Copyright 1982 The New York Times Company The New York Times
March 4, 1982, Thursday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section A; Page 4, Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 2898 words
HEADLINE: SOUTH KOREA UNDER CHUN: A NEW SENSE OF VIGOR
BYLINE: By HENRY SCOTT STOKES, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:
President Chun Doo Hwan, completing his first year as head of state under South Korea’s new Fifth Republic, appears to have won the confidence of his allies abroad and much of the military and business elite at home.
After taking office on March 3, 1981, and making a slow start marked by discord and official repression, Mr. Chun, a former army general, has injected a sense of vigor into his administration, and the economy is reviving after a bad spell. He has emerged as a rival to Kim Il Sung, the North Korean President, on the emotional issue of Korean reunification and, in consequence, as a forceful leader in the Korean peninsula.
Meanwhile, he has apparently persuaded a reluctant Japanese Government to grant him several billion dollars in long-term credits. His quest for international acceptance received further impetus from the International Olympic Committee’s surprise decision to bestow the l988 Olympic Games on Seoul and not on the Japanese city of Nagoya, which fully expected the games.
Predecessor Was Murdered
These are not small achievements. South Korea went through a traumatic period in 1979 and 1980 after the murder of President Park Chung Hee by his own security chief. Now the situation is quieter, and the streets of Seoul bustle with well-dressed people. The shops are full of electronic goods.
Early this year Mr. Chun ended a nationwide midnight-to-4 A.M. curfew that had been in effect for 36 years. This was a largely symbolic gesture, but it marked a gradual return of confidence, with business picking up and the threat of armed conflict with North Korea seemingly under control.
(On Tuesday, in a move aimed at conciliating critics at home and abroad, Mr. Chun reduced from life to 20 years the sentence imposed in 1980 on his chief political rival, Kim Dae Jung, while awarding amnesty or reduced sentences to 2,862 other convicts, including 297 listed as political prisoners. Although no major political prisoners were released, the gesture demonstrated Mr. Chun’s increased selfconfidence.)
Still a One-Party State
At the same time, however, South Korea remains essentially a oneparty state and Mr. Chun has made only modest progress toward his own avowed goal of ‘‘democracy.’’ And there is much residual bitterness among those on whom he cracked down hard during his rise to power, particularly in the universities, the press and rival political factions.
That worries United States officials in Seoul. In view of its ‘‘spectacular’’ economic progress over the last two decades ‘‘and the increasing importance of its international activity,’’ said the United States Ambassador, Richard L. Walker, ‘‘the Republic of Korea has the basis for a more confident approach’’ to political liberalization.
The 51-year-old Mr. Chun, a snub-nosed, partly bald man, direct in conversation and far more willing than his austere predecessor, Mr. Park, to seek the counsel of ordinary Koreans in private talks, gave his own sense of priorities in a New Year speech before the National Assembly.
Substantial Economic Growth
‘‘Nineteen eighty-one was a year in which we extricated ourselves from political and social chaos and restored stability,’’ he said. ‘‘As a result, substantive progress was achieved, including a 7 percent economic growth - a reversal of the negative growth of 1980.’’
In his speech, the first to the Assembly by a head of state since 1968, Mr. Chun outlined a comprehensive proposal for the unification of Korea, by far the most complete program so far submitted by South Korea. It would start with an exchange of permanent Cabinet-level officers between Seoul and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
North Korea responded negatively. But the offer, which was followed up by more unification proposals from Seoul, remains on the table. President Chun, advised by the newly appointed chief of his presidential staff, Lee Bum Suk, a Pyongyang-born former diplomat who is regarded as a leading expert on the North, had previously made a shrewd move last year when he offered to meet Kim Il Sung at any time and place without a set agenda.
Reunification the Key Goal
The significance of these maneuvers arises from the fact that the dream of Korean reunification remains a major issue in the hearts of virtually all Koreans. For years, Kim Il Sung carried the torch of reunification; Mr. Park, by contrast, seemed to lack confidence in dealing directly with the Communists.The torch may now have passed to Mr. Chun.
A career soldier who received part of his training in the United States, and who engaged in no political activity until 1980, Mr. Chun appears to have developed a sense for the political gesture. His decision to speak before the National Assembly - something that President Park avoided - was such a move, seemingly intended to underline his belief in ‘‘democracy.’’
But what democracy means to Mr. Chun is unclear. He seems to share some of Mr. Park’s disdain for politicians, speaking before the Assembly of ‘‘fatuous political behavior characterized by strife and confrontation, and opposition for the sake of opposition.’’
As an apparent alternative to Western-style parliamentary democracy, he proposed ‘‘judicious nurturing of the national strength through dialogue and compromise,’’ with ‘‘major efforts to insure clean government.’’ Politicians could interpret this Confucian sentiment as meaning, in essence, ‘‘Follow me.’’
Leading Politicians Banned
Mr. Chun has banned 567 former leading politicians from political activity until 1988. His attitude toward politicians generally is based on an almost Khomeini-like emphasis on purity of motive. ‘‘Hidden pockets of corruption must be uprooted,’’ he has said. ‘‘As long as anyone is inclined that way, corruption will raise its head.’’
There is an element of shrewd political calculation in all this, but Mr. Chun’s moral posture appears basic to much that he has done. It manifests itself in his frequent admonitions to the business community, a source of bribes under the Park administration; in his ‘‘purification’’ programs for the nation; in his dealings with a greatly weakened political opposition, and in his efforts to cleanse Seoul of criminal and dissident elements alike by interning them at what Korean officials describe as ‘‘rehabilitation’’ camps scattered at military bases across the country.
Meanwhile, the press is not free in any conventional Western sense. Although formal censorship disappeared with the ending of martial law a year ago, the Government, using Draconian legislation, exercises considerable authority over the news media.
400 Journalists Dismissed
In theory, the ‘‘basic press law’’ adopted in December 1980 guarantees ‘‘the people’s right to know,’’ but in actuality the press, radio and television went through what the semiofficial Korea Herald called a ‘‘voluntary reorganization’’ under which 400 journalists were dismissed.
Not long afterward, the authorities gave editors written instructions called ‘‘suggestions for cooperation on the news.’’ These suggestions, which discourage criticism of the Constitution or of Mr. Chun, are not technically mandatory, but they have had an inhibiting effect.
Mr. Chun’s key aides include Ho Ham Su and Ho Hwa Pyong, former brigadier generals who were on Mr. Chun’s staff when he was the chief of army intelligence under Mr. Park. Their influence with the President, a subject of intense speculation among South Koreans and diplomats here, is believed to be partly tempered by civilian aides, notably economists, whose expertise gives them access to and influence on Mr. Chun.
Foremost among the economists, who are United States-trained, are Kim Key Hwan, recently made president of the Korea Development Institute, and Kim Jae Ik, a member of the presidential staff. Mr. Chun inherited both aides from Mr. Park.
Unemployment Rate Is Down
Official statistics suggest there has been a major turnaround in South Korea since a 1980 slump caused in part by a worldwide surge in oil prices. Job offers for young blue-collar workers exceed jobseekers in the big cities and basic unemployment is presently about 4 percent of the total workforce.
Meanwhile, exports rose by 18 percent to a record of more than $20 billion, one-third of the whole economy, at a time when world trade contracted. There was a bumper rice crop. And inflation fell back to single digits after touching nearly 50 percent not long ago.
But Kwon Jung Dal, another former general from army intelligence, who runs Mr. Chun’s new ruling Democratic Justice Party, warned that South Korea still had a long way to go. ‘‘With growth of 7 percent this year and negative growth of over 5 percent in 1980, we are only back where we were in 1979,’’ he said in an interview.
Revival of the economy recalls a remark by Gen. John A. Wickham Jr., the United States military commander in Korea, in the dark days of 1980. ‘‘Provided foreign countries find Korea a fertile area for investment, provided peace and stability can remain here, I’m very optimistic about Korea’s economic future, whatever the leadership she has,’’ the general said.
‘Threat From North’ Played Down
A healthy economy is seen by United States officials as vital for security, and vice versa. That is perhaps why Mr. Chun, seeing the economy move ahead again, has placed much less emphasis on the ‘‘threat from the North,’’ once a favored slogan, in recent speeches. Operating on the assumption that a ‘‘perceived threat’’ is bad for business and foreign investment, he offered his unification proposals instead.
South Korea’s foreign debts have risen to $30 billion and will increase further under a five-year plan that will depend heavily on low-interest loans from Japan. By comparison, North Korea, virtually outside the world economy under President Kim’s ‘‘juche,’’ or ‘‘selfreliance,’’ philosphy, has foreign debts of only about $3 billion. But it has had difficulty in covering payments on those, defaulting on its debt in the mid-1970’s, because its exports are weak.
The South, with 38 million people and a $60 billion economy, has twice the population and about four times the economic activity of the North, and the gap is increasing again. Although North Korea is hardly on its knees, as some reports circulated in Seoul maintain, experts say it was seriously short of oil in 1981, unable to pay world market prices.
North’s Imports Said to Lag
A Cabinet source said that last year the Pyongyang regime obtained only 2.08 million tons of oil imports, compared with home demand estimated at 3.72 million tons and refinery capacity of 4 million tons. The Chinese and the Russians, who ship oil to North Korea at prices one-third below world levels, were discouraged by the unattractive business outlook, the source maintained.
For years Kim Il Sung was portrayed in Northern propaganda as the leader of the nonaligned world. But there too he has lost ground. When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1988 games to Seoul, raising the prospect of a flood of visitors from the third world and vast publicity for South Korea, it was a bitter pill for the 69-year-old leader.
Meanwhile Mr. Kim is engaged in possibly the most tricky exercise of his 36-year rule. On April 15 he will hold a gigantic celebration in Pyongyang, with guests from all over the Communist and nonaligned world, to mark his 70th birthday. He is expected to appear at the party with his 40-year-old son Kim Chong Il to lay the ground for what would be the first Communist dynasty in history.
‘The Biggest Cult of Them All’
‘‘His basic concern is passing on power to his son,’’ said a spokesman for South Korea’s Agency for National Security Planning. ‘‘He saw what happened after Mao and Stalin died and their cults collapsed. Kim has the biggest cult of them all, and to avoid a cruel posthumous fate he seeks to hand over to his son, guardian of his cult. The turning point is the 70th birthday.’’
North Korean sources in Tokyo say that the younger Mr. Kim is actually running things in the north on a day-to-day basis already. Experts in North and South say that President Kim is committed to a feat of dynastic gymnastics that some here are sure will fail.
‘‘It cannot work, no way, I am 100 percent sure of that,’’ said Mr. Lee, Mr. Chun’s chief of staff. ‘‘You have Kim Il Sung’s second wife, Kim Sung Ae, who has her own son to promote, watching unhappily from the wings.’’
‘‘There has to be all kinds of Renaissance-style intrigue up at the palace,’’ Mr. Lee said.
Dissident’s Trial Stirred Protests
But Mr. Chun is not without problems of his own. There was much resentment at the arrest and trial of Kim Dae Jung. Later, thousands massed in protest in the streets of Kwangju, and many were killed by Mr. Chun’s troops.
Mr. Kim was charged with sedition and with having organized the Kwangju uprising, though he was in prison when it broke out. He was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment just before President Chun made an official visit to Washington and after the Reagan Administration and other Western powers brought pressure to bear on Mr. Chun.
South Korea’s relations with the West have improved steadily since then, but diplomats in Seoul have not taken much comfort in the way Mr. Chun has consolidated his power. Having quietly invited President Choi Kyu Hah, an ineffectual former diplomat who had been President Park’s Prime Minister, to pack his bags and leave the Blue House, the presidential mansion, in August l980, Mr. Chun moved in and then had a Constitution drawn up that gave him a stacked electoral college. This guaranteed him automatic election to a full seven-year term in the presidency a year ago.
Chun’s Party Holds Majority
Subsequently, Mr. Chun’s ruling party won a majority of the 290 seats in the National Assembly, in part because it managed to spend more than 90 percent of the money available for political campaigning and advertising.
The opposition, such as it is, is less than happy. Shin Sang Woo, a leader of the Democratic Korea Party, said in an interview that he appreciated ‘‘stability’’ under Mr. Chun but was unhappy over the President’s refusal to allow normal political activities, something that is difficult without funds.
‘‘I desire that the political curfew be lifted now the midnight curfew has gone,’’ he said. Other opposition demands include revision of the Constitution to deny the Government the power to stack presidential elections by controlling slates of candidates for the electoral college. Mr. Park used a similar tactic to get himself re-elected with only nominal opposition. In that sense the Fifth Republic is a carbon copy of Mr. Park’’s last one, critics said.
True Democracy Seen as Distant
Will Mr. Chun take steps toward ‘‘liberalization, diversity, flexibility and pluralism,’’ if not real democracy, as urged on him by Western diplomats? ‘‘There’s a match flickering at the end of the tunnel,’’ a diplomat commented. ‘‘Will it light the candle?’’ This man and other ambassadors appear to doubt that the ‘‘candle’’ of freedom will be lighted easily by Mr. Chun. But, on the other hand, can the President muster widespread popular support, for himself and for his reunification program, if he will not take the risks involved?
There are no easy answers to these questions, as Mr. Chun himself is aware. As early as this spring Mr. Chun may face restive opposition parties and disturbances on campuses. His problem is that if he eases up he might be forced from power or lose the confidence of the armed forces leaders, his ultimate prop, but if he does not liberalize, resistance may grow underground.
Stability May Be the Key
The great majority of his people plainly want stability, and if Mr. Chun offers that, as well as continued economic growth, he is likely to remain in command.
Indeed, he seems to have sensed this and has tried to capitalize on it by frequent public appearances, having turned up in every major city to meet the people since his inauguration last year. In this, he is following a policy deliberately different from that of Mr. Park, who became a virtual recluse after the assassination of his wife in l974 and disappeared into the security of the Blue House.
‘‘But what we need also is, as Chun claims to be, a convincing patriot who also embodies Korean nationalism,’’ a conservative church leader remarked not long ago. ‘‘My question is whether Chun is not in some vital ways unable to gather true national support.’’
GRAPHIC: Illustrations: photo of Chun Doo Hwan and his wife