes what she has endured and develops deep feelings for her.
At one level, the complex story line can be seen as an allegory about Kwangju, raped and beaten by an uncomprehending nation.
It also expresses the director’s hopes for the future. “The worker was indifferent and even hostile at first to the girl, but later he came to understand her,” Chang Sun Woo said. “I hoped the same will be true of the Korean people--that ultimately they will understand and even love Kwangju.”
Kim Duk Soo, artistic director and lead performer of the prominent traditional percussion troupe SamulNori Hanullim, has worked for many years to bridge the differences between rival regions and strengthen a truly national culture.
“Regionalism in its original form is not bad, because it reflects love of your birthplace, love of where you are living,” he said. “So I try not to miss the characteristics and valuable traditional aspects of each region. . . . If we could generalize, we could say the language they speak in Cholla is more delicate, Kyongsang is more masculine and the central area is more refined. The same thing applies to the music they play.”
The instruments of SamulNori--janggo, hourglass drum; buk, barrel drum; jing, large gong; and kwenggari, small gong--are common to Korean percussion troupes throughout the country. But the way they are used varies distinctly. “In Cholla, the sound of drums is not pronounced. The rhythm is more delicate and emotional, and they accent the beautiful dancing forms,” Kim said. “In Kyongsang, they place the drum in front, and its size tends to be bigger. In the central area, in Chungchong, there’s a more refined and disciplined manner of playing.”
None of this is mere coincidence, Kim said. Cholla’s values, he said, grew from its history as a rich agricultural center, with plenty of land, plenty to eat and a love of beauty that the well-to-do can afford. In mountainous Kyongsang, “they had to be strong to survive, and it was reflected in their music,” he said. “The central area was close to the government. There were more scholars and members of the ruling class. They had to be disciplined and refined.”
Thus, Kim said, in putting together his troupe’s repertoire he turns to the melancholy melodies of Cholla to evoke “pathos,” to Kyongsang for “brave marching music” and to the Chungchong area for “refined musical dialogues.”
Repeating a sentiment expressed especially often by younger Koreans, the 43-year-old musician predicted that once the famous “three Kims” with their strong regional bases are gone from the political scene, local antagonisms will fade.
And based on what happened when SamulNori performed in North Korea’s capital in 1990, Kim Duk Soo held out hope that even the immense north-south gulf can be bridged.
“Even in Pyongyang, although we have been separated these 50 years, I found nothing has changed for these four musical instruments,” he said. “With these four instruments we could be united. I cried to witness that.”
Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report. Holley was recently on assignment in Seoul.
South Korean Regions The regions of South Korea have distinct divisions in politics, social ties, music, food and dialect. While these variations give texture to Korean society, they help perpetuate political antagonisms dating to ancient times.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Musician Kim Duk Soo plays janggo, a traditional Korean instrument. PHOTOGRAPHER: SEUNG-U PARK / For The Times GRAPHIC-MAP: South Korean Regions, VICTOR KOTOWITZ / Los Angeles Times PHOTO: (A2) INSTRUMENTAL--Musician Kim Duk Soo has worked for years to bridge the differences between South Korea’s rival regions. A1 PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID HOLLEY / Los Angeles Times
Document 75
Copyright 1996 Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
May 7, 1996, Tuesday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Page 10; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 482 words
HEADLINE: S. KOREA’S CHUN DENIES CRACKDOWN ROLE; ASIA: EX-PRESIDENT, ON TRIAL FOR SEDITION, SAYS HE WAS NOT INVOLVED IN DEPLOYING TROOPS WHO KILLED HUNDREDS IN 1980.
BYLINE: DAVID HOLLEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TOKYO
BODY:
Former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan on Monday told a court trying him for sedition that he was not responsible for the use of troops to violently suppress a 1980 pro-democracy protest in the city of Kwangju.
“The deployment of troops is done through the normal line of command,” Chun testified in answer to prosecution questioning. “I was in charge of intelligence. It was not a matter for me to be involved in.”
Chun, 65, a former general, is on trial in Seoul with other former top military officers, including his successor, former President Roh Tae Woo, for a Dec. 12, 1979, military mutiny and a May 1980 martial law crackdown.
It is widely accepted in South Korea that Chun was the leader of the 1979 mutiny and that it gave him control over the armed forces. It is also widely believed that the nationwide declaration of martial law on
May 17, 1980, and the use of troops to crush protests that broke out the next day in Kwangju gave Chun the power base to assume the presidency later that year.
But at his trial Monday, Chun insisted that his position at the time as head of the Army Security Command did not give him power to order troop movements and that he was not aware of the effort to put down protests in Kwangju until the day after the operation began.
“I think May 18 was Sunday, so I received such information only the following morning,” Chun said.
Chun acknowledged attending a May 18 meeting of martial law authorities but denied prosecution charges that plans for a crackdown in the southwestern city were a topic.
“Student protests in Kwangju at the time were not very serious,” he said. “I did not have interest in the matter, and it was not discussed in the meeting.”
While denying that he had anything to do with the decision to crush the 10-day Kwangju protests, Chun said the crackdown--which took at least 240 lives and, some believe, possibly even 1,000--was necessary to reestablish order in the face of a possible military attack by Communist North Korea.
“In a situation of intense South-North confrontation, the crackdown was inevitable,” he said.
Also in court Monday, Hwang Young Si, a co-defendant who was deputy commander of martial law troops at the time of the Kwangju massacre, testified that the martial law command did not draft the text of a radio broadcast that warned demonstrators troops would use force in “self-defense” against them.
When asked whether he meant that the Army Security Command headed by Chun had drafted the warning--something that could link Chun more closely to the massacre--Hwang replied, “Yes, it’s possible.”
Chun and Roh are also facing separate trials on corruption charges stemming from their accumulation of huge slush funds while in office.
Chun was president from 1980 to 1988, Roh from 1988 to 1993.
Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.
Document 76
Copyright 1996 Journal Sentinel Inc. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
May 7, 1996 Tuesday Final
SECTION: News Pg. 3
LENGTH: 109 words
HEADLINE: Chun denies role in Kwangju massacre
SOURCE: Journal Sentinel wire reports
DATELINE: Tokyo
BODY:
Former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan on Monday told a court trying him for sedition that he was not responsible for use of troops to bloodily suppress a 1980 pro-democracy protest in the city of Kwangju.
“The deployment of troops is done through the normal line of command,” Chun testified in answer to prosecution questioning. “I was in charge of intelligence. It was not a matter for me to be involved in.”
Chun, 65, a former general, is facing trial together with other former top military officers, including his successor, former President Roh Tae Woo, for a Dec. 12, 1979, military mutiny and a May 1980 martial law crackdown.
Document 77
Copyright 1996 Telegraph Group Limited The Daily Telegraph
April 11, 1996, Thursday
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 676 words
HEADLINE: Death of student could shift power balance in Korea
BYLINE: By Robert Guest in Seoul
BODY:
ABOUT 20,000 students demanded the head of President Kim Young-sam yesterday as they rallied in Seoul on the eve of the general assembly election to mourn the death of a classmate they say was murdered by police. “The president is a fascist,” said one of the radicals, wearing a bandanna as a mask. “He has no respect for human rights.” How Roh Su-sok, a 20-year-old law student, died is not clear. He was found unconscious after a demonstration held on March 29 to protest against higher tuition fees and the president’s refusal to explain where the money for his 1992 election campaign came from. A post-mortem examination showed that he had died of heart failure. His friends say that he would still be alive if riot police had not beaten him and attacked him with tear-gas. Yesterday’s four and a half hour procession did more than block Seoul’s already congested roads. Today’s vote is expected to be close and Roh’s death could conceivably tip the balance away from Kim’s dominant party. In the absence of substantial policy differences, voters will choose according to which of the party leaders they trust most: Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung or Kim Jong-pil, usually known by their initials: YS, DJ and JP. On economic matters, the three Kims’ platforms are indistinguishable: all are pro-business, pro-tax cuts and committed to slow de-regulation. Their foreign policies are also interchangeable: pro-America and cautious of North Korea. But the three contenders’ styles and backgrounds are so dissimilar that each man’s supporters tend to love their leader and loathe his enemies. Kim Jong-pil, the least popular of the three, was a close ally of the military strongman Park Chung-hee, the founder of the vicious Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Park was assassinated in 1979. JP draws his support from those who share his implausible belief that the government is in constant danger of being subverted by North Korean agents and from those who share his birthplace near Taejon city. Kim Dae-jung’s power base is in the Cholla region, which suffered most under martial law. At least 200 Cholla-ites were slaughtered by government troops in the town of Kwangju in 1980. DJ was the loudest agitator for democracy in the days of dictatorship and paid for his convictions. He spent years in jail or under house arrest, was occasionally tortured, and in 1973 was kidnapped by the Intelligence Agency and threatened with dismemberment. Only American intervention saved him. Kim Young-sam was also a dissident leader in the days of army rule. But he was less outspoken than DJ and spent only three weeks in prison. This makes him less heroic in the eyes of radicals, but more acceptable to conservatives, who associate DJ with violent strikes and student riots. DJ is more intelligent than YS. A popular joke is that, while whereas DJ has written 12 books, the president has not even read that many. But YS has a rough political cunning that his opponents underestimate at their peril. He won the presidency by merging his party with that of the old dictators. He courts conservatives by locking up Leftists and playing up the threat from North Korea. This month he put the army on higher alert, sent his prime minister to inspect frontline troops and ordered his forces to kill any Northerners who crossed the border. At the same time he tries to appeal to natural DJ supporters. This year he brought to trial those responsible for the Kwangju massacre and during yesterday’s rally he made sure that riot police kept their distance to avoid bloodshed. Since opinion polls are banned during election campaigns, no one knows whether YS’s cunning will keep his party in power. About 30 per cent of voters are thought to be undecided, so anything could happen. If YS loses control of parliament he will remain as president. But defeat will greatly hamper his ability to run the country. Fortunately for South Koreans, it is predicted that the economy will grow by a comfortable seven to eight per cent this year, whoever wins the election.
Document 78
Copyright 1996 The Financial Times Limited; Financial Times (London)
April 9, 1996, Tuesday
SECTION: Pg. 4
LENGTH: 897 words
HEADLINE: News: Asia-pacific: Sedition trial may backfire on Kim: Seoul court case may affect outcome of Thursday’s poll, writes John Burton
BYLINE: By JOHN BURTON
BODY:
For the past month former presidents Roh Tae-woo and Chun Doo-hwan, once the most powerful men in South Korea, have made weekly appearances in the dock of the Seoul district court dressed in powder-blue prison uniform.
Their trial for sedition has transfixed the nation, while being hailed in the rest of Asia as a rare regional example of political leaders being brought to justice for abuses of power.
But that noble image has been obscured in Seoul as the trial becomes a bitter political issue that could affect the outcome of the general election on Thursday.
With his government in danger of losing its parliamentary majority, President Kim Young-sam is telling voters that the trial of his two military-backed predecessors reflects his strong commitment to democratic reforms and ‘righting the wrongs of history’.
The opposition parties have a more cynical view of the president’s motives, alleging that Mr Kim has put his two former political allies on trial in a blatant attempt to win votes, while protecting himself against damaging charges concerning illegal political contributions.
Mr Chun and Mr Roh are involved in two sets of trials. They are being tried separately on corruption charges for allegedly accepting a combined total of more than Dollars 1bn in corporate bribes during their successive terms of office from 1980 to 1993. They are also being tried jointly on treason charges for leading a 1979 army coup and suppressing a 1980 pro-democracy protest in which at least 200 demonstrators were killed.
The two main opposition parties, the centre-left National Congress for New Politics and the conservative United Liberal Democrats, suspect that the government scheduled the treason trial right before the election to gain the maximum advantage as voters prepare to go to the polls.
In addition, the trial represents a potential threat to both opposition parties. The NCNP’s largest urban stronghold is the south-west city of Kwangju, where the 1980 massacre of protesters occurred. It believes the government is using the trial to attract votes in the Kwangju region.
The ULD worries that the trial could prove embarrassing since many of its politicians are former supporters of the two ex-presidents.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties have criticised the leisurely schedule of the corruption trials, which began in December and are not expected to end until May at the earliest.
They believe the slow pace of the corruption trials is intentional to prevent any pre-election disclosures of alleged illegal links between Mr Kim’s election campaign finances and the huge political slush fund amassed by the two former presidents.
In 1990 Mr Kim, a former dissident, joined the ruling party established by Mr Chun and Mr Roh and became its successful presidential candidate in 1992. Mr Kim has repeatedly denied personally receiving any money from his predecessors, although he has not disclosed sources for the 1992 campaign.
The election debate over the trials underscores that the arrest and imprisonment of Mr Chun and Mr Roh last autumn have had strong political overtones from the beginning.
After taking office in February 1993, Mr Kim publicly opposed demands for an official review of possible abuses by his two immediate predecessors. He explained that investigating the 1979 coup and 1980 Kwangju massacre would harm national reconciliation.
There were also good political reasons for caution. Mr Kim controlled a minority faction in the ruling party and any attempt to probe the ex-presidents could cause the majority faction of their supporters to leave the party, which would result in the government losing its parliamentary majority.
However, the disclosure last October that Mr Roh had collected Dollars 650m (Pounds 427.6m) in political donations during his 1988-93 term forced Mr Kim’s hand because it raised awkward questions about whether he had received some of this money for the 1992 campaign.
The president skilfully used the slush fund scandal to his advantage. Mr Kim enjoyed the widespread support of an angry public to arrest Mr Roh and later Mr Chun. This enabled Mr Kim to conduct a purge in the ruling party of the ex-presidents’ supporters, which consolidated his political control.
In spite of opposition worries that the trial may harm their election chances, Mr Kim’s strategy could still backfire.
The trial has deepened the regional antagonism that bedevils Korean politics. The south-eastern Taegu region, the political stronghold of the two former presidents, regards the trial as unfair retribution. The formerly pro-government area is likely to elect ULD and independent MPs next month.
Mr Kim’s actions have also strengthened a perception of him as a political opportunist, which has contributed to a slump in his popularity.
‘The concept of loyalty is important in Korean society. You do not betray those who have helped you,’ explained the editor of a leading Korean newspaper. ‘But President Kim is seen by some as turning on the political benefactors who helped him get elected in order to save himself.’
It has also set a dangerous precedent for Mr Kim if any illegalities are ever found in his political past.
‘President Kim is seen by some as turning on the political benefactors who helped him get elected in order to save himself’
Document 79
Copyright 1996 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
March 20, 1996
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 2334 words
HEADLINE: CLEANING OUT THE STABLES AND LETTING LOOSE THE HORSEPOWER; Away from the glare of publicity surrounding the prosecution of two former presidents and a host of business leaders, the thrust for economic pre-eminence continues. KEVIN RAFFERTY surveys the current state of a vigorous and maturing country
BYLINE: Kevin Rafferty
BODY:
PRESIDENT Kim Young-sam has stirred up deep passions in the past six months with the arrest and prosecution of not one but his two predecessors as president on charges of mutiny, treason, and massive corruption.
The arrest too of a virtual Who’s Who of Korean businessmen for bribery has raised the question whether these events mark political desperation or a paying off of old scores, or are a vital stepping stone on Korea’s road to maturity as a modern industrialised democracy.
The court cases have driven off the front pages yet another year of excellent economic progress as South Korea strives to reach the very front rank of developed countries by early in the next century. They have not, though, diverted attention from the vexing question of what is going on north of the 38th parallel in secretive North Korea, a country that appears to be on its knees with famine and economic problems but is still threatening its brothers in the South.
It is an astonishing thing, the flood of arrests and prosecutions in South Korea. Huge cleanups that occur in developing countries after coups may spring to mind.
But this is happening in a sophisticated and modern country which will soon become a member of the OECD, the rich countries’ club.
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, once proud generals, stood side by side in the dock last week, bareheaded, wearing loose off-white prison clothes with numbers on the breast, humbled like common criminals, charged with mutiny in seizing power 16 years ago. The charges carry the death penalty.
“Through the trial, all truth must be brought to light to show our descendants that law and justice are alive in this country,” said the senior prosecutor, Kim Sang-hee, opening the case.
The proceedings against them began when Mr Roh was accused of keeping a $ 650 million slush fund to maintain himself in office. Tearfully, he admitted that he had such a fund.
Cynics retorted that this campaign was triggered by President Kim to deflect some of his growing unpopularity after three years in office.
But the president went further, taking the anti-corruption sweep back to Mr Roh’s predecessor, Mr Chun.
The spectacle of two former presidents being paraded through the courts in prison garb was hardly an edifying one.
Further to distinguish himself from his predecessors, President Kim was able to play on the biggest difference of all. He is the first civilian leader of South Korea for 30 years, while Mr Roh and Mr Chun are former military generals and friends.
Mr Chun rose to power through the arms of his military colleagues, and Mr Roh was chosen to succeed him because of their friendship, though he became a civilian in response to popular pressures for greater democracy.
President Kim drew attention to the difference between himself and his predecessors by reopening investigations into events of the early 1980s: the coup that brought Mr Chun to power and the massacre of protestors against martial law in the southern city of Kwangju, in which 200 people were officially acknowledged to have been killed, but as many as 2,000 may have died.
Opponents who accused Kim Young-sam of opportunism because he climbed to the presidency by striking a deal with then President Roh were silenced. President Kim was among those arrested in the martial law sweep that was Mr Chun’s stepping stone to the presidency.
President Kim had previously said that the coup and Kwangju massacre fell outside the statute of limitations. The decision to reopen the case was undoubtedly popular, especially in the southern city, which has long felt neglected and abused by the rest of Korea.
The prosecutions did not stop there. A host of captains of industry also found themselves arraigned and in the dock for bribery as the source of the presidents’ slush funds. Almost the only leading firm that has not been implicated is Hyundai, whose founder, Chung Ju-yung, previously faced prosecution for financial irregularities after he challenged Kim Young-sam and the opposition leader Kim Dae-jung for the presidency in 1992.
A Hyundai executive put the group’s defence when he said that after Chung Ju -yung decided to run for president the group had its funds cut off by the government-owned Industrial Bank of Korea.
“We were told that we had to get approval first from the Blue House,” he said bluntly, referring to the office of the president.
Prosecutors of the corruption charges against Mr Chun even suggested that there was substance in the defence by businessmen that contributing to political funds was essential to survival. They claimed that the Kukje group, then the sixth or seventh biggest of the chaebol (industrial conglomerates), was driven to bankruptcy for daring to refuse funds to the Blue House; it lost its licence and shortly after went out of business.
Leading chaebol have been trying to minimise the damage by claiming that their bosses are the victims of political winds. Samsung put out a statement saying the arrest of its chairman, Lee Kun-hee, was “an isolated incident in the company’s past that was influenced partly by the political situation”.
The signs are that President Kim too has hesitated about pushing his prosecutions to the logical limits, which might destroy the big corporate groups. He met leaders of the chaebol last month, a sign of peacemaking.
THE truth is that the big business groups are so important to Korea’s economy - the top 30 of them account for 40 per cent of manufacturing production and they dominate exports - that it would be irresponsible to damage them deliberately for political ends.
The question remains: what inspired the action against the former presidents and businessmen?
Cynics have a had a field-day, pointing out that President Kim was in difficulties and his party - renamed the New Korea Party to try to remove taints of association with previous rulers - was trailing in the opinion polls before next month’s parliamentary elections.
But others are inclined to give the president the benefit of the considerable doubt. One leading businessman says: “It was inevitable that the clean-up of Korean political life would come, but President Kim has advanced its cause by five, maybe 10 years.”
Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, Archbishop of Seoul and a man who played a notable unsung part in steering his country towards democracy, also regrets that under years of military dictatorship human rights were trampled on. He praises the fact that Korea has a civilian government and adds: “It is very important for this country to create a really new society based on human rights and justice.”
It is a mark of the rapid changes in South Korea that it has been transformed in 30 years from poverty to what Cardinal Kim calls “the next step behind an advanced country”.
More remarkable - and an answer to advocates from Beijing to Singapore of the “Asian way to development” - is the progress in a shorter period from military dictatorship to civilian democracy.
Meanwhile it is clear that Koreans are hungry for continued economic growth. Per capita income has just topped the magic $ 10,000 mark.
The economic numbers continue to be impressive. Growth last year was a whopping 9.3 per cent, too much for the liking of many economists who fear an overheated economy and are thankful that this year it will be 7 to 7.5 per cent.
But growth is merely one mark. Others are the emergence of leading Korean groups at the cutting edge of international consumer markets and indeed challenging for international leadership in some critical hi-tech areas such as semiconductors.
Most impressive of all is the aggressive determination of Koreans to be world leaders, prepared to spend billions of dollars in pursuit of it. Korean companies are moving with big money into investment in China and India, eastern Europe and Latin America, showing a similar pioneering spirit to that British companies showed decades ago.
Document 80
Copyright 1996 The Washington Post The Washington Post
March 18, 1996, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A16
LENGTH: 463 words
HEADLINE: On Trial in Seoul
BODY:
TWO FORMER strongmen of South Korea wore the powder-blue uniforms of prisoners last week as they strode straight-backed into a Seoul courtroom. The two ex-generals and military school classmates, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, held hands briefly but otherwise maintained their composure as the state began trying them for treason. Both could face the death penalty.
Their case raises perplexing questions of how to balance accountability with reconciliation, justice against retribution -- questions that trouble every nation moving from dictatorship to democracy, whether in South Africa or Poland or Chile.
The two generals, who consecutively ruled South Korea from 1979 to 1993, are on trial for staging a coup in 1979 and then ordering their troops to suppress opposition to it in 1980 by firing on unarmed demonstrators in the city of Kwangju. That massacre, in which by official count more than 200 died, and the subsequent coverup by the Chun regime have long troubled Korea’s soul. Many Koreans also have suspected that the U.S. government played a larger than acknowledged role in allowing the crackdown to take place. South Korea will not be able to move forward freely until the truth about Kwangju is uncovered and acknowledged, and it is to the credit of the nation, as it has developed, that no one is considered above the law in this matter.
Some aspects of the ex-presidents’ trials are troubling to many Koreans. For one thing, both are also on trial for corruption, having allegedly amassed slush funds of hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet the current president, Kim Young Sam, who has ordered their prosecution and who joined their political party in 1990, has yet to speak openly about his own possible relationship to these funds.
More to the point, Mr. Roh especially holds a place in Korean history distinguished by far more than his supporting role in the 1979 coup -- which was, by the way, against another military regime. Mr. Roh permitted and then led the democratization and demilitarization of South Korea’s government, and he was duly elected in the nation’s first free presidential poll. His role as South Korea’s Gorbachev does not free him from responsibility for past alleged crimes, but many Koreans believe it merits consideration in whatever punishment is ultimately decided.
No leader of South Korea has ever managed to pass power on and peacefully retire. It reflects well on South Korea that Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh are now facing a judicial process, not a coup or assassination. But one can hope that South Korea, which has passed so many political and economic milestones so quickly, will soon reach a place in which it is producing leaders who when they retiree will have only to worry about penning their memoirs.
Document 81
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company The New York Times
March 12, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 7; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 580 words
HEADLINE: Ex-Presidents, on Trial in Seoul, Defend Coup and Crackdown
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
DATELINE: TOKYO, March 11
BODY:
At the opening of a courtroom drama in Seoul that has enormous resonance throughout Asia, two former South Korean Presidents today defended their seizure of power in 1979.
Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, former generals who once ruled South Korea by absolute fiat, wore light blue prison uniforms as they went on trial together, charged with staging the 1979 coup and then massacring pro-democracy protesters in 1980.
“We’re as good as dead, so please try to look dignified,” Mr. Chun reportedly had written to Mr. Roh, and they both seemed calm and impassive as they stood in the dock. At one point they held hands for a moment and whispered to each other.
Though the death penalty is possible, they almost certainly will not be executed. The current speculation in Seoul is that Mr. Chun may initially be sentenced to death and Mr. Roh to life in prison, but that both sentences will be reduced to a fixed number of years in prison.
The most powerful of the charges is that they carried out a massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Kwangju in May 1980.
Dictators from Thailand to Indonesia to China have also massacred protesters over the years, and the trial raises the prospect that the spread of democracy could lead to similar trials in other countries. Some Chinese dissidents say the principle of accountability for the Kwangju massacre may eventually be confirmed in a trial of Chinese leaders for the Tiananmen killings in 1989.
Mr. Chun, who led the 1979 coup and then was President from 1980 until 1988, did not speak in court today. But Mr. Roh, who played a lesser role in the coup and was President from 1988 to 1993, was briefly cross-examined and offered a partial justification for the coup.
“I felt that confusion and insecurity were growing worse,” he said.
Chon Sang Sok, the lawyer for Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh, offered a long defense of the former Presidents. He emphasized that Mr. Chun’s administration had been regarded as legitimate by foreign nations and by Koreans themselves.
“No foreign country severed diplomatic relations,” Mr. Chon noted. He also argued that the 1979 coup was legal, even though it took the form of Mr. Chun’s “arresting” the army chief of staff without getting the approval of the President at the time. “There is no legal basis requiring presidential approval for the arrest of an army chief of staff,” he said.
Turning to Kwangju, Mr. Chon said the two defendants had needed to crack down on unrest in part because of fears that North Korea might seize the opportunity to invade.
“The Government had to end the nationwide protests quickly,” Mr. Chon said. He also quoted from a report by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative American research institute, referring to the protesters in Kwangju not as democracy campaigners but as “rioters.”
The spotlight is sure to turn in later court sessions to allegations that the United States condoned the Kwangju massacre.
Also on trial with the two former Presidents are 14 other former generals accused of taking part in the massacre or the seizure of power, beginning with the coup and continuing with further actions in the spring of 1980 to wrest power from civilian political leaders.
Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh have already begun separate trials on corruption charges. A verdict and sentence will eventually be handed down on all the charges together by a panel of judges, for South Korea does not use juries.
Document 82
Copyright 1996 Southam Inc. The Ottawa Citizen
March 12, 1996, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A7
LENGTH: 498 words
HEADLINE: SOUTH KOREA: Former dictators on trial for 1979 coup and massacre
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: TOKYO
BODY:
At the opening of a courtroom drama in Seoul that has enormous resonance throughout Asia, two former South Korean presidents defended their seizure of power in 1979.
Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, former generals who once ruled South Korea by absolute fiat, wore light blue prison uniforms as they went on trial together Monday, charged with staging the 1979 coup and then massacring pro-democracy protesters in 1980.
“We’re as good as dead, so please try to look dignified,” Chun reportedly had written to Roh, and they both seemed calm and impassive as they stood in the dock. At one point they held hands for a moment and whispered to each other.
Though the death penalty is possible, they almost certainly will not be executed. The current speculation in Seoul is that Chun may initially be sentenced to death and Roh to life in prison, but that both sentences will be reduced to a fixed number of years in prison.
The most powerful of the charges is that they carried out a massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Kwangju in May 1980.
Dictators from Thailand to Indonesia to China have also massacred protesters over the years, and the trial raises the prospect that the spread of democracy could lead to similar trials in other countries. Some Chinese dissidents say the principle of accountability for the Kwangju massacre may eventually be confirmed in a trial of Chinese leaders for the Tiananmen killings in 1989.
Chun, who led the 1979 coup and then was president from 1980 until 1988, did not speak in court Monday. But Roh, who played a lesser role in the coup and was president from 1988 to 1993, was briefly cross-examined and offered a partial justification for the coup.
“I felt that confusion and insecurity were growing worse,” he said.
Chon Sang Sok, the lawyer for Chun and Roh, offered a long defence of the former presidents. He emphasized that Chun’s administration had been regarded as legitimate by foreign nations and by Koreans themselves.
Turning to Kwangju, Chon said the two defendants had needed to crack down on unrest in part because of fears that North Korea might seize the opportunity to invade.
He also quoted from a report by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative American research institute, referring to the protesters not as democracy campaigners but as “rioters.”
The spotlight is sure to turn in later court sessions to allegations that the United States condoned the Kwangju massacre.
Also on trial with the two former presidents are 14 other former generals accused of taking part in the massacre or the seizure of power, beginning with the coup and continuing with further actions in the spring of 1980 to wrest power from civilian political leaders.
Chun and Roh have already begun separate trials on corruption charges. A verdict and sentence will eventually be handed down on all the charges together by a panel of judges, for South Korea does not use juries.
Document 83
Copyright 1996 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
March 12, 1996, Tuesday, METRO EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 422 words
HEADLINE: Korean dictators jeered in court Ex-presidents Chun, Roh begin trial for sedition
BYLINE: (Reuter)
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:
SEOUL (Reuter) - Booed from the public gallery and taunted with swearwords, two former South Korean presidents appeared side-by-side yesterday in a Seoul court.
Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae-woo, former military generals, face the death sentence if convicted on charges of mutiny and sedition.
Dressed in light blue prison uniforms, both sat straight-backed in the front row of the defendants’ gallery of the Seoul District Criminal Court along with 14 other former senior military officers.
Chun is accused of mutiny for masterminding a 1979 coup that gave him and his protege Roh a grip on the presidency for 13 years from 1980 to 1993.
Roh is charged with helping Chun stage the putsch that followed the assassination of military strongman Park Chung-hee, who was their mentor.
The two have also been indicted for sedition in connection with a 1980 army massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Kwangju, in which 200 people were killed by official count.
Roh’s defence lawyer scoffed at the charges, saying the issue of the coup and events leading up to the Kwangju incident had been put before voters, who elected Roh president in 1987.
Dozens of protesters screaming obscenities and demanding heavy punishment scuffled with riot police outside the court.
Inside, an ugly brawl erupted when the father of a student beaten to death by riot police in 1991 swore at the pair.
The father, Kang Min-jo, 54, was reacting to a show of camaraderie by the two smiling ex-presidents, who shook hands, bowed to each other and exchanged greetings before the court’s noon recess.
One of Chun’s sons seated nearby in the public gallery lunged at Kang and was soon joined by other Chun relatives and supporters who punched and kicked Kang to the ground. News reports said Kang was taken to hospital.
As Kang was hustled out of court by guards he shouted: “They are traitors in history. We should execute them.”
Others in the public gallery booed Chun and Roh, classmates at the Korea Military Academy who are now reviled for the brutality that kick-started their political ambitions and the massive corruption that surrounded their administrations.
The two separately face bribery charges for amassing hundreds of millions of dollars while in office.
Chief prosecutor Kim Sang-hee argued that the putsch that thrust Chun into the presidency in 1980 was unconstitutional. The defence argued that if Chun’s presidency, based on a successful coup, was illegal then the present constitution was also invalid.
GRAPHIC: REUTER photo: ON TRIAL: Former South Korean presidents Chun Doo Hwan, left, and Roh Tae-woo stand side-by-side yesterday in Seoul District Criminal court.
Document 84
Copyright 1996 The Journal of Commerce, Inc. Journal of Commerce
March 5, 1996, Tuesday
SECTION: FRONT, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 804 words
HEADLINE: SOUTH KOREA GETS US INFO ON CRACKDOWN
BYLINE: TIM SHORROCK; Journal of Commerce Staff
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
The South Korean government has received hundreds of declassified U.S. government documents dealing with a 1980 military crackdown in Korea that severely damaged relations between Washington and Seoul, the State Department said Monday.
The Korean Embassy requested the documents last week after The Journal of Commerce, quoting secret diplomatic and military cables, reported that the Carter administration approved Korean contingency plans to use military units against huge student demonstrations that rocked South Korea in May 1980.
General Chun Doo Hwan, the former president of South Korea, later declared martial law and launched a political crackdown that lasted well into the 1980s.
This month, Mr. Chun will be tried on murder and treason charges for ordering elite Special Forces to open fire on demonstrators in the city of Kwangju in May 1980. More than 240 people were killed and hundreds injured in Kwangju following the imposition of martial law.
The Journal of Commerce report sparked a wave of anti-American student demonstrations in at least three Korean cities last week, including Kwangju. Student groups said they will intensify the protests in the coming weeks.
‘‘This is spring, and it gives the students intense ammunition,’’ said a political writer in Seoul who asked not to be identified.
An official in the Korean Embassy said his government obtained copies of the 2,000 declassified State Department documents on Friday, but would not comment on how they would be used. ‘‘Seoul is the place to read them, rather than here,’’ he said. The documents will be delivered to Seoul this week, he said.
The documents show that U.S. officials in Washington and Seoul knew Mr. Chun’s contingency plans included the deployment of the Special Forces, trained to fight behind the lines in North Korea, against South Korean student and labor demonstrations.
The United States has always held it was not responsible for what happened in Kwangju because it did not have operational control over Korean Special Forces.
Two U.S. officials deeply involved in the events in Korea in 1980, Warren Christopher and Richard C. Holbrooke, have played a key role in the Clinton administration’s foreign policy. Mr. Christopher is Secretary of State and Mr. Holbrooke retired last month as President Clinton’s chief negotiator on Bosnia. He now works for the Wall Street banking firm, Credit Suisse First Boston.
A U.S. human rights group welcomed the release of the documents to Seoul and called on the Clinton administration to reveal everything it knows about the Kwangju Incident.
‘‘Kwangju has left a deep and troubling scar in the minds and heads of so many Koreans,’’ Richard Dicker, associate counsel for Human Rights Watch, a New York group that has monitored human rights conditions in North and South Korea. ‘‘Any government with access to information really needs to be responsible by turning it over to authorities who could carry out a proper investigation into the matter,’’ he said.
Mr. Chun’s trial on the treason and murder charges will begin in mid-March following his current trial for corruption. Former president Roh Tae Wo o, who is charged with complicity in the 1980 coup and faces separate corruption charges, will be in court with him.
The two men were indicted after President Kim Young Sam, a former dissident, persuaded the Korean National Assembly to pass a special law allowing their prosecution.
According to observers of the Korean political scene, the Kim government is eager to see the documents because many officials in Mr. Kim’s ruling party are former military officers with close ties to Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh. South Koreans go to the polls in April for important National Assembly elections.
The Korean reaction to the story could have an impact on the vital U.S.-Korean trade relationship.
Until the early 1980s, the United States ran a trade surplus with South Korea. But in the last 10 years, South Korea has become a major exporter of manufactured goods and has frequently angered the United States by discouraging imports - either directly, by government edict, or through a web of industrial and consumer groups with close ties to the government.
In 1990, for example, government officials called imports ‘‘unpatriotic,’’ purchasers of imported autos often faced tax audits, and a government-produced comic book exhorted school children to taunt their parents if they purchased imported produce.
U.S. attempts to change Korean trade policies often triggered an angry reaction from students and other groups critical of U.S. foreign policy. If anti-Americanism rises again in South Korea, another surge in anti-import sentiment could undermine progress the United States has made in dismantling barriers to imports in South Korea.
Document 85
Copyright 1996 The Washington Post The Washington Post
March 05, 1996, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 1195 words
HEADLINE: South Koreans Protest After Disclosure of U.S. Decision in ‘80 Uprising
BYLINE: R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
U.S.-South Korean relations have been roiled in the past week by the disclosure of declassified U.S. government documents stating that Washington decided not to oppose South Korea’s possible use of notorious “special forces” brigades to put down a citizen uprising 16 years ago.
The documents make clear that top U.S. officials in Washington and Seoul were aware on May 9, 1980, of South Korean plans to use the brigades to help quell dissent around Seoul and in other cities. Ten days later the special forces bayoneted, beat and killed hundreds of unarmed citizens in the southern city of Kwangju who were protesting a sudden imposition of martial law.
Washington had been trying for months to keep South Korean protesters and government officials from provoking a violent confrontation. But on this occasion, the documents show, Washington decided as a matter of policy not to challenge the government’s military contingency plans for halting unrest -- even though the special brigades were regarded by U.S. officials as more brutal and violence-prone than regular police.
The documents immediately provoked an angry response in South Korea when they were first disclosed last Tuesday in Washington by the Journal of Commerce, largely because they fed long-held suspicions that the two governments had cooperated closely in the period leading up to the massacre. The massacre still burns hotly in the memory of South Koreans today, and two former South Korean presidents are now in prison on charges of treason for their alleged role in ordering the massacre.
On Thursday, 70 people from one of South Korea’s largest protest organizations tried to see U.S. Ambassador James Laney in Seoul to demand a U.S. apology but were turned aside. The following day, several hundred protesters marched on the embassy, only to be turned back by a phalanx of 500 riot police; 140 people were arrested.
Tear gas was used to break up a larger, more violent anti-American demonstration on Friday in Kwangju, also provoked by the documents, according to wire service accounts. A leader of Hanchongryun, an association of students at 204 universities in South Korea, said last weekend that additional protests are likely to be organized when universities reopen this week after a holiday.
The protests have touched raw nerves at the State Department, partly because U.S. officials believe the declassified documents are being misrepresented in South Korea to suggest that Washington literally sanctioned the massacre. “We have denied on multiple occasions that we had advance knowledge of what was going to happen at Kwangju or that we gave our approval for it,” said a department spokesman. “There is really nothing new that we wish to add.”
While the bulk of the documents are broadly consistent with the claim that Washington was counseling moderation by the government in the period before the massacre, they also provide a fuller and more complex picture of U.S. policymaking at the time than available previously.
The record is sensitive partly because the core group of decision-makers on Korean matters in weeks leading up to the massacre included Warren Christopher, who was then deputy secretary of state and is now secretary of state, and Richard C. Holbrooke, who was then the chief U.S. diplomat specializing in East Asian and Pacific affairs and recently retired as assistant secretary of state for European affairs.
According to Washington’s official history of the Kwangju incident, prepared for a South Korean government investigation in 1989, U.S. officials were focused on trying to keep the government from taking extreme measures to repress dissent.
But the newly released documents suggest that Washington’s messages to South Korea also included previously undisclosed expressions of support for Seoul’s efforts to maintain order as well as explicit statements that Washington did not oppose using Army troops in the spring of 1980 to bolster police efforts to halt public protests.
Copies of the key documents were provided to The Washington Post by Tim Shorrock, a reporter for the Journal of Commerce who formerly lived in South Korea and who obtained them over a period of several years from the Pentagon and the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents describe in rich detail Washington’s anxiety in late 1979 and early 1980 that South Korea could become another “Iran,” in which U.S. missteps helped promote chaos, as Holbrooke said in one cable to the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, William Gleysteen. Washington’s concerns were based on widespread protests over the imposition of martial law after the assassination of President Park Chung Hee in October 1979, which some feared might invite a North Korean attack.
The cables make clear that even though Washington’s advice was not always taken, U.S. officials did not hesitate to provide day-to-day advice to South Korean leaders about how they should govern. They indicate for the first time that Washington was urging the embassy in late 1979 to convey its disapproval of street demonstrations and other violations of martial law, while also telling the generals about this message in an attempt to curry favor.
As protests widened the following spring, a secret cable was sent to Gleysteen in Seoul under Christopher’s signature on May 8, which said, “We agree that we should not oppose [South Korean] . . . contingency plans to maintain law and order, but you should remind Chun [Doo Hwan, the country’s military chief] . . . of the danger of escalation if law enforcement responsibilities are not carried out with care and restraint.”
Although the official history states that Washington had no prior knowledge of the deployment of special forces to Kwangju, U.S. military officials and diplomats by then knew that special forces were being drawn into riot control plans and were trained in the use of CS gas, a noxious anti-personnel agent.
A report on May 8 that passed through the Joint Chiefs of Staff message center in Washington mentioned that the seventh brigade of these forces was “probably targeted against unrest” at universities in Kwangju and another city. It also noted that during an October 1979 action against striking miners in Pusan, the special forces “were ready and willing to break heads” but cautioned that any order to fire on students “might have significant impact on SF [special forces] discipline.”
In an interview yesterday, Gleysteen said he does not remember reading or discussing such a cable, although he believes others in the embassy were doubtless aware of it. He said he and others felt at the time that “special forces were not the kind of units to be used for this” because of their “very tough and aggressive” reputation.
But Gleysteen added that Washington had “no reason to assume they would be ordered to do what they did” in Kwangju and that its concerns about military involvement were balanced by fears that “all hell would break loose” if police were not reinforced in Seoul and other cities.
Special correspondent Lee Keumhyun in Seoul contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC: Photo, upi, Tied to a rope, arrested students are led by Korean soldiers after the troops staged a May 1980 raid in the riot-torn city of Kwangju.
Document 86
Copyright 1996 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. THE PHOENIX GAZETTE
February 28, 1996 Wednesday, Final
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 91 words
HEADLINE: EX-S. KOREA LEADER BLAMED IN MASSACRE
BYLINE: Compiled from wire reports
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:
Ending a three-month investigation, prosecutors formally announced today that former President Chun Doo-hwan was responsible for the army’s massacre of at least 240 pro-democracy protesters.
Chun has been held generally responsible for the 1980 “Kwangju Massacre,” but this is the first time he has been blamed individually for the actual shooting.
The 65-year-old former army general is to be tried with his army buddy and presidential successor, Roh Tae-woo, in connection with the massacre in Kwangju. Their trial is to open March 11.
Document 87
Copyright 1996 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. THE PHOENIX GAZETTE
February 28, 1996 Wednesday, Midday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 102 words
HEADLINE: EX-S. KOREA LEADER BLAMED IN MASSACRE
BYLINE: Compiled from wire reports
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:
Ending a three-month investigation, prosecutors formally announced today that former President Chun Doo-hwan was responsible for the army’s massacre of at least 240 pro-democracy protesters.
Chun has been held generally responsible for the 1980 “Kwangju Massacre,” but this is the first time he has been blamed individually for the actual shooting.
The 65-year-old former army general is to be tried with his army buddy and presidential successor, Roh Tae-woo, in connection with the massacre in Kwangju, which happened a few months after the two seized power in a coup. Their trial is to open March 11.
Document 88
Copyright 1996 The Journal of Commerce, Inc. Journal of Commerce
February 27, 1996, Tuesday
SECTION: FRONT, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 3757 words
HEADLINE: EX-LEADERS GO ON TRIAL IN SEOUL
BYLINE: TIM SHORROCK; Special to The Journal of Commerce
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
Two former South Korean presidents charged with treason, mutiny and corruption entered a Seoul courtroom this week to begin what could be the most important political trial in modern Asian history.
Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo stand accused of staging a rolling coup in 1979 and 1980, sending troops into the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 to quell pro-democracy demonstrations in an action that resulted in the massacre of some 240 people and accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Korean corporations in the decade they held power.
At stake, in addition to the fate of the generals, is the solidity of the U.S. relationship with South Korea, which has been a keystone of U.S. foreign and economic policy for four decades. That’s because a major issue in the trial will be the role of the United States in approving the use of elite Korean military units to put down the Kwangju uprising. The United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea and, under a joint command structure, has operational control of more than 80 percent of the Korean forces.
Mr. Chun, who has been charged with murder for giving troops the order to open fire in Kwangju, has said that his actions in 1979 and 1980 were explicitly approved by Washington, a claim that the Carter administration adamantly denied. A 1989 White Paper produced by the Bush administration supported those denials.
But new documentation obtained by The Journal of Commerce indicates that the United States. knew far more about Mr. Chun’s plans than has ever been acknowledged.
According to the newly declassified U.S. government documents:
* Senior officials in the Carter administration, fearing that chaos in South Korea could unravel a vital military ally and possibly tempt North Korea to intervene, approved Mr. Chun’s plans to use military units against the huge student demonstrations that rocked Korean cities in the spring of 1980.
* Two of the key decision-makers at the time were Warren Christopher, President Clinton’s secretary of state, and Richard C. Holbrooke, who retired last week as the Clinton administration’s chief negotiator on Bosnia to join the New York investment banking firm of CS First Boston. Mr. Christopher was deputy secretary of state in 1980 and Mr. Holbrooke, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in Bosnia, was assistant secretary of state of East Asian and Pacific affairs.
* U.S. officials in Seoul and Washington knew Mr. Chun’s contingency plans included the deployment of Korean Special Warfare Command troops, trained to fight behind the lines in a war against North Korea. The ‘‘Black Beret’’ Special Forces, who were not under U.S. command, were modeled after the U.S. Green Berets and had a history of brutality dating back to their participation alongside American troops in the Vietnam War.
* On May 22, 1980, in the midst of the Kwangju Uprising, the Carter administration approved further use of force to retake the city and agreed to provide short-term support to Mr. Chun if he agreed to long-term political change. At a White House meeting on that date, plans were also discussed for direct U.S. military intervention if the situation got out of hand.
The documents show that the U.S. assurances to Mr. Chun were approved by Mr. Christopher and delivered May 9 by William J. Gleysteen, who was then U.S. ambassador to Seoul. ‘‘In none of our discussions will we in any way suggest that the USG (U.S. government) opposes ROKG (Republic of Korea government) contingency plans to maintain law and order, if absolutely necessary, by reinforcing the police with the army,’’ Mr. Gleysteen cabled the State Department on May 7, 1980, as he prepared for a critical meeting on May 9 with Mr. Chun.
Mr. Christopher cabled back the next day: ‘‘We agree that we should not oppose ROK contingency plans to maintain law and order.’’ He added that Mr. Gleysteen should remind the Korean leaders ‘‘of the danger of escalation if law enforcement responsibilities are not carried out with care and restraint.’’
The documents directly contradict parts of the white paper that was prepared by the Bush administration after it refused to allow Mr. Gleysteen and Gen. John Wickham, commander of U.S. forces in Korea, to testify before a South Korean congressional panel investigating Kwangju.
US OFFICIALS ALARMED
In that report, the State Department said, ‘‘U.S. officials were alarmed by reports of (Korean) plans to use military units to back up the police in dealing with student demonstrations’’ in 1980 and did not have ‘‘prior knowledge of the movement of the Special Warfare Command units to Kwangju.’’
In a statement given to The Journal of Commerce last week, the State Department acknowledged an apparent discrepancy between the White Paper and some of the newly declassified cables, but added that ‘‘we stand behind the integrity of that report and of our actions.’’
In an interview, a State Department official added: ‘‘Its basic conclusions are unassailable and unimpeachable. When all the dust settles, Koreans killed Koreans, and the Americans didn’t know what was going on and certainly didn’t approve it.’’ He said he was speaking for the entire department, including Mr. Christopher and Mr. Holbrooke, who did not wish to be interviewed.
Donald J. Gregg, who was the CIA station chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975 and confronted the issue of Kwangju when he was U.S. ambassador in Seoul during the Bush administration, was equally confident. ‘‘I don’t think we have anything to fear’’ from the trials, he said in a recent interview. ‘‘There are no smoking guns.’’
That, of course, remains to be seen. In any event, the newly released documents are sure to be explosive in South Korea. Mr. Chun remains a hated figure for imposing eight years of military rule after the country had experienced 18 years of dictatorship under Park Chung Hee. Mr. Park, a former general who seized power in 1961, was assassinated on Oct. 26, 1979, by the head of Korean CIA.
DOCUMENTS SHOW ‘PATTERN’
Bruce Cumings, a professor of international history and politics at Northwestern University and a leading expert on Korea, says the documents ‘‘show a pattern where the United States wasn’t going to do anything serious to Chun Doo Hwan no matter what he did, including mowing down a lot of people in Kwangju. Security prevailed over human rights.’’
The new documents are part of a collection of 2,000 declassified State Department and Defense Intelligence Agency cables obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. They provide a detailed look at the decisions made at the highest levels of the U.S. government about the crisis that gripped South Korea in 1979 and 1980.
Among the cables are about 150 pages of high-level discussions about Korea that began shortly after the Park assassination. That event added another element of turbulence in an administration dealing with the Iranian hostage crisis and rising tensions with the Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.
WEAK INTERIM PRESIDENT
Mr. Park was succeeded by a weak interim president, Choi Kyu Ha. But on Dec. 12, 1979, Mr. Chun, with help from Mr. Roh, led a coup inside the Korean military. He declared martial law on May 17, 1980, and replaced Mr. Choi as president four months later.
The most highly classified cables, code named Cherokee, were distributed only to President Carter’s top diplomatic and intelligence advisers. Mr. Gleysteen, who is now retired, recalled recently that Mr. Carter himself was deeply involved in the Korea decisions. At the White House, he said, ‘‘you just pushed the Korea button and the door opened.’’
‘‘There should be no misunderstanding of the fact that Ambassador Gleysteen and General Wickham (are) expressing coordinated USG policy and concerns under centralized direction from Washington,’’ Mr. Christopher and Mr. Holbrooke wrote in a secret cable in April 1980. ‘‘There is a unified policy and direction, and we are in constant mutual communication.’’
According to the cables, Mr. Gleysteen met with Mr. Chun and a top aide to Mr. Choi on May 9. In their discussions of the student demonstrations, Mr. Chun ‘‘probably found my attitude sympathetic,’’ Mr. Gleysteen reported in his follow-up cables. ‘‘We would not obstruct development of (Korean) military contingency plans.’’
SPECIAL FORCES BEING SENT
Just before his meeting with Mr. Chun, Mr. Gleysteen reported that two brigades of Korean Special Forces were being sent to Seoul and the nearby Kimpo Airport to cope with the upcoming student demonstrations. ‘‘Clearly ROK military is taking seriously students’ statements that they will rally off-campus on May 15 if martial law is not lifted before that date,’’ he said.
A separate cable from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon on May 8, 1980, reported that the 7th Brigade of the Korean Special Forces, which was later blamed for the worst brutality in Kwangju, was ‘‘probably targeted against unrest’’ at universities in Kwangju.
The cable also noted that Special Forces were trained to use CS gas, a virulent form of tear gas banned in many countries, and had been willing to ‘‘break heads’’ in previous encounters with Korean students.
Pat Derian, a veteran of the civil rights struggles in the south in the 1960s who was Mr. Carter’s assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, expressed shock when recently shown the documents, which she had not see during her tenure at the State Department. ‘‘This was a green light as far as I can see,’’ she said of the U.S. assurances to Mr. Chun.
Ms. Derian, who frequently locked horns with Mr. Holbrooke over human rights issues, said ‘‘national security hysterics’’ frequently determined the course of U.S. policy in the latter part of the Carter administration.
‘‘There was an unmuscular, almost supine approach to these dictators,’’ Ms. Derian said. ‘‘This wasn’t some morale choice. It was what they wanted to do.’’
HOLBROOKE ANGRY AT DISSIDENTS
Friction between the Carter administration’s human rights rhetoric and its military and security concerns began to emerge as soon as protests against martial law broke out following the Park assassination.
After meeting with a group of senators in December 1979, the documents show, Mr. Holbrooke told Mr. Gleysteen that attitudes in Washington ‘‘are dominated by the Iranian crisis.’’ ‘‘Needless to say, nobody wants ‘another Iran’ - by which they mean American action which would in any way appear to unravel a situation and lead to chaos or instability in a key ally,’’ he said.
To keep the lid on in Korea, Mr. Holbrooke proposed ‘‘a delicate operation’’ to ‘‘make clear to the generals that you are in fact trying to be helpful to them provided they in turn carry out their commitments to liberalization.’’ He instructed Mr. Gleysteen to tell what he referred to as ‘‘a relative handful of Christian extremist dissidents,’’ that they should not count on U.S. support forever.
Mr. Holbrooke and other U.S. officials were deeply disturbed by the Dec. 12 coup, when Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh violated the U.S.-Korean command structure by sending armored units to the Korean Army headquarters, where they arrested the martial law commanders and replaced them with officers loyal to Mr. Chun.
TIMETABLE DEMANDED
Within days, Mr. Holbrooke instructed the ambassador to extract a timetable from Mr. Choi even if it was vague and noncommittal. ‘‘You could even point out, if you were a very cynical person, that setting a date now does not necessarily mean that this date will be kept,’’ he said.
The next day, the Korean ambassador to Washington reassured Mr. Holbrooke that the political process would continue. Mr. Holbrooke then reported back to Mr. Gleysteen, saying he had told the ambassador ‘‘that the USG would not publicly contest the ROKG version of events, but he would not wish to see further changes of command ‘Korea style.’ ‘‘
Shown these cables in an interview, Mr. Gleysteen was asked if he had followed up on Mr. Holbrooke’s advice. The message to the Christian dissidents, he said, ‘‘was too tricky an armchair suggestion from Washington, something we just couldn’t do.’’
But after the Dec. 12 action, he added, the U.S. government made clear to Mr. Chun ‘‘we won’t argue about who did what to whom.’’
In the months before Mr. Chun’s May 17 coup, Mr. Gleysteen said he continued to press Korean dissidents to avoid confrontation. While warning the generals to be tolerant, he explained, ‘‘we tried to get the message across to the moderates that they should keep down their inflammatory actions.’’
DAILY DEMONSTRATIONS HELD
But by early May, tens of thousands of students were holding daily demonstrations in Seoul and other cities demanding that Mr. Chun step down and calling on the National Assembly to set a timetable for democratic rule.
It was in this context, with both sides refusing to yield, Mr. Gleysteen said in a recent interview, that the U.S. began discussing military contingency plans with Mr. Chun. ‘‘Chun was saying he was going to behave,’’ Mr. Gleysteen said, ‘‘But he had to have contingencies if things got out of control. The U.S. understood at the time that no government would allow law and order to break down. But we added that how this was done was critically important.’’
Mr. Gleysteen said he signed off on the contingency plans because he feared ‘‘total chaos’’ in South Korea. ‘‘Seoul was close to being overrun’’ by the demonstrations, he said.
Mr. Gregg, who was monitoring Korean intelligence reports for the National Security Council, said the Carter administration approved the contingency plans because of the way the Korean Army had handled previous demonstrations in Seoul. ‘‘I remember the general feeling’’ in the White House, he recalled. ‘‘There was real apprehension when the riots broke out in Seoul. Chun was a very tough man. So there was a sigh of relief when the demonstrations in Seoul were moderately handled.’’
CONCERNED ABOUT SIGNALS
In addition, ‘‘we were concerned about sending the wrong signals to North Korea,’’ said Mr. Gregg. ‘‘That was the prism through which we always saw the events of this government.’’ Because of the concern, the Department of Defense sent two early warning aircraft to Korea and diverted an aircraft carrier from the Philippines to the Japan Sea.
Both Mr. Gregg and Mr. Gleysteen say now that they do not recall seeing the May 8 Defense Intelligence Agency document stating that Special Forces were ‘‘probably targeted’’ against unrest at Kwangju universities.
Mr. Gleysteen said U.S. officials in Korea usually knew where Korean Special Forces were even though they are not under direct U.S. command. But even if some U.S. officials knew Special Forces were going to Kwangju, he argued, it was ‘‘absolutely unknown to the United States, either through military or civilian channels,’’ that they would open fire or use bayonets on peaceful demonstrators.
‘‘We had no preview of Kwangju, of what amounted to very cruel brutality,’’ he said. ‘‘It was very much out of line with Korean military behavior in our experience.’’
ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE
Mr. Chun’s declaration of full martial law and an end to all political activity on May 17 sent Korea down a slippery slope. In a swift chain of events, he closed down the National Assembly, sent troops to occupy the nation’s universities and began arresting scores of politicians and dissidents. Among those detained were Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s best-known dissident and a native of Kwangju, and Kim Young Sam, who is now president of South Korea.
Those decisions deeply angered Mr. Gleysteen, who informed the Korean government the United States was ‘‘staggered’’ by the crackdown.
But in Kwangju, where political dissent has a long historical tradition, students continued to hold large demonstrations on May 18 and May 19. They were surrounded by Army and Special Forces troops, who began shooting indiscriminately and using bayonets and clubs on students. By all accounts, the worst brutalities were committed by the Special Forces.
In response, citizens seized guns from local armories and drove the military out of Kwangju. For nearly seven days, as the Korean Army surrounded the rebellious city and its outlying towns, a citizens group tried to negotiate with the Chun group.
‘MASSIVE INSURRECTION’
On May 22, Mr. Gleysteen reported, ‘‘a massive insurrection in Kwangju is still out of control and poses an alarming situation for the ROK military.’’ He estimated that ‘‘at least 150,000 people are involved.’’
Publicly, the Carter administration criticized Mr. Chun’s crackdown and urged moderation.
Behind the scenes, however, U.S. officials were growing increasingly concerned.
On May 22, Mr. Gleysteen told the Korean foreign minister that the U.S. military would help facilitate Korean ‘‘army efforts to restore order in Kwangju and deter trouble elsewhere.’’ He added that ‘‘we had not and did not intend to publicize our actions because we feared we would be charged with colluding with the martial law authorities and risk fanning anti-American sentiment in the Kwangju area.’’
That afternoon in Washington, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie convened a high-level meeting at the White House to discuss Korea. Among the participants were Mr. Christopher; Mr. Holbrooke; Mr. Gregg; National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; Defense Secretary Harold Brown; Gen. David Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
RESTORATION OF ORDER A PRIORITY
The secret minutes of that meeting were declassified under the Freedom of Information request.
After a full discussion, ‘‘there was general agreement that the first priority is the restoration of order in Kwangju by the Korean authorities with the minimum use of force necessary without laying the seeds for wide disorders later,’’ the minutes state.
‘‘Once order is restored, it was agreed we must press the Korean government, and the military in particular, to allow a greater degree of political freedom to evolve,’’ the White House decided.
The U.S. position was summed up by Mr. Brzezinski as ‘‘in the short-term support, in the longer-term pressure for political evolution.’’
In addition, Mr. Muskie asked the Department of Defense, which had already declared a state of alert toward North Korea, to ‘‘take additional planning steps to prepare for ‘worst case scenarios’ which could develop.’’
Back in Seoul, Mr. Gleysteen and Gen. Wickham agreed that the U.S. government should allow the Korean 20th Division to retake the city. ‘‘We did not want the special forces used further,’’ Mr. Gleysteen said in his interview.
20TH ARMY DIVISION RUSHES IN
In the early morning hours of May 27, the Korean Army sent its 20th Army Division to retake Kwangju after receiving permission from Gen. Wickham. The troops recaptured the city after a brief firefight. About 10 civilian demonstrators were killed in the final assault.
News of the U.S. decision to release the troops was broadcast throughout South Korea on the orders of Mr. Chun. That angered the Carte r administration, which had asked Mr. Chun to release an accompanying statement criticizing his political crackdown.
In a cable to Washington, Mr. Gleysteen expressed his disdain at a ‘‘deliberate effort on the part of the Chun Doo Hwan group who are determined to manipulate American public opinion.’’
‘‘Too many Koreans and local Americans believe that the U.S. condoned and even abetted the government’s harsh behavior in Kwangju,’’ he said. ‘‘This misunderstanding grew from the core fact that we acquiesced in the movement of forces to Kwangju to control the situation.’’
The misunderstandings intensified in early June, when the Carter administration approved a visit to Seoul by John Moore, president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which considering $ 600 million in loan guarantees to South Korea to finance the export of U.S. nuclear power technology. A group of U.S. lawmakers sharply criticized the visit as a stamp of approval for Mr. Chun.
‘MULTIPLIER EFFECT’
In response, Mr. Holbrooke testified that canceling Mr. Moore’s visit or cutting Ex-Im bank loans to Seoul would have had an ‘‘almost certain multiplier effect . . . on private lending institutions in New York and elsewhere’’ and hurt the Korean economy.
For many Koreans, the final blow came in 1981, when President Reagan invited Mr. Chun to the White House and honored him as the first foreign head of state to visit Washington after Mr. Reagan’s inauguration. According to recent visitors to the Kwangju cemetery where people killed during the uprising are buried, a figure resembling President Reagan hangs in effigy.
Mr. Gleysteen and some of his former colleagues at the State Department argue it was Mr. Reagan’s invitation, and not their actions, that made Kwangju a burning issue in the 1980s.
‘‘Remember, that’s Reagan’s effigy hanging in Kwangju, not Carter’s,’’ the State Department official said.
‘‘Kwangju was an unspeakable tragedy that nobody expected to happen,’’ he said. The State Department, he added, continues to believe the United States ‘‘has no moral responsibility for what happened in Kwangju.’’
Mr. Chun remained in office until 1988. But he sparked another round of protests when he tried to name Mr. Roh his successor in 1987.
STARTLING POLITICAL COMPROMISE
In June 1987, as hundreds of thousands of citizens jammed the streets of Seoul, Mr. Roh startled his former military colleagues and the Korean public by announcing a political compromise that would allow open presidential elections and eventual democratization.
That opening sparked a rebirth of the labor movement and a series of economic reforms that ended the cozy relationship between South Korea’s giant corporations and the government.
In 1988, Mr. Roh was elected president when the country’s leading dissidents, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, split the opposition vote. Kim Young Sam later joined Mr. Roh’s Democratic Liberal Party and in 1992 was elected president.
Last December, the Korean National Assembly passed legislation - proposed by Mr. Kim to unearth the truth of the Kwangju Incident - that allowed the prosecution of Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh. Mr. Roh was arrested November 16 and Mr. Chun was arrested December 3. Their trials are expected to last through the spring.
EDITOR-NOTE: US Knew of South Korea Crackdown
GRAPHIC: GRAPHICS: Photo, Graphic;(1)A South Korean paratrooper beats an anti-government demonstrator in May 1980. Some 50,000 deonstrators, using sticks and rocks, battled troops during a nine-day revolt. (Source: UPI / Corbis-Bettman Photo);
(2) on page 4A; Automobiles burn after angry demonstrators set a fire during an anti-government demonstration in May 1980. UPI / Corbis-Bettmann Photo);
(3) on page 4A; WU (4) on page 4A; CHUN
Document 89
Copyright 1996 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad New Straits Times (Malaysia)
February 11, 1996
SECTION: National; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 871 words
HEADLINE: Ten Asian Foreign Ministers did well to put EAEC in motion
BYLINE: By Syed Nadzri
BODY:
THE wheels of the East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) have been set in motion. And unwittingly, the push came last week when Foreign Ministers of 10 Asian countries met in Phuket.
The informal two-day meeting was to lay the groundwork for a historic gathering of leaders from 25 countries from Asia and Europe in Bangkok next month.
This Bangkok itinerary, widely known as Asem and set for March 1-2, is seen as a landmark meeting because heads of Governments from the top economies of Asia and Europe will, for the first time, be present to discuss issues of common interest.
Asia’s 10 representatives will be from the Pacific rim nations comprising the Asean 7, Japan, China and South Korea while Europe will have Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Britain.
There can be no doubt as to the kind of prominence such a high-profile meeting involving two of the world’s most vibrant regions would make.
As pointed out by Acting Foreign Minister Datuk Abu Hassan Omar, who represented Malaysia in Phuket: “Asem will surely pave the way for stronger co-operation between Europe and Asia. This is what we are all looking for in this new world order.”
But for Asean, particularly Malaysia, there is an added significance - the EAEC is becoming a reality.
Some years ago, Malaysia mooted the idea of forming the caucus, a loose forum of East Asian countries.
Although it got the support from the Asean partners, reservations expressed by some countries prevented the EAEC from really taking off. Until Phuket, that is.
The Phuket gathering, though confined to just ministers and senior officials, was not an EAEC meeting. But the fact that the countries involved were the very ones that its formation hinged on, proved to a large extent that the EAEC is practicable - if not in name, at least in spirit.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the prime mover of the concept, was also quick to recognise this fact.
Speaking in Alor Star last Tuesday, he said: “If they (participating countries) did not want to call it EAEC, it is their problem. We will see whether the co-operation will give any benefit to the countries.
“If it benefits them, I hope the countries which still refuse to be members of EAEC will decide to join the fold.”
Though largely preparatory in nature, the informal meeting in Phuket was useful in that it gave the opportunity for Foreign Ministers and senior officials to plan a united front in anticipation of some serious issues to be raised by European partners in Bangkok.
Asian countries prefer that only “developmental” issues be brought up in Bangkok and that controversial issues like human rights be left aside.
But it is understood that human rights and labour standards - two issues central to the Europeans’ foreign policy in this region - would be raised by the other side.
Senior officials who were in Phuket insisted that Bangkok is not going to be a confrontational meeting, but in the same breath added but then again, you’ll never know. The apprehension is mainly because there is no fixed agenda and heads of government would be free to bring up any issue.
And should matters on human rights surface, Wisma Putra secretary- general Tan Sri Ahmad Kamil Jaafar said they should be discussed with “proper decorum.”
The magic brought about by the “EAEC-like” meeting in Phuket was that representatives could prepare themselves in anticipation of a bashing on such issues.
A few senior officials privately said if matters on human rights were brought up and conditionalities attached by Europe to co-operation with Asia, then the Asians were prepared with a rebuttal.
An Indonesian official said that if, for instance, the question of East Timor cropped up, the republic, with some backing from its fellow Asians, would bring up the lack of consistency in the European stand on the implementation of the human rights clause.
The examples he cited were plenty including Bosnia, Chechnya, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the Tiananmen incident, the Kwangju massacre, the Gulf War and hanging of dissidents in Nigeria. All these could show the inconsistent policies of European nations on human rights.
Thai deputy permanent secretary to the Foreign Ministry Saroj Chavanaviraj said he was confident that one of the issues would involve the desire of Asean members to ensure that the region remained a nuclear- free zone.
He expressed confidence that trade and investment would take centre stage at the summit, while global issues, like nuclear proliferation, would also be raised.
He also said the chairman’s statement would be issued at the end of the Bangkok summit. This would cover measures for political, security, social and cultural co-operation between the two regions.
All ministers and officials who attended the Phuket meeting agreed that Asem should not be a “one-off thing,” which should be good for the spirit of the EAEC.
Phuket, said a Malaysian official, carried the crux of the idea of an EAEC. Meaning, to get together in a loose forum and come up with a common stand on issues.
Document 90
Copyright 1996 Globe Newspaper Company The Boston Globe
February 7, 1996, Wednesday, City Edition
SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1261 words
HEADLINE: S. Korean leader beset by changes he set in motion
BYLINE: By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:
Kim Young Sam should be riding high. Instead, the first democratically elected leader of South Korea is scrambling to save his presidency and keep his country from descending into political disarray.
Starting in 1993, Kim engineered a monumental shakeup of the country’s political and economic life. But initially positive reactions to his efforts to clean up government have turned into widespread outrage at all politicians - including Kim himself.
While polls show that South Koreans generally approve of the jailing of former Presidents Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan - charged with corruption and sedition - they also feel their country is being shamed in the eyes of the world. Likewise, people say they support Kim’s financial reforms, which have led to charges against numerous major business leaders, but they resent that small businesses also are feeling the effects.
“All our presidents are gangsters,” growled cabbie Kim Young Hwan, reflecting the national mood, as he picked up a fare outside the National Assembly Building. “I hope in the future there will be a president from the religious sector - a priest with no family and no greed. All politicians are gangsters, liars and thieves.”
Hong Sung Woo, a distinguished human-rights lawyer for more than 20 years, said that “at the beginning of his presidency, it seemed Kim Young Sam was really trying to make an effort in every area of reformation.” But, he added, “he did not have any principles of his own. What he is trying to do has become vague and confused. No one knows what could happen tomorrow, and it is making the entire country feel unstable.”
Hong said he recently entered elective politics for the first time - seeking a National Assembly seat in a party opposed to Kim - because “our country’s political condition is getting worse and worse. The serious corruption of politics must be dealt with by people who are not professional politicians.”
When he moved into the Blue House three years ago, Kim championed causes that had topped the agenda of the government’s harshest critics, offering conciliation to the communist regime in North Korea, wiping out an enormous financial black market, and driving scores of corrupt bureaucrats from office.
He even began demolition of the hated colonial administration building built in the 1920s by the Japanese in front of Seoul’s Kyungbok Palace to symbolize their dominance of Korea.
Growing bolder, he gave prosecutors the green light last year to investigate the two presidents who preceded him and to probe the 1980 massacre in which South Korean troops killed hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in the southern city of Kwangju.
But many ordinary citizens as well as critics are deeply suspicious of the interval between the beginning of Kim’s reforms and the pursuit of investigations against the country’s former leaders.
“For 2 1/2 years they didn’t reveal these scandals, then suddenly they take action,” says Choe In Kyu, a tailor. “It is a show, to improve their popularity. All the people around here are complaining.”
So far, the Korean economy, the world’s 11th largest, has not suffered overall, and Kim has hinted that penalties against major corporate leaders might be limited to prevent economic turmoil. But even supporters of the president acknowledge that reforms that dried up a once vast and officially tolerated black market in credit have caused bankruptcies, disaffection and widespread hardship among smaller enterprises.
There is little evidence of a general sentiment for a return to the old ways of doing business and politics. Rage over the corruption and brutality of the former presidents is widespread, and many citizens say Chun and Roh should be executed if convicted of responsibility for the Kwangju massacre.
A recent poll by the Korea Gallup Research Institute for the Ministry of Information found 75.9 percent approval of Kim’s efforts to “correct the wrongs of history.” But polls and media analysis also show support for Kim and his party is lukewarm. All say the party faces serious losses in the upcoming National Assembly election scheduled for April 11.
Kim has been a presence in South Korean politics since 1954 when, at age 27, he became the youngest person ever elected to the National Assembly. Koreans refer to recent years as the era of the “three Kims,” dominated by Kim Young Sam and two rivals - Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Pil.
Kim Young Sam started as a member of the ruling party, but spent most of his career in opposition to the government, launching hunger strikes and enduring expulsion from the assembly and arrest in defense of his views.
But just before the last election, he merged his reformist followers with the ruling party and won the presidency in a stunning political coup that his defenders called a show of pragmatism and his critics called a sell-out.
Lee Kark Bum, the president’s senior policy adviser, says his 68-year-old boss is simply attuned to the public and willing to do what the people want.
“He is a historic leader with two sides in his person,” Lee said in an interview at the Blue House. “One side is an idealist who really wants to reform the country, to make it an advanced country in the 21st century and to exert his powers for the good of the people. The other side is a realist who fought and fought for the seat of power until he became president.
“When people were most concerned with stability and continuity, he advocated letting history be the judge” of former presidents Chun and Roh, Lee said.
Last year, Kim’s reforms led to revelations that Roh had kept a political slush fund of nearly $ 400 million in alleged bribes from the country’s biggest corporations. The amount stunned even those who had been convinced that Roh was corrupt.
“When the huge slush funds were found and people turned away from the former presidents, and there was a loud demand for their arrest, President Kim decided to follow the people’s mind,” Lee said. But the move left a lingering impression among the public that Kim had been reluctant to act.
Kim is also suffering from his initially popular outreach to North Korea, which was harshly rebuffed by North Korean leaders who subsequently cut off their dialogue with the South and threatened to turn Seoul into a sea of fire.
“His policy was really naive,” says Kang In Duk, director of the Research Institute for North Korean Affairs. “He did not understand the real issues.” Eventually, the euphoria for Korean unification that arose at the end of the Cold War soured.
Despite the disaffection, there are signs that Kim’s resilience will keep the president and his reforms afloat. Kang and other opinion-leaders are beginning to moderate their criticism.
The downturn in relations with North Korea “wasn’t all Kim Young Sam’s fault. Now he is being very serious, very cautious” and taking a harder line with the North, Kang said approvingly.
Hong Sa Duk, a leading independent member of the National Assembly who a year ago was a prominent critic of Kim, said his opinion of the president has improved because of Kim’s ability to persevere and to adapt, both domestically and in the all-important relationship with the North.
“Our country has been very successful for the last 30 years, but now we must change,” Hong said. “Government direction of the economy must be minimized, regulations reduced and corrupt links between government and big business groups broken. President Kim Young Sam’s corruption fighting is very necessary for this reformation.”
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, AP FILE PHOTO / President Kim Young Sam of South Korea appears in July at a White House news conference with President Clinton.
Document 91
Copyright 1996 Globe Newspaper Company The Boston Globe
January 28, 1996, Sunday, City Edition
SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1794 words
HEADLINE: Reliving a massacre; S. Korea copes with trauma of Kwangju killings
BYLINE: By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:
Kang Hae Jung still doesn’t know what hit her that day in May 1980, blinding her forever. But for her and most other South Koreans, the darkness that smothered the country that spring is finally beginning to lift.
Between May 18 and May 27, 1980, South Korean troops beat, bayoneted and shot their way through Kwangju in an orgy of violence that became the most traumatic event in South Korea’s peacetime history.
Before it ended with the storming of the provincial capitol in the heart of the city, hundreds were dead and thousands injured. Many victims were demonstrators opposed to the military, but many others were not - a child taking a swim, a pregnant woman awaiting her husband at their gate, countless people like Kang who were just trying to get out of the way.
Now the first wide-open investigation of the violence - spurred by a financial scandal that has discredited former military leaders - is shaking South Korea from top to bottom.
Last week, former presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, already facing massive corruption charges, were indicted for sedition in connection with the Kwangju massacre. They could be executed if convicted. More than a dozen other former military leaders also are being investigated.
But survivors are calling for a much wider investigation. How the country reckons with the long-suppressed facts of the Kwangju massacre, they say, is a test of whether democracy has come of age in this important US ally, or whether President Kim Young Sam is merely using the public mood to purge his predecessors.
For years, the Kwangju action, which followed the assassination of the country’s leader and a military revolt, was portrayed by the government as self-defense against armed rioters sympathetic to the communist regime in North Korea.
But for just as long, activists and students, professors and photographers struggled, often covertly, to keep alive another version of the event - as a massacre planned in cold blood and provoked by the military to justify taking over the country, silencing its opponents and extinguishing democracy.
For one family, suffering continues
Kang Hae Jung’s story is significant not because it is unusual, but because it is so common.
The mother of six, then 46, was walking her youngest children to the home of relatives in the suburbs, trying to get them away from the gunfire, tear gas and flames consuming central Kwangju, when she was passed on the road by a busload of armed citizens.
“Suddenly I saw soldiers aiming their guns toward the bus,” she recalled. “There was a big blasting sound and the bus stopped. I told my second son to run into the fields; I sent the youngest son in another direction and the girls to a third place. Suddenly there was no one but me on the road.
“I laid down on the ground, face down,” she said. “I thought my sons would be safe, but one of the daughters was just below the bus and I was afraid she might be hurt. The shooting stopped. I raised my head to call out my daughter’s name, and at that moment I was blinded.”
Whatever it was - a bullet, a rocket, a flare - passed across the bridge of her nose, searing her face and ruining both eyes. “I prayed to God where I should go,” she said. “I started to crawl, and after that I don’t remember anything.”
She regained consciousness in a hospital, her head covered in bandages. She had been in a coma for four days. No one told her she had been blinded, she sobs, “but one day I tried to feel my eyes and I understood there were no eyeballs there.”
The suffering of Kang and her family was not over. Soon she would learn that one of her grandchildren, left alone while the family searched frantically for her, died in an accident at home. The child’s mother would never completely recover.
Two years later, Kang’s husband, who struggled with his wife’s injury and grandchild’s death, had a stroke and never again spoke.
Nor did the suffering of the city and the country end when the soldiers quit shooting.
There were months of interrogations, torture and repression as the military tightened its grip on the country. Politicians sympathetic to the demonstrators were arrested. Professors friendly with student activists were forced to resign.
For years after that pressure eased, awareness of what actually happened was kept alive mainly by films and documents smuggled among victims’ organizations and major campuses.
Opinions differ on punishing leaders
‘I always believed that one day” the military leaders at the time “would be punished, because there is a Lord,” Kang said, adding a plea for moderation.
“We can hate the crime, but we shouldn’t hate the people,” she said. “We better not commit another murder or execution.”
Many of her fellow citizens do not agree.
Song Hee Sung was beaten during the Kwangju violence and tortured in its aftermath. But she does not think of herself first as a victim. The 57-year-old mother of five has a toughness born of generations of fighters. Her father was killed in action against the North Koreans; a grandfather died in the resistance to Japan’s 35-year-long colonial rule.
Song, who was elected to the provincial council last summer, has testified before the prosecutors investigating the massacre and is pressing a lawsuit on behalf of women who were abused by the troops. She expresses views that are widespread in Kwangju and rapidly gaining adherents across the country.
After Chun Doo Hwan and his fellow generals seized control of the military, on Dec. 12, 1979, nationwide protests were so strong the coup leaders could not immediately take over the civilian government, Song said. “They needed a clear cause to take power. They selected Kwangju and made a scenario.”
Why pick Kwangju?
Residents believe there were several reasons. It is a liberal city, home ground to Kim Dae Jung, a longtime leader of opponents of authoritarian rule. There is also the history of distrust and prejudice toward the Kwangju region.
Troops were deployed in Kwangju at midnight on May 17, just as Chun was declaring nationwide martial law. When the soldiers blocked university students from entering campuses the next morning, name-calling and fights broke out.
But instead of trying to quiet the crowds, Song said, the soldiers deliberately made matters worse.
“People who were just walking around, who hadn’t taken part in any demonstration, were beaten severely,” she said. “The soldiers took their trousers off, made them raise their hands, and beat them.”
Huh Yon Shik, an investigator for the Victims’ Families Foundation, said, “Soldiers stopped high school girls on the streets, stripped off their clothes and sexually humiliated them. Citizens who told them not to do that were beaten.
By May 19, “after watching the brutality, people got furious,” Huh said. “The soldiers stimulated a most primitive, elemental anger in people. It was deliberate.”
Then roads into the city were blocked by the troops, communications with the outside were cut, and soldiers began shooting people rather than beating them.
Starting on May 21, Song said, “people armed themselves with arms from the local police stations,” which had been deserted by officers unable to stand against the army and unwilling to stand against the townspeople. “People had to do that to protect themselves.”
Within days, however, many residents turned in their weapons, she said. “Mostly younger people were wearing weapons, and the adults were concerned about the danger and got them to return the guns. When the end came, most people were not armed.”
The “Kwangju liberation period” lasted from May 21, when the army withdrew to the outskirts in the face of the furious citizenry, to dawn on May 27, when massively reinforced martial law troops, now equipped with tanks, stormed the city.
While not all details can be verified, an extensive photographic record of the Kwangju events, published in 1994, shows piles of weapons surrendered by civilians before the final assault by the troops. It also shows soldiers encircling unarmed civilians, beating them with rods as they lay on the ground. The government’s official death toll is 200, but residents maintain that thousands died.
Trying to set history right
Guilt, shame, fear of the military, a distaste for facing a cruel reality - all appear to have played a role in the Korean public’s long insensitivity to what went on in Kwangju, and to the strong sentiment now for setting history right.
“Some students showed films of the Kwangju massacre. I tried to look, but I didn’t stay very long,” said Kim Hyo Jeong, 26, a graduate of Seoul’s Yonsei University. “It was interesting, but very brutal. I lacked a sense of responsibility. I didn’t feel they were my people. I didn’t feel that accident had anything to do with me, and I was suspicious of the real color of the students in the demonstrations. There were reports of North Korean influence and agitation.”
But as discussion has broadened, as Kim has listened to the stories of the victims, she has changed.
“We know now this is a shame, a disgrace,” she said. “This wasn’t a civil war. Young kids, pregnant women, innocent kids were killed. The military leaders who did it became president, traveled to many countries, and were welcomed as fathers of our nation.”
The US government, South Korea’s largest ally, said it was shocked and disturbed by the coup, the declaration of martial law and the Kwangju incident. But America’s prime concern in 1980 was the Cold War standoff between South Korea and North Korea, which was backed by the Soviet Union and China.
There were no economic or military sanctions, no outcry comparable to the American reaction against China’s suppression of dissidents at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
In 1990, the National Assembly, after an investigation of the Kwangju massacre, passed to compensate Kwangju victims and to recognize that the people killed and injured here were engaged in democratic activities, not rebellion.
There was insufficient support for the next step - assessing responsibility for the violence. That is why the current investigation is seen as crucial for South Korean democracy.
After all the lies and scandals, many Koreans say they will not be able to believe in their government until a thorough, uncompromising accounting has taken place.
And what should be done if the former presidents are found guilty, Kim, the former student, was asked.
“Execution,” she said without hesitation. “Now I really share the anger of other people. If you murder just one person you can be executed, and they massacred many. And they mocked us. We tried to trust the government. We wanted to believe them when they insisted they were innocent.”
GRAPHIC: PHOTO MAP, 1. The picture of a student killed in the May 1980 massacre in Kwangju, the most traumatic event in South Korea’s peacetime history, adorns a grave in Mangwol Dony Cemetery. / GLOBE PHOTO / YUNGHI KIM 2. Kang Hae Jung was trying to get her children away from the fighting in Kwangju when she was seared by an object that blinded her for life. / GLOBE PHOTO / YUNGHI KIM 3. GLOBE STAFF MAP
Document 92
Copyright 1996 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc. Chicago Sun-Times
January 24, 1996, WEDNESDAY, Late Sports Final Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 36
LENGTH: 491 words
HEADLINE: S. Korea Ex-Leaders Indicted in Massacre
BYLINE: BY KIM MYONG-HWAN
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:
South Korean ex-presidents Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan were formally charged Tuesday with sedition stemming from the 1980 army massacre of pro-democracy activists in Kwangju, prosecutors said.
It was the latest in a string of charges against the two former heads of state.
Chun and Roh already face mutiny charges over the 1979 coup that propelled them to power. They also have been indicted on corruption charges for amassing slush funds of hundreds of millions of dollars during their rule.
The brutal crackdown of the popular uprising against military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju is one of the most traumatic chapters in South Korean history. Secrecy has surrounded the event for many years .
“Chun, as the mastermind, and Roh . . . as a key player in various violence, mutiny and seditious activities committed a crime of trampling on the constitution,” a prosecution statement said.
It said Chun and his military associates “believed protests in Kwangju could pose barriers to their bid to seize control, restricted media reports on Kwangju demonstrations on fear of worsening protests and intended to crush them.”
Along with Chun and Roh, six former senior military officers were indicted on sedition charges. They include former army chief of staff Hwang Yung Si and generals-turned-politicians Lee Hak Bong and Yoo Hak Seong, who already have been arrested.
The others, who have not been held, are former defense minister Choo Young Bock, then martial law commander Lee Hui Sung and former military academy president Cha Kyu Hun.
“The Kwangju incident took place as the new military leadership tried to follow programs aimed at seizing political power,” a prosecutor said.
The programs included the closing of parliament, arrests of politicians, purging of journalists, a crackdown on democracy campaigners and a revision of the constitution.
About 200 people were killed by official count when members of crack special forces trained for combat with North Korea stormed the city to end the revolt. But residents say as many as 1,000 may have died.
The Kwangju rebellion erupted a day after the Chun-led military ordered the imposition of martial law across South Korea in May, 1980 after a military coup in 1979.
Many Kwangju residents were also angry at the arrest of opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, a local political hero whom the military accused of fanning protests.
Prosecutors said the final authority for the order to send troops to Kwangju came from Chun.
The two former presidents could face execution if convicted, although it is widely believed they would receive jail terms.
Chun and Roh challenged the constitutional validity of a special law enacted to punish them and their former aides.
Last month, parliament passed a law ordered by President Kim Young Sam to punish his two predecessors for leading the crackdown in the city.
The law made possible the prosecution of Chun and Roh.
GRAPHIC: REUTERS
Document 93
Copyright 1996 Journal Sentinel Inc. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
January 24, 1996 Wednesday Final
SECTION: News Pg. 3
LENGTH: 63 words
HEADLINE: South Korea indicts 2 former presidents
SOURCE: Journal Sentinel wire services
DATELINE: Seoul, South Korea
BODY:
Former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, already charged with bribery and insurrection, were indicted for treason Tuesday for alleged involvement in an army massacre of civilians nearly 16 years ago.
The indictment wraps up nearly two months of a government investigation into the so-called “Kwangju Massacre,” in which hundreds of people were killed or injured.
Document 94
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company The New York Times
January 24, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 9; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 783 words
HEADLINE: Seoul Indicts An Ex-Leader For Massacre In the 1980’s
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
DATELINE: TOKYO, Jan. 23
BODY:
South Korean prosecutors indicted former President Chun Doo Hwan today for overseeing the massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1980, an incident that has haunted South Korea and that now has more resonance than ever throughout Asia.
The massacre, in which young demonstrators in the city of Kwangju were machine-gunned and clubbed to death, shocked the world, yet its force seemed to recede with the passing of time and the rise of the South Korean economy.
Today’s indictment offers a reminder of how harsh repression, even if it seems successful initially, can fester beneath the surface and bring down dictators years later.
Mr. Chun, a former general who was South Korea’s President from 1980 to 1988, could face the death penalty for his role in the massacre. Mr. Chun’s successor, Roh Tae Woo, was also indicted today for insurrection and could also face the gallows, but he was not accused of involvement in the massacre.
“They are traitors who stole power, and I’m glad they’re now getting what they deserve,” said Kang Min Jo, whose son was beaten to death in the massacre and who heads a victims’ organization in Kwangju.
“In an ordinary murder, the killer can be executed,” Mr. Kang said. “Chun and Roh should be executed too, along with their major collaborators. And if they had any conscience at all, they would just kill themselves.”
Mr. Kang’s bitterness has parallels around the world, from Chile to China. Particularly in Asia, one of the unresolved questions for the coming years is whether political and military leaders will be punished for incidents like the Tiananmen Square killings in China in 1989 or Indonesia’s massacre of demonstrators in East Timor in 1991.
The leaders of China and Indonesia have been betting that such incidents will be forgiven if memories are dulled by strong economic growth. But the lesson is sure to reverberate throughout Asia that Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh made the same bet, and it now seems that they have lost. Their downfall came partly because they presided over the emergence of a budding democracy.
Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh are already in jail on charges of corruption and of staging a military mutiny in December 1979 to seize control of the army. Today’s charges for insurrection relate to the actions that Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh took after that mutiny to crack down on opposition and consolidate their power.
Their seizure of power set off protests in Kwangju that paratroopers put down with violence. Mr. Chun’s indictment holds him responsible for the massacre, but prosecutors said that at the time Mr. Roh was busy with the task of pacifying Seoul and so would not be prosecuted for the Kwangju massacre.
“This will serve to give momentum to the effort to eradicate the remnants of military dictatorship,” Kim Yong Sun, a spokeswoman for the governing New Korea Party, said of the indictments.
The indictment does not charge that Mr. Chun specifically ordered that the troops open fire on the protesters. Kim Sang Hee, the chief prosecutor, said that there was no written evidence that any senior official had given an order to shoot.
“The prosecution does not believe that the incident was committed as a result of a detailed plan, or even that it was intentional,” Mr. Kim said. But he cited evidence including memos written at the time by Mr. Chun advising commanding officers to end the Kwangju protests rapidly, suggesting that the former President allowed the massacre to take place and showed no interest in preventing bloodshed.
Neither did the indictment clarify the death toll. The Government now accepts that at least 240 people died, and most estimates are substantially higher.
Mr. Chun has maintained that he never ordered the killings, and that in any case the troops used their guns only after protesters opened fire on them. It is true that demonstrators seized guns, but virtually all accounts say it was the paratroopers who initiated the violence.
Mr. Chun’s lawyer, Seok Jin Kang, said tonight that the prosecutor’s statements absolved the former President by indicating that there was no evidence that he ordered the massacre. Mr. Seok referred to the Kwangju massacre as “an unfortunate accident.”
Mr. Kang said that while he was gladdened by the indictments, he wanted a more thorough investigation to uncover exactly how the massacre came about.
“Coming this far isn’t enough,” Mr. Kang said. “I’ve seen the prosecutors as they investigated, and they’re just like someone licking the skin of a watermelon.”
That is a Korean idiom referring to something done in a perfunctory way, like trying to get at the tasty part of a melon by licking its surface.
Document 95
Copyright 1996 The Baltimore Sun Company The Baltimore Sun
January 23, 1996, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: TELEGRAPH (NEWS), Pg. 8A, FOREIGN DIGEST
LENGTH: 448 words
HEADLINE: Ex-Korean leaders charged with treason in probe of massacre
SOURCE: From wire reports
BODY:
SEOUL, South Korea -- Former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, already charged with bribery and insurrection, were indicted on treason charges today for alleged involvement in an army massacre of civilians nearly 16 years ago. The maximum penalty for treason is death.
The indictment wraps up nearly two months of a government investigation into the so-called “Kwangju Massacre,” in which hundreds of people were killed or injured. Also indicted were six ex-army generals who helped brutally crush pro-democracy protests by hundreds of thousands of people in the southern city of Kwangju.
The crackdown helped Mr. Chun and Mr. Roh consolidate power. Mr. Chun became president in 1980 and was replaced by Mr. Roh in 1988.
Yeltsin says he’s likely to seek a second term
MOSCOW -- President Boris N. Yeltsin said yesterday that he was likely to run in June’s presidential election and pledged to continue democratic and economic reforms.
“It looks as though I will give my agreement to run in the presidential election,” Mr. Yeltsin told a small group of foreign investors at the Kremlin.
It was the most firm indication that Mr. Yeltsin, 64, who had two bouts of heart trouble last year, would seek a second term. But he said he would wait until February to announce a final decision.
Colombia’s president took drug money, ex-aide says
BOGOTA, Colombia -- In an explosive new turn in Colombia’s political crisis, the jailed chief of President Ernesto Samper’s 1994 election bid said yesterday that the president knew the campaign had taken money from the Cali drug cartel.
The comments by Fernando Botero, a former defense minister, are a severe blow to Mr. Samper, who has been plagued by suspicions that his campaign took millions of dollars from the world’s largest supplier of cocaine.
“He knew, it’s the truth. He knew,” Mr. Botero told the television news program CMI. “It’s a central fact. He is very seriously compromised.”
In December, a congressional commission dropped an investigation of Mr. Samper and his campaign, citing a lack of evidence. But U.S. officials and other government critics had predicted a whitewash.
New Japanese premier vows to cut U.S. force on Okinawa
TOKYO -- Promising a more assertive foreign policy and moving deftly to defuse domestic protests, Japan’s new prime minister said yesterday he will reduce the U.S. military presence on Okinawa while maintaining Japan’s security ties with the United States.
In his first policy speech to the Diet, or parliament, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto gave no specifics on the Okinawa plan. He also promised full economic recovery by the end of this year.
Document 96
Copyright 1996 The Atlanta Constitution The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
January 22, 1996, Monday, JOURNAL EDITION
SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 12A
LENGTH: 706 words
HEADLINE: WORLD IN BRIEF; Yeltsin: Likely to seek re-election
BYLINE: From our news services
BODY:
President Boris Yeltsin of Russia reportedly said today that he likely will be a candidate in elections in June. It was the strongest indication yet he would seek re-election.
Yeltsin, who has acted like a candidate since returning to the Kremlin following a two-month absence caused by heart trouble, said he will announce a final decision next month on seeking a second five-year term.
“Probably, I will agree to run in the presidential elections. I am saying probably because I am going to announce my final decision Feb. 13- 15,” Yeltsin said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Yeltsin, whose popularity has fallen sharply in recent years, would face strong competition from Communist and nationalist candidates. Communist and nationalist parties won the most votes in parliamentary elections in December.
EUROPE
- BAILOUT TALKS FAIL: Daimler-Benz, Germany’s biggest industrial group, announced today it would contribute no more cash to save its Dutch aircraft subsidiary, Fokker, from insolvency after bailout talks with the Netherlands government failed. Trading in Fokker shares was suspended on the Amsterdam stock exchange, and Fokker made contingency plans to lay off all 7,800 employees at five plants in what would be the biggest company shutdown in Dutch history. Daimler said it would take losses of $ 4.1 billion for 1995, more than twice as much as analysts predicted.
-GOVERNMENT SWORN IN: Premier Costas Simitis of Greece and his streamlined center-left Cabinet were sworn in today, pledging to accelerate efforts to align the lagging Greek economy with its European Union partners. Simitis, 60, a former economics professor and veteran politician, replaced the 76-year-old Andreas Papandreou, who resigned last week because of ill health. Lawmakers from the ruling Panhellenic Socialist Movement party elected Simitis on Thursday over two Papandreou loyalists. The new prime minister pared the Cabinet from 52 members to 40 and shut out all but two of Papandreou’s close aides, Interior Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos, and Health and Welfare Minister Anastasios Peponis.
ASIA
- TREASON CHARGES LOOM: Two former South Korean military-backed presidents, already charged with corruption, will be indicted this week on charges of treason in connection with an army massacre of civilians 15 years ago, officials said today. The charges, to be filed Tuesday against Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, will end nearly two months of an extensive government investigation into the so-called “Kwangju Massacre,” the bloodiest civil uprising in modern South Korean history. Lee Jong-chan, head of the investigation team, said eight former army generals, associates of the two ex-presidents, also will be indicted in connection with the massacre.
-HOSTAGE RELEASED: Separatist rebels released one Indonesian hostage today and may free their remaining 13 captives, including six Europeans, in the next few days. Christian missionaries who flew to a remote village in the jungles of Irian Jaya to negotiate with the kidnappers found the freed man, Jacobus Mandipa, waiting for them. Col. Sumertha Ayub, a military spokesman, said the other hostages could be released in two or three days.
AFRICA
- PILOT ERROR CITED: Aviation experts investigating a plane crash that killed the Nigerian military ruler’s son believe pilot error rather than sabotage was to blame, a Lagos newspaper reported today. A previously unknown group saying it represents opponents of the military regime last week claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s crash, but there has been no way to authenticate the claim. Civilian and military aviation experts have been investigating the crash, which killed all 14 people on board minutes before the private jet was to land in the northern city of Kano.
-REFUGEES STRANDED: About 16,000 Rwandan refugees were stranded near the Burundi-Tanzania border today, unable to cross into Tanzania and reluctant to return to their burned out camp in Burundi. Tanzania, which already hosts about 500,000 Rwandan refugees, has closed its border to refugees in Burundi. However, a U.N. official said about 400 of the 16,000 Ntamba refugees had managed to slip into the country.
Document 97
Copyright 1996 The Atlanta Constitution The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
January 22, 1996, Monday, CONSTITUTION EDITION
SECTION: FOREIGN NEWS; Pg. 12A
LENGTH: 758 words
HEADLINE: WORLD IN BRIEF; Treason charges loom for ex-leaders
BYLINE: From our news services
BODY:
Two former South Korean military-backed presidents, already charged with corruption, will be indicted this week on charges of treason in connection with an army massacre of civilians 15 years ago, officials said today.
The charges, to be filed Tuesday against Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae- woo, will end nearly two months of an extensive government investigation into the so-called “Kwangju Massacre,” the bloodiest civil uprising in modern South Korean history.
Lee Jong-chan, head of the investigation team, said eight former army generals, associates of the two ex-presidents, also will be indicted in connection with the massacre.
After seizing power in a 1979 coup, Chun, with help from Roh and other generals, brutally suppressed pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Kwangju six months later. At least 240 people were killed and 1,800 injured.
The treason charges carry a maximum sentence of death. Chun already faces a mandatory death penalty for allegedly masterminding the coup, although it is unlikely to be imposed. Roh faces up to life in prison.
Both men also face 10 years to life on corruption charges. ASIA
- HOSTAGE TALKS: Christian missionaries in Indonesia will negotiate with separatist rebels for the release of 14 hostages, whose freedom the military had demanded by midnight, according to the official Antara news agency. The agency today quoted an unidentified military official as saying that “ although we have passed the deadline, there are still some possibilities for use of persuasion to free the hostages.” The rebels have been holding six Europeans and eight Indonesians for three weeks at a jungle hideout in southeastern Indonesia.
THE AMERICAS
- POPE PREPARATIONS: Alarmed by a recent spate of bombings of Catholic churches and organizations, Nicaragua is mobilizing thousands of police and security officers for the Feb. 7 visit of Pope John Paul II. The pontiff is to make a nine-hour visit to the capital, Managua, where at least 1 million people are expected to congregate for a public Mass. Commander Fernando Caldera, general director of the National Police, says 3,600 police will be mobilized in Managua and 3,000 more from the provinces will oversee the flood of faithful expected to pour in from outlying areas. Since April, there have been at least 18 church bombings - the latest Jan. 1.
EUROPE
- ARMS DEAL FROZEN: Reluctant to damage its fragile relations with two giant economic partners in Asia, France has frozen lucrative arms deals with Taiwan and Pakistan, the Paris daily Liberation said. France is leery of angering China, locked in an escalating territorial dispute with Taiwan, or India, a longtime French ally that is feuding with neighboring Pakistan, the newspaper reported. The sale of 40 Mirage 2000- 5 warplanes to Pakistan was worth nearly $ 3 billion to French jet maker Dassault Aviation. The newspaper didn’t say how much the sale of 550 Mistral missiles to Taiwan would have been worth.
MIDDLE EAST
- STOCK SALE: Strapped financially by U.N. trade sanctions, the Iraqi government plans to raise money by selling stock in some state- owned businesses, the country’s finance minister said in Baghdad. The official Iraqi News Agency quoted Hikmat Mizban Ibrahim as saying the government will use the money to invest in “productive projects.” Iraq’s 20 million people have been suffering under U.N. trade sanctions imposed in August 1990 after Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait. The sanctions halted the oil exports that formed the basis of Iraq’s economy.
-PERES CHOSEN: Winning support to continue as Israel’s leader, Prime Minister Shimon Peres was named the Labor Party candidate for elections slated for later this year. Only three of the ruling party’s 1,296 central committee members voted against Peres, who ran unopposed. The elections are scheduled for October, but there are signs Peres might call an early vote in May or June.
OCEANIA
- ARMS MEETING: Scientists, former military strategists and retired statesmen from around the world gather in Sydney, Australia, this week to launch a new effort to rid the world of nuclear arms. The meeting takes place amid a controversial series of nuclear tests by France in the South Pacific. Defying international opinion, France has detonated five blasts beneath Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls since
September. The sixth, which Paris promises will be its last forever, is due anytime. Australia has been among the most vocal critics of French testing.
Document 98
Copyright 1996 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. THE PHOENIX GAZETTE
January 22, 1996 Monday, Final
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A11
LENGTH: 70 words
HEADLINE: EX-S. KOREA LEADERS FACING TREASON CHARGES
BYLINE: Compiled from wire reports
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:
Two former military-backed presidents, already charged with corruption, will be indicted this week for treason in connection with an army massacre of civilians 15 years ago, officials said today.
The charges, to be filed Tuesday against Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, will end a nearly two-month of government investigation into the “Kwangju Massacre,” the bloodiest civil uprising in modern South Korean history.
Document 99
Copyright 1996 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. THE PHOENIX GAZETTE
January 22, 1996 Monday, Midday
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A11
LENGTH: 100 words
HEADLINE: EX-S. KOREA LEADERS FACING TREASON CHARGES
BYLINE: Compiled from wire reports
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:
Two former military-backed presidents, already charged with corruption, will be indicted this week for treason in connection with an army massacre of civilians 15 years ago, officials said today.
The charges, to be filed Tuesday against Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, will end a nearly two-month of government investigation into the “Kwangju Massacre,” the bloodiest civil uprising in modern South Korean history.
Lee Jong-chan, head of the investigation team, said eight former army generals, associates of the two former presidents, also will be indicted in connection with the massacre.