Re:ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOURCES ON 5.18 400~445

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Document 400

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
July 3, 1987, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A29
LENGTH: 706 words
HEADLINE: Roh Pursuing Conciliation; S. Korean’s Unusual Visit Startles a Veteran Opponent
BYLINE: Lena H. Sun, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: SEOUL, July 2, 1987
BODY:

Ruling party chairman Roh Tae Woo, pressing his policy of political conciliation, dropped in without warning today on a startled opposition party president Kim Young Sam.

“You should have notified me in advance,” Kim told Roh, who had to wait about 10 minutes at the headquarters of the Reunification Democratic Party while Kim was summoned from a nearby office.

Roh apologized and said, “I came here to see you and do whatever I can to help you.” Roh also told Kim the ruling party is “ready to become an opposition party” if it loses an upcoming election.

The surprise visit appeared to be aimed at impressing the South Korean public with government determination to push ahead with political reforms approved this week by President Chun Doo Hwan. The key reform is direct presidential elections.

What Roh did was virtually unheard-of here. Meetings between top-level political leaders are normally set up days in advance, with newspapers reporting in detail on the arrangements.

Roh’s political stock has soared in recent days, as many South Koreans see him as the driving force in pushing the government to accept the popular reforms. He is widely expected to run for the presidency.

“He’s really trying to play the politician,” said one western diplomat, referring to Roh, a retired Army general. “He’s breaking the ice with the opposition in a dramatic way.”

The meeting lasted about 15 minutes. The two men agreed to meet again and urge their senior staff members to begin contacts next week on drafting a new constitution.

Kim reiterated demands that political prisoners be released and that the government restore the political rights of fellow opposition leader Kim Dae Jung. The government has agreed to them in principle but has yet to act.

[In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kim Dae Jung said Thursday that democracy was not yet assured, and warned that the government could still resort to oppression. Kim also warned that democracy, if achieved, would bring new problems.]

The opposition and the government are now working on drafts of a new constitution, with a target date of mid-July. Negotiations will then follow toward producing a single document, which will be submitted to the National Assembly.

In another development today, government party officials said they are considering measures to heal the scars left by a bloody uprising in the southern city of Kwangju in May 1980.

More than 200 people were killed after Chun ordered Army troops into the city to quell demonstrations there. The incident is considered to be the deepest blot on the legitimacy of the Chun government.

Many South Koreans feel the government has never given an adequate accounting of Kwangju. People in the opposition hold Chun directly responsible for the deaths.

“Our party has reached a consensus that we have to view the Kwangju incident in the right way as our party is implementing substantive democratization measures for national harmony,” the semiofficial Yonhap News Agency quoted party spokesman Kim Jung Nam as saying today.

Among the measures under consideration, the agency said, are compensation for the families of the victims, construction of a memorial tower and permission for an official memorial ceremony.

Kim Young Sam today declined comment on the proposed measures. But he said that “the souls [of the Kwangju victims] will feel compensated only when there is democracy.”

Kim spent most of the afternoon visiting jailed political prisoners, as part of a schedule that appears to be the start of a presidential campaign. He spent yesterday visiting hospitals to comfort injured students and riot police.

His meeting with Roh was the lead story in the South Korean afternoon newspapers today, and he was followed by photographers when he visited the Yong Dong Po and the West Gate prisons.

Among the political prisoners Kim saw today were about a dozen people, including a vice president of the opposition party, whom police have charged with masterminding a huge street rally June 10.

South Korean cities remained quiet today but Korean news media reported that about 50 radical students fought police briefly with firebombs and rocks in southwestern Seoul last night.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, KIM YOUNG SAM, LEFT, SHAKES HANDS WITH ROH TAE WOO DURING ROH’S SURPRISE VISIT TO OPOSITION HEADQUARTERS. AP

Document 401

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
July 2, 1987, Thursday

SECTION: SECTION I; Editorial; Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1216 words
HEADLINE: After The Euphoria; South Korea And Democracy
BYLINE: Maggie Ford, Seoul
BODY:

Not a riot policeman or a student demonstration was in action in Seoul yesterday as President Chun Doo Hwan delivered his speech promising direct elections. Yet, the optimism of the past two days had somehow disappeared. The achievement of democracy is not going to be easy.

At first glance, the President’s speech appeared to be all that the opposition could have hoped: direct elections for his replacement when he steps down next February, a revision of the constitution so that the poll will be fair, and a number of other democratic reforms.

But much as the President’s rhetoric seemed in tune with the popular will, the speech was silent on one key issue; the name of Mr Kim Dae Jung, the leading opposition politician, at present banned from politics under a sedition charge, was not mentioned.

The position of Mr Kim, symbol of the persecution inflicted by the military government, especially during the 1980 Kwangju uprising, is central. For Kwangju is at the heart of the basic problem facing South Koreans in their quest for democracy - whether the military feels secure enough to give up power in the face of the possibility of opposition revenge. The answer so far is, at best, maybe.

That in itself is an achievement, for only three months ago the President’s decision to call off constitutional revision talks between the main political parties represented a clear “no” to democratic change.

The past three weeks have also established the power of non-violent demonstrations to put pressure on the Government without provoking military intervention. It is a weapon which must be used carefully, but South Koreans feel they have found a way of keeping politicians in check.

They have been helped in their progress towards democracy by the policy of the US Government, which has combined public commitment to democratic change with pressure on President Chun to refrain from using force in quelling unrest. Observers believe Mr Chun may have been dissuaded from proclaiming martial law two weeks ago by pressure from President Ronald Reagan.

The US has apparently become convinced that South Korea will be a more stable ally against Communist North Korea, and in the region as a whole as a democracy than if the country continues to be ruled against its will by a military backed regime.

Although a democratic South Korea is likely to be more nationalistic whoever is president, there is firm commitment on all sides of the political spectrum to anti-Communism, a strong defence and the retention of the 400,000 US troops based in the country.

In the short term, the way forward looks fairly clear. The two main political parties, the opposition Reunification Democratic Party led by Mr Kim Dae Jung and Mr Kim Young Sam, and the ruling Democratic Justice Party led by Mr Roh Tae Woo, must negotiate over the revision of the Constitution and the basic election law.

Both parties are already preparing revision drafts and haggling is likely to be complex. Issues range from redrawing election boundaries to deciding the length of the presidential term. Argument will also take place over the timetable for the presidential election, which must take place in December at the latest to allow a transition in February. An agenda for National Assembly and local elections must also be prepared.

Both parties are likely to negotiate as a matter of urgency the separation of powers of the executive, the National Assembly and the judiciary.

At present all three are under the control of the executive. As a result politicians have no power to engage in serious debate and judges have no authority to enforce the law fairly.

The Government is also likely to face pressure to deliver quickly on its promise to release all political prisoners, now thought to number about 3,000.

Factionalism in the opposition is likely to prove a serious problem. Although the RDP is jointly led by the two Kims, its members support one or the other and agreement on policies and strategies constantly breaks down.

The ruling DJP has a different problem. Ten days ago at a party meeting to discuss the demonstrations that provoked the move to democracy, members were asked for their views on policy for the first time in the party’s seven-year history.

Adjustment by the parties to the new situation is vital if negotiations over constitutional reform are not to be bogged down. A delay, affecting the timetable for the transfer of power by the President next
February could provide another excuse for suspending the democratic process.

At the same time as conducting constitutional negotiations and internal reform, the parties must decide on their presidential candidates. While Mr Roh Tae Woo, chosen by the ruling party earlier this month as President Chun’s replacement, is likely to remain the DJP’s candidate, the position of the RDP - whose two leaders each have their own power base - is complicated.

Even if Mr Kim Dae Jung receives an ammnesty as Mr Roh has recommended, he is by no means the obvious candidate. Last year, in an effort to spur moves towards democracy, he said he would not stand for the presidency.

Mr Kim Young Sam has a strong power base in the important industrial area of Pusan, and support from thg middle-class, who see in him a similar background to their own. He is perceived, however, to lack character and appears to have weak political judgment.

The position of Mr Roh, on the other hand, may well have improved since he put his list of democratic proposals to President Chun on Monday. His plan, widely seen as an effort to respond to the public’s demonstration of its wishes, has now been accepted by Mr Chun. The events of the past few days, if followed up by further genuine efforts at negotiation, will boost Mr Roh’s chances.

Mr Roh also has one characteristic - formerly seen as a disadvantage - which may yet prove an asset: he is a former general, like the President. That fact may make him better able to deal with the one issue which in the turmoil of the past three weeks, has not been addressed - the Kwangju uprising.

At the beginning of the Chun regime in 1980, a revolt against the military coup took place in the provincial city of Kwangju, home base of Mr Kim Dae Jung. The uprising, started by students and joined by citizens who took over the city of 1 m was brutally put down by the military.

By government estimates nearly 200 people died, but local people claim more than 1,000 were killed. As one South Korean said yesterday: “Chun’s hands have been stained with blood ever since.” Fear of revenge over this incident has troubled South Korea’s military ever since, focusing especially on Mr Kim Dae Jung, who was sentenced to death for sedition over his alleged role in the revolt.

A major task for South Koreans over the next six months will be to persuade the people of Kwangju to forgive the military for their treatment. Only if the military are convinced that their future will be secure from punishment can democracy take root. Unless these fears can be allayed by the opposition, Mr Roh may seem a better candidate.

Meanwhile, South Koreans, helped by their media, becoming more free by the day, know that if what they see does not please them, the demonstrators will be back.

GRAPHIC: Picture A show of unity, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam shake hands as President Chun announces his acceptance of democratic reforms

Document 402

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
July 2, 1987
LENGTH: 735 words
HEADLINE: Chun opens campaign by praising Roh’s reforms
BYLINE: From JASPER BECKER
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

South Korea’s presidential election campaign started yesterday with President Chun Doo Hwan lavishing praise on Mr Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party’s candidate.

President Chun made a solemn 20-minute television address yesterday morning in which he endorsed the eight point plan for political reform put forward by Mr Roh.

‘I keenly sense the strong determination and profound thoughts about the country and people in his proposals,’ President Chun said. Mr Roh’s proposals ‘certainly open the way for a grand national compromise and reconciliation. ‘

President Chun said he had ‘truly’ no other ambition than to be remembered for opening ‘a new era of genuine democracy’ and ending ‘the vicious cycle of conflict, confusion, and retaliation. ‘

Political parties immediately began preparing for the country’s first open and democratic election for decades.

The ruling Democratic Justice Party (DJP) discussed ways of laying the ghost of the Kwangju uprising in 1980. President Chun put down the protest brutally at the cost of hundreds - the opposition says thousands - of lives.

The opposition intends to make much of the incident to discredit Mr Roh, although he played no direct part in it. The incident is an embarrassment for the present government, which he helped establish.

The DJP yesterday considered building a memorial tower and a cemetery for the victims of the uprising, and paying the victims’ families compensation.

Mr Roh’s surprise decision to capitulate fully to the opposition’s demand for direct presidential elections implies that he still believes that he can suceed President Chun next February.

Mr Roh can capitalise on the popularity he has won and rely on the DJP’s substantial organisation and financial resources. The opposition Reunification Democratic Party does not even possess a headquarters.

Mr Roh can rely, on votes from the conservative rural population. They are likely to consider the opposition irresponsible troublemakers after watching the demonstrations on the television.

Mr Roh is expected to seek votes with measures such as lower interest on mortgages.

The election is still four or five months away, and most observers favour the opposition provided the two opposition leaders, Mr Kim Young Sam and Mr Kim Dae Jung, can settle their differences

Voters between the ages of 20 and 30 account for 58 per cent of the electorate and there is talk of lowering the voting age to 18. This generation includes the demonstrating students of the last eight years who would largely vote for the opposition.

At least 70 per cent of well educated urban people would probably vote against the government’s candidate, judging by the support given to recent demonstrations.

Many others might support the opposition’s candidate simply to see South Korea’s first purely civilian government.

The opposition’s lack of experience in office is not necessarily a handicap. President Chun had no experience when he seized power and managed by delegating responsibility to a team of talented technocrats.

Speculation was rife yesterday about whether Mr Kim Young Sam or Mr Kim Dae Jung would become the opposition’s candidate. Both agreed not to compete against each other but to cooperate before and after the election. Both stood for the presidency in 1980.

Mr Kim Dae Jung vowed last year that he would not stand in direct presidential elections. But some fear that he split the opposition’s vote by forming his own party.

He might be content with the post of party chairman of the opposition, especially if he were honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize. Japanese opposition politicians are said to have nominated him.

Other compromises are possible. All parties seemed to be reaching agreement yesterday that the President’s term in office should be reduced from seven years to four, but the number of terms allowed increased from one to two.

Labour or student unrest would undermine the opposition’s prospects. Radical students may continue to cause trouble and the suppressed trade unions are likely to start making demands, particularly in the low-paid textile and coalmining industries.

‘We must cross mountains and mountains before realising full democracy here’, Mr Kim Dae Jung said yesterday. He said the Government’s ‘luke-warm attitude’ over releasing political prisoners might later become an issue.

Document 403

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
June 30, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 9; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 934 words
HEADLINE: REFORM SELLS PAPERS; SEOUL: HOPE TINGED WITH SKEPTICISM
BYLINE: By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Roh Yoon Soo has sat in his tiny newsstand kiosk in the heart of downtown Seoul six days a week for the past 15 years, and never before has he sold as many newspapers as he did on Monday.

“I sold 10 times the papers today that I do in an ordinary day,” said the ruddy-faced Roh, 55, his wide grin showing a few silver teeth and a personal joy that went far beyond his profits.

“All of the Korean people are very happy today,” he said. “From today, I think, we will all begin to live well.”

Echoes of Hope

Almost from the moment that Roh Yoon Soo and hundreds of other corner newsstand owners like him began selling thousands of copies of “extras” reporting the ruling party leader’s announcement of major concessions to the opposition, the streets of this capital of 10 million people echoed with the kind of hope, even euphoria, voiced by the newsstand owner.

Along traffic-snarled downtown streets that just three days earlier had reeked of potent police tear gas used against anti-government demonstrators, smiles and soft laughter replaced tears and anger on the faces of thousands of commuters and shoppers as news of the government party’s program of concessions spread through Seoul.

It was not, however, the sort of unbridled euphoria that turned Manila into a city-wide carnival after the fall there last year of Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Protests Seen Ending

The surprise announcement by Chairman Roh Tae Woo of the ruling Democratic Justice Party was, to most of the Koreans interviewed on the street Monday, the most significant political event in recent history. And, reflecting the graceful reserve that marks so much of Korea’s 5,000-year-old culture as well as its complex system of politics, their obvious elation was tempered with skepticism.

Most of the Korean businessmen, vendors, students, priests and shopkeepers interviewed said they believed Chairman Roh’s proposed reform program, including direct popular election of a president, would have to be accepted by the increasingly isolated President Chun Doo Hwan. They also said that they believe the violent, student-led street demonstrations of the past three weeks will come to an end for now.

Yet they warned of worse consequences if the ruling party were to change its stand on Roh’s proposals.

‘Not Over Yet’

“This is not over yet,” said a 30-year-old businessman who identified himself only as Mr. Kim. “The final decision has not been made yet, so the students should watch and wait.

“We had a mistrust of the government and ruling party for a long time,” he added. “Because of the announcement today, they took away some of this mistrust. But if Chun will not accept this, we will have worse mistrust of them than ever. It will be worse than if Roh had never announced it in the first place.”

Kim Kyung Min, a college sophomore sitting with a friend near Myongdong Cathedral, the site of a six-day anti-government student sit-in earlier this month, agreed that Roh’s proposal for reform was long overdue.

“They should have made this announcement long ago, before students and police were hurt,” Kim said. “It is a good proposal, and obviously I hope it is accepted. But the demonstrations were never a worthless exercise.

“When this is accepted and carried out, then the demonstrations will stop for good -- only then.”

Cho Sung Shin, owner of a Korea Ginseng Tea franchise in an underground shopping mall in the district where the worst of the recent demonstrations took place, was more hopeful.

“This is all so very welcome,” the 30-year-old shop owner said. “These two things alone -- the direct presidential election and the abolition of press censorship -- were the main things that the people want.

“Of course, I do not understand the behind-the-scenes story, but I would like to believe this will all come to pass.”

Describing the proposal as “revolutionary,” Cho said that many businessmen are now looking ahead to the presidential election, which party Chairman Roh said should be held before next February, when Chun has pledged to step down after seven years of military-backed rule. Chun is not allowed a second term under the present Korean constitution.

“At this point, it is difficult to tell which party will come to power -- the opposition or the ruling party -- but I am a little afraid of revenge against Chun,” Cho said.

Cho cited the 1980 anti-government riots in the central city of Kwangju, in which the government acknowledged that the South Korean army killed about 200 people. The opposition says that as many as 2,000 were killed. Many Koreans blame Chun for the carnage.

Calling the Kwangju massacre “one of the most significant and tragic” events in Korean history, the tea-shop owner said he hopes the political opposition will not seek punishment of the regime over the incident.

“I think for the sake of national unity, we should only learn the facts,” he said. “That is enough. Just to know what really happened. Punishment, political revenge, this is too much right now.”

Priest Euphoric

Perhaps the greatest euphoria was shown by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Alexander Lee, on the steps of the recently besieged Myongdong Cathedral.

Interviewed after a charity concert in the cathedral for his leprosy clinic in the Korean town of Anyang, Alexander called Roh’s proposal “a miracle.”

“It is very difficult in Korean politics to make these strong decisions,” the priest said. “It was very good news. That is what we have been asking for all along.

“And it is just very, very fortunate that this came about before anything worse happened.”

GRAPHIC: Photo, Roh Yoon Soo in his Seoul newsstand: “All of the Korean people are very happy today.” HYUNGWON KANG

Document 404

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
June 28, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Opinion; Part 5; Page 1; Column 1; Opinion Desk
LENGTH: 1348 words
HEADLINE: KOREA; WHEN MONKS JOIN THE MOVEMENT
BYLINE: By William R. LaFleur, William R. LaFleur is a UCLA professor of East Asian languages and cultures.
BODY:

Songgwang-sa is a Buddhist monastery in a remote mountain area of southwestern Korea, nearly 300 miles from Seoul and 60 from Kwangju, the closest city. Songgwang-sa can be reached only by a circuitous road, still unpaved in places. When I arrived one day last month, I was surprised to see two khaki-clad soldiers standing just outside the entry gate, obviously watching and noting all comings and goings. I had visited a good number of temples in Asia but had never before seen one under military surveilance. Throughout their history Buddhist monasteries have rarely been places where governments -- even repressive ones -- felt a need for scrutiny.

Inside Songgwang-sa, however, was a partial explanation and a story little known outside Korea. Many of the monks I had hoped to meet had gone elsewhere that particular day -- for reasons that proved to be important. The older monks said that the others had gone as a group to Kwangju city to engage in peaceful protest against the policies of President Chun Doo Hwan. The origins of protest go back seven years to what is called the “Kwangju massacre” when, according to official accounts, Chun’s police killed more than 200 people (many Koreans insist that the real number is closer to 2,000). During May of this year students commemorated that massacre and, when pursued by the police this time, entered Wongak-sa, a small city temple. The police did not respect their sanctuary and fired 30 canisters of virulent tear gas within the temple itself. This so outraged the entire Buddhist community of Korea that Buddhist newspapers openly announced that a crisis-point had been reached and, in response, many of Songgwang-sa’s monks were off protesting in Kwangju .

A sustained Buddhist challenge to Chun is more than a numerical increase in the number of persons opposing his regime. The Buddhists undercut one of Chun’s favorite ploys -- his stated rationale for refusing democratic reforms on grounds that such reforms are foreign to the Korean tradition and experience.

Chun regularly fulminates not only against the hated, Marxist north but also against the West for its assumption that Western definitions of democratic ideals have universal applicability. Chun apparently would like history to prove both Marxism and Western-style democracy as culturally alien to the real needs and aspirations of the Korean people. A “Korean democracy” when defined by Chun is stunningly different from that of the West. When he named Roh Tae Woo as his hand-picked successor on June 10, Chun declared that with the transfer of power, “Korean democracy will already have achieved 99% of its goals.” This implies that democracy, Korean-style, is meant forever to be without free elections, a free press, the right to assembly, opposition parties free to oppose and religious institutions protected from attack by soldiers or police. Chun’s view of a “democracy” to fit Korean life and values is clearly a peculiar democracy indeed.

To define things his way, Chun had already made use of some Korean intellectuals. He celebrates any intelligent Korean who studies in Europe or America and then returns to insist that Korea is “different” and ought not follow the political ways of the West. He provides incentives for such thinkers to locate quotes from Western theorists who suggest that the West’s pattern is flawed, full of contradiction or already on the wane.

A favorite for such quotation use is Daniel Bell, a Harvard sociologist who writes of “the disjunction of realms” -- seemingly to suggest that capitalist economic development and political liberalization are quite divisible. At least the Korean intellectuals in Chun’s coterie so interpret Bell. It must be music to Chun’s ears to hear an argument that you can have prosperity without a franchise, have a boom for the people without votes in their hands. That kind of thinking, in Chun terms, is right on target, a concept that gives them license to define Korean “democracy” as one from which unneeded Western elements have been removed.

These intellectuals would also like Christianity to be much more Koreanized . Since approximately 25% of Koreans are Christian -- often passionately so -- it is hardly possible to banish that faith. But those who help Chun conceptualize his goals would like to see Christianity more shaped by indigenous Confucian principles of hierarchy and respect for authority -- and much less shaped by Western notions of the individual and justice. Through his wife, Chun makes it appear he is on good terms with the Christian churches, but his people hint that Christianity is still so new in the Land of the Morning Calm that it is infected by unnecessary “Western” elements. Especially when his major political opponents cluster at Seoul’s churches and cathedrals to organize demonstrations against him, Chun sees reasons enough to think of Christianity as still “un-Korean” or even “anti-Korean.”

And that is what makes the protests and posture of the Buddhists such an added aggravation. Chun must be unnerved by resistance from a good portion of Korea’s 25,000 Buddhist monks and nuns -- who, in turn, are linked to a Buddhist laity that may constitute close to 40% of the population.

Most significant, the Buddhists implicitly turn Chun’s favorite argument to sawdust. For there is no way that the Buddhists, in Korea for 16 centuries, can be dismissed as “Western” or too recent to understand and value native ways. The Buddhists, simply by participation in the call for democratic reforms, suggest that the right of self-determination is not just a noxious Western weed but something with universal appeal. They certainly have no links to Rome or Washington. By moving from their mountains to the city streets, the Buddhists have exposed the ideological nakedness of a president whose right to rule is questionable.

In Korea, a monk is like a student in interesting ways. Celibate, he has no responsibilities for a spouse or child to make him wary. Often youthful in spirit even when middle-aged, he may be more committed to universal ideals than to practical exigencies. When deeply provoked about justice, the monk can take to the streets and may even risk his life; Vietnam in the ‘60s offered numerous examples .

Korean academics, by contrast, are careful -- even when in full support of the protests. A kind of “white-collar violence” is directed against professors and other intellectuals in Korea. If they vocalize their concerns publicly they know the Chun-controlled Ministry of Education, a powerful holder of carrots and sticks, will quite brazenly deny them research monies for years, try to inhibit their promotions or deny them visa clearance to travel abroad. The presidents of the prestigious national universities are, ultimately, appointed by Chun himself. Scholars who have spent what the government regards as “too much time in the West” are, upon their return, pressured into seminars for re-Koreanization. At such sessions, I am told, there is much high-blown talk about Confucian traditions -- obedience, unstinting respect for those in authority, hard work for family and nation.

Because it fits the government so well, Confucianism in its most authoritarian version is proffered as what is best for academics who need to wash their brains of foreign toxins.

The Buddhist monks are, by the structure of their institution, the mode of their livelihood and their retreat into temples and mountain monasteries, considerably more free from government control. In Korean history monks did exhibit a good deal of respect -- downright abject at times -- for political authority. But now for seven years the Chun government has contemptuously harassed them and seems to have become unbearable in their eyes.

In their monasteries monks now listen to what pilgrims tell them over tea, become indignant when it is clear that the common people are abused and -- when they see the need -- even make decisions to go down to the cities to ask in very public ways for a very fundamental change in public life .

GRAPHIC: Drawing, Nancy Ohanian / For the Times

Document 405

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
June 27, 1987, Saturday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1579 words
HEADLINE: INTERNAL PRESSURES, U.S. ADVICE SEEN DETERRING CHUN FROM ARMY USE
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

President Chun Doo Hwan, who for much of his life was an army officer, seized power in a military takeover and would seem to have no compunction about using force. But in the present troubles he has yet to call out the army. What accounts for his patience so far?

Political analysts here, Korean and non-Korean, cite a number of factors. Among them:

-- The overwhelming desire of the South Korean people, and Chun himself, to see that the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul are carried out peacefully and on schedule.

-- Chun’s need to placate a growing body of moderates among his supporters, including those in the military.

-- A stronger national economy that has enabled South Korea, though still in debt, to worry less about the effect public unrest might have on its image abroad, particularly among international bankers.

-- The increasing sophistication of the South Korean people, which has made the average citizen less willing to be dictated to, as a long-term American resident put it, “by a bunch of men with guns.”

-- Growing concern within the military about public hostility, particularly in light of the suppression of the Kwangju uprising in 1980 at the cost of at least 194 lives.

Few Political Concessions

But despite all this, Chun has yet to make any political concessions of substance, and he has yet to commit himself to resolving the situation peacefully. The latest test of Chun’s patience occurred Friday when tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets of 32 cities, and Chun made no move to call out the troops.

At a meeting Wednesday with Kim Young Sam, president of the main opposition Reunification Democratic Party, Chun merely agreed to resume talks with the opposition on revising the constitution. All this did, in effect, was restore the deadlock that existed in April, when Chun ordered the talks suspended until after the Olympic Games.

Other promises Chun has made, for unspecified “broad democratic reform,” are still unfulfilled.

Kim said he warned Chun at their meeting that imposing martial law would mean “your end.” But Chun, according to a government statement, reiterated his determination to use whatever means are necessary to restore order.

Vows to Keep Order

“It is best, if at all possible, not to use emergency measures,” Chun was quoted as saying. “But I must exercise all the powers and responsibilities vested in me as president if national discipline becomes lax and social unrest is fomented.”

The United States has made it clear that it cannot countenance the use of military force or the imposition of martial law. If Chun has made any reply, it has not been made public. U.S. officials also have said that they see no likelihood of troops being used or of martial law being decreed, but they have taken care to add the words at this time.

In the view of foreign diplomats, South Korea has managed to get past three crisis points -- moments when martial law could conceivably have been proclaimed -- since the current unrest erupted June 10 when the ruling Democratic Justice Party nominated Roh Tae Woo, a longtime Chun associate, to succeed Chun as president when he steps down next February.

The first came that weekend, as student-led protest demonstrations spread, and the second came the following Friday, June 19, a day after tens of thousands of protesters poured into the downtown streets of this capital. The third was Friday’s widespread protest.

On the night of June 19, Prime Minister Lee Han Key issued a stern warning that if the disturbances were not stopped, “extraordinary measures” would be taken. Many had expected an announcement of emergency measures, not just a warning.

Army Use Still Possible

And in spite of Friday’s demonstrations having come and gone with no “emergency measures” undertaken, there is still concern here that Chun might ultimately turn to the army to ensure that his plan for the succession goes ahead unhindered.

On Wednesday, as Chun was meeting with Kim, the defense minister, Lee Ki Baek, was calling army, navy and air force commanders together for what Korean reporters were told was a review of “unusual” military activity in Communist North Korea. Skeptical reporters asked if this was not really a smoke screen for a discussion of the unrest in South Korea.

Brig. Gen. Lee Heung Sik, the defense ministry’s spokesman, said that as far as he knew the meeting of military commanders had been scheduled long ago.

The Olympic Games are becoming an increasingly important factor in South Korean politics. They appear to be holding Chun back and spurring on his critics.

According to South Korean sources and foreign diplomats, Chun has said privately that he is willing to sacrifice the games to maintain his style of domestic stability. Yet virtually all South Koreans, Chun included, are united in nationalistic anticipation of basking in the limelight that the games will provide for a country once known as the Hermit Kingdom.

“The government would do almost anything to avoid martial law,” a Western diplomat said.

Olympics and Democracy

To Koreans who also want domestic stability but with freedom of expression‎ and an opportunity to have a say in national policy, “the Olympics has become a rallying point for democratization,” another diplomat said.

“The Olympics,” he said, “are supposed to advertise Korea’s achievements to the world. Most people see no reason why they should not advertise its political as well as its economic accomplishments.”

Korean and foreign analysts alike see the current political problems as a struggle between conservatives in the government and liberals in the opposition for the support of the growing middle class.

Both camps are burdened by dependence on extremists at their outer fringes, the main difference being that on the conservative side, Chun, the leader, is usually ranked with the hard-line minority. But some diplomats believe it is a feeling that Chun is with them that keeps the military from considering a coup. This also makes it more difficult for moderate conservatives to have much of an impact.

On the liberal side, Kim Young Sam, a moderate by inclination, has to rely on the more militant Kim Dae Jung, who in 1971 was the last opposition candidate in a free and open presidential election here. Kim Young Sam must also rely on extremely militant radicals who are, in the words of a diplomat, “the opposition’s most vociferous, effective people.”

7 Years of Change

The timing of the current troubles may also be a factor favoring moderation. Important changes over the past seven years have made this a different society from what it was in 1980, when Chun seized power.

Chun himself was responsible for most of the instability that followed the assassination in 1979 of President Park Chung Hee. But there was already what amounted to a political void, and this had created an economic near-crisis. South Korea had no trade surplus then, and was borrowing foreign money to repay foreign loans.

Today, with a trade surplus growing so fast that the money supply is threatening to get out of hand, South Korea no longer needs new foreign loans. On the contrary, it is paying them back as fast as it can to curb incipient inflation.

Despite the political troubles, South Korea’s gross national product increased by 15.6% in the first three months of this year.

“As the people’s bellies get fuller, they have become more concerned with freedom,” said Horace Underwood, grandson of the missionary who founded Seoul’s Yonsei University. “They want to speak out. They want to read things.”

Under Chun, the number of students in South Korean colleges has doubled, and South Korea has become one of the world’s most literate nations.

Underwood, who has lived most of his life here, said that South Koreans “resent being treated as ignorant peasants by men with guns.” He said press controls so irritate Koreans that some have taken to saying, “Just because you read it in the newspaper doesn’t mean it’s a lie.”

Military Attitudes

Korean and foreign analysts agree that much of the military establishment recognizes the growing antipathy toward governments made up of former officers. And many officers feel that another military intervention, however successful in briefly patching together a picture of tranquility, would only exacerbate the anti-military feelings and undermine security.

As a result, these analysts say, the military is less politically trigger-happy than it has been in the past.

The trouble that followed Chun’s suspension of debate on constitutional reform, a move reportedly championed by the extremists in his camp, appears to have given the conservative moderates a louder voice, at least for the moment.

In late May, for example, Chun dismissed Chang Se Dong as head of the Agency for National Security Planning, the old South Korean CIA. Chang, a noted hard-liner, is believed to have been the driving force behind the decision to postpone reform.

Now, on the eve of summer vacation for a million students on South Korea’s 105 university campuses, Chun is believed to be calculating that when the students go home, his troubles will diminish. Student turmoil, which is almost a seasonal event in South Korea, has always disappeared with the coming of summer.

If it doesn’t this time -- and student leaders have promised that it will not -- Chun may yet choose to use force.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Protesters and police clash in Seoul. Despite such violence, the South Korean military is less politically trigger-happy these days. HYUNGWON KANG / Los Angeles Times

Document 406

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
June 26, 1987, Friday

SECTION: International; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 849 words
HEADLINE: S. Korean military: waiting in wings
BYLINE: Daniel Sneider, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul

HIGHLIGHT: Chun received military’s pledge to step in and keep peace if needed
BODY:

The most important actor in the South Korean political scene is also the least visible and the most unpredictable - the military.

As the country is pulled apart in a seesaw dynamic of political protest and governmental response, the Army stands ominously in the wings, ready to intervene.

Last week, as protests swept through South Korea, President Chun Doo Hwan, a former general, met with senior Army commanders. According to several well-informed Korean and Western sources, Mr. Chun received their pledge to impose emergency rule, deploying their forces to maintain order.

Chun, one source said, ‘‘was close to (declaring) martial law last week but backed down off it.’’

His decision to hold off was prompted, the sources say, by pressure from within South Korea and from the United States, its main ally. American officials in the past week have sought to issue unusually blunt warnings against martial law.

‘‘Any use of the armed forces in this situation is unwarranted,’’ US Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur said in Seoul yesterday.

Close observers of the South Korean military express uncertainty over what course the politicized officers may chose. The circumstances for overt military intervention, all agree, would be created by an escalation of the political turmoil that has swept the country in the past two weeks. The military would deploy troops, they say, if it felt the police and government could no longer control events on the street.

However there are also powerful factors acting against such intervention. Many Korean military officers wish to avoid a repeat of the Kwangju incident of May, 1980 when troops under General Chun crushed a student-led revolt in Kwangju, killing at least 200 persons.

‘‘There are indications that there are a lot of military officers that see the dangers of an emergency or garrison decree,’’ says a Western diplomat. They ‘‘feel the prestige of the Army suffered a lot because of the Kwangju incident and wouldn’t want that to happen again.’’

Nonethless, the Korean military has a powerful belief that such civilian unrest is a threat to national security. The threat from North Korea, the well-armed communist dictatorship, has been used many times to motivate the need for supressing dissent. On Wednesday, Defense Minister Lee Ki Baek, a close military ally of Chun, spoke about ‘‘unusual’’ troop movements in the north in a meeting with senior military commanders. According to South Korean press reports, Lee said the events are ‘‘taking place in North Korea in connection with the domestic (political) situation in the south.’’

The military’s fierce anticommunism, a hallmark since the Korean War, has tended to warp attitudes toward opposition parties. In the elite Korean Military Academy, cadets are reportedly taught that opposition leader Kim Dae Jung is a communist sympathizer.

For many military officers, says one longtime observer, the mere possibility of the opposition coming to power is feared. ‘‘They don’t trust’’ what the opposition ‘‘would do with national security,’’ he says.

The military officers also fear retribution for Kwangju. ‘‘For some it could mean going to jail. For others,’’ the source continues, ‘‘it could mean just being deprived of their perks and power ... .’’

While the country has lived under a nominally civilian government, the Army has been the actual source of power for the past 25 years. Civilian rule ended in 1961 when Gen. Park Chung Hee staged a coup. General Park set the style for Korea’s military leaders: He legitimized his rule, giving it a civilian, constitutional form, with political parties and limited elections. But the actual realm of electoral choice was kept limited.

Park was assassinated in October 1979. Shortly after that, Chun staged his own coup. Following in Park’s footsteps, he too became a civilian, becoming President under a new Constitution in September 1980. During this time, Korea’s generals, majors, and colonels have come to occupy positions of influence and power throughout society. Former generals constitute a quarter of the ruling party’s National Assembly members and retire to top posts in corporations and the bureaucracy.

A martial law declaration, observers say, could be accompanied by a coup against Chun. But, says one observer, conditions ‘‘would have to reach the stage where the core group in the Army ... (concluded) that Chun is more of a liability than an asset, that if they didn’t do something, something worse would happen.’’

Certain factors work against a coup. For one Chun is said to be a master at not only coup-making but coup prevention. More importantly, the observer believes, the military has become ‘‘more pragmatic. ... They’ve seen military government fail.’’ If they moved, ‘‘it would simply be to work themselves out of a disaster, out of being blamed for another mess.’’

Still, the present situation may present unavoidable choices for the military. The Chun regime is demonstrably unpopular. The unrest could make his continuation in office untenable without military intervention.

GRAPHIC: Picture, S. Korean Navy: some say the fierce anticommunism of armed forces has warped attitudes toward opposition, R. NORMAN MATHENY - STAFF/FILE

Document 407

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
June 25, 1987, Thursday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 1; Column 6; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1675 words
HEADLINE: KIM’S PARTY BACKS NEW PROTEST PLAN; KOREA OPPOSITION CALLS TALKS WITH CHUN A FAILURE
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr. and SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writers
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

The main South Korean opposition party, saying that its leader’s political talks with President Chun Doo Hwan earlier in the day were a failure, late Wednesday threw its weight behind a major street protest scheduled for Friday.

“The top-level meeting today broke down,” said Kim Tae Ryong, spokesman for the opposition Reunification Democratic Party. “We have no other choice but to stage struggle by peaceful and nonviolent means along with all democratic forces.”

The party leader, Kim Young Sam, who met with Chun for three hours at the Blue House, the presidential mansion, returned to his party headquarters obviously discouraged and angry.

Doubts Chun’s Grasp

“I told the president that he does not seem to know what is really going on (in South Korea),” Kim said at an afternoon press conference. In a statement issued later, he said, “We condemn the current regime’s scheme to prolong its power and declare strongly (our intention) to struggle . . . for democratization.”

In his talks with Chun, according to a government summary, Kim told the president: “I have had the National Coalition for a Democratic Constitution twice postpone their next rallies. But it has become difficult to postpone them any further.” The coalition is sponsoring Friday’s protest march.

The coalition, in which Kim’s party has joined an amalgam of religious and human rights groups, organized a June 10 rally to protest the police-torture death of a Seoul university student. The rally’s cancellation by the government coincided with the initial explosion of anti-government protests.

Will March on Chun Mansion

During Friday’s protest -- reportedly scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. (1 a.m. PDT) -- demonstrators will attempt to march on the presidential mansion, which is heavily guarded by armed troops.

“I think we’re in for trouble Friday,” a Western diplomat said this morning. “If you have a cadre of 20,000 people already, you have the potential for many more.” He referred to the estimated 20,000 students who rallied at Seoul’s Yonsei University on Tuesday and vowed to take part in the march whatever the outcome of the Chun-Kim talks.

One of Kim’s demands of the president was to lift the house arrest of his opposition colleague, Kim Dae Jung, and restore his civil rights. At midnight Wednesday, the police cordon around Kim Dae Jung’s house was removed.

Surrounded by several hundred supporters and reporters who joined him outside the house, Kim described his 78 days of restriction, during which even his children could not visit him. He said jokingly that during the period of detention, he and his wife “had a very long and happy honeymoon.”

In a more somber mood this morning, Kim predicted that Friday’s demonstration will be a “turning point” for the opposition, demonstrating its power to the government. He called for a peaceful protest but said he anticipated a violent police reaction. The primary focus of the talks between Chun, a former general, and Kim Young Sam, a lifelong politician, was Chun’s decision last April 13 to abandon negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties on revising the authoritarian constitution that the president imposed after he took power in a coup seven years ago.

On June 10, the ruling Democratic Justice Party nominated Roh Tae Woo, a longtime Chun ally and the president’s handpicked choice, to run for the presidency in indirect elections late this year under the Chun constitution. That same day, students and other anti-government forces began a series of demonstrations against Chun’s rule. Violent protests have swept the country for two weeks, resulting in thousands of injuries on both sides.

In the last few days, Chun has come under heavy pressure from members of his party -- as well as U.S. officials -- to rescind his April decision to postpone talks on constitutional revision until after Seoul’s 1988 Summer Olympics, by which time Roh would be expected to occupy the Blue House under constitutional provisions and election laws that favor the ruling party.

Offered to Resume Talks

Government radio and the unofficial government summary of the Chun-Kim talks said that Chun, in the face of mounting protests, offered to resume the constitutional talks immediately.

“Please resume the constitutional debate,” the summary quoted him as saying. “I have empowered Roh (the ruling party’s chairman as well as its presidential nominee) with the responsibility and power to deal with political affairs. . . . I hope that you will meet with Chairman Roh and have open discussions with him.”

Kim was quoted as responding: “You are responsible for state affairs. I think that the discussions should be held with the responsible person.”

Asked later at his press conference whether he and the president had agreed to resume the talks, Kim merely shook his head and said he insisted on dealing directly with Chun.

According to the government summary, Kim told the president: “I believe all political leaders are seriously concerned about the current situation. And yet, I understand, Mr. President, you are the one who is most painstakingly working on it. . . . Some doubt that the seriousness of the situation has been accurately reported to you.”

Chun Smoking More

Chun replied: “I have been receiving detailed reports from various sources. In fact, I have been smoking heavily because of the pressure of reading so many reports.”

The opposition leader presented a short list of demands in his meeting with Chun:

-- He asked that the April decision be rescinded and that the people be asked in a referendum to settle the constitutional question of which form of government South Korea should have. The opposition favors a presidential system, one with direct elections and shorn of the centralized powers of the Chun constitution. The ruling party has called for a parliamentary system, headed by a prime minister elected by Parliament.

Chun agreed to a resumption of the talks -- in fact urged it upon Kim. He called for negotiations within the National Assembly, where the earlier round of talks never got beyond an initial organizational meeting before breaking down because of intransigence on both sides. The president defended the present constitution, noting its limit of a one-term presidency and saying past changes in Seoul have often been “heavy handed (and have) . . . caused a vicious political cycle.”

He added, interestingly: “I have been telling my colleagues in the Democratic Justice Party to work with a preparedness to become the opposition.” He did not directly respond to Kim’s call for a referendum but called for a consensus decision in the National Assembly, where his party holds a nearly two-thirds majority.

-- Kim asked for the release of all demonstrators arrested since the anti-government protests began June 10 except those involving cases of extreme violence. Chun replied: “I will consider that positively.”

-- Kim also asked that the civil rights of Kim Dae Jung be restored. Convicted of sedition for an alleged role in organizing the Kwangju uprising of 1980, Kim is barred from participating in politics. Although he lifted Kim’s house-arrest order (this one, in effect since April 8, was the latest of many), the president said he could not arbitrarily restore the opposition leader’s civil rights. “The attitude of the person concerned and general circumstances must be considered,” he said.

Was Candidate in 1971

Kim Dae Jung was the last opposition candidate to vie for the presidency in a free election against one of the country’s long string of military-dominated governments. He lost to the late President Park Chung Hee in 1971.

Chun also met Wednesday with the leaders of two minor opposition parties, ostensibly to seek a consensus on ways to resolve the political crisis.

The Western diplomat suggested three possible causes for the opposition’s refusal to resume constitutional talks at the National Assembly level:

-- A traditional caution of the opposition when dealing with government here. “Kim might have feared he would be seen as a patsy,” the diplomat said.

-- The opposition’s most visible and vocal constituency is the student movement, which had already committed itself to take to the streets on Friday, and Kim was “pulled along by his constituents.”

-- In analyzing what he had achieved in the talks, Kim may have decided it wasn’t enough. “Perhaps Kim thinks he did not get concessions, that what he got were only promises,” the diplomat surmised. He did point out, however, that the Chun-Kim meeting, according to the government scenario, was only a consultation and that Chun has yet to deliver a promised package of proposed reforms.

Gaston J. Sigur, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, who is here as President Reagan’s trouble-shooter on a three-day mission, held a series of talks with principal figures in the crisis, including Chun, Roh and Kim Dae Jung -- the last of whom Sigur met Wednesday night, before Kim’s house arrest was lifted. Kim told reporters later that the meeting was “very productive” and declared that “American policy is headed in the right direction” in South Korea.

U.S. Pressuring Chun

The U.S. government has been publicly pressuring Chun on reforms in recent weeks. In Washington on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley insisted that the United States had “long called for negotiations in a spirit of compromise,” and she warned against any intervention by the South Korean military in the turmoil.

But confrontation, not compromise, is the style of politics in South Korea. The Kim-Chun meeting, their first, came off only after a series of grudgingly accepted demands by both sides.

Kim, for instance, refused to meet Chun in the company of the two minor opposition party leaders, reportedly the government plan for a while. (The presidential press secretary, serving as a stenographer, was the only other person present during the talks, according to press reports.)

GRAPHIC: Photo, Supporters kneel before Kim Dae Jung, at left in dark suit, in Seoul after the opposition leader’s release from house arrest. Associated Press

Document 408

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
June 22, 1987
LENGTH: 535 words
HEADLINE: US tells Seoul not to impose martial law
BYLINE: From MARK TRAM and JASPER BECKER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON and SEOUL
BODY:

The US State Department’s top official for Asian affairs, Dr Gaston Sigur, yesterday warned the Seoul Government against declaring martial law in South Korea. The warning came as the ruling party in Seoul hammered out a package of concessions which it hoped would mollify the opposition.

Dr Sigur spoke from Sydney, on his way to Seoul. He said: ‘We do not want to see the military involved. Martial law is not the proper approach. ‘

In public statements the US administration has urged the Seoul Government to reopen a dialogue with the opposition on moving the country towards democracy - a message Dr Sigur underlined again yesterday.

The ruling Democratic Justice Party (DJP) chairman, Mr Roh Tae Woo, is due today to try to persuade President Chun Doo Hwan to agree to the package of concessions at a meeting at the presidential Blue House.

Mr Roh is reportedly proposing to resume the postponed constitutional revision talks - the main opposition demand.

Mr Roh, who is also the presidential candidate, may be ready to agree that the next government should simply be a caretaker administration and offer leniency for detainees as well as lifting the house arrest of the leading opposition leader, Mr Kim Dae Jung. Mr Kim Joung Sam, leader of the chief opposition Reunification Democratic Party (RDP) declined to see Mr Roh. He is holding out for a meeting with President Chun whom he claims holds the real power to rescind the April 13 decision postponing constitutional talks until after the 1988 Olympic Games.

Mr Roh held meetings with minor opposition party leaders over the weekend and the Secretary General’s floor leaders of the DJP and RDP held a four-way meeting. Such efforts are likely to defuse the situation.

The opposition ultimately wants to bring down the Government and strengthened by continuing student demonstrations, is likely to push for further concessions.

President Chun fears that if the opposition gains power after he steps down next February it will exact retribution for the Kwangju uprising in 1980, in which at least 180

Riot police in Pusan, South Korea’s second city, facing hijacked buses used as battering rams, arrested at least 800 protesters last night to beat back a crowd of more than 4,000 trying to demonstrate in the city centre.

Late last night an estimated 2,000 demonstrators fought pitched battles with riot police in Kwangju, in the south-east.

In the northern outskirts of Pusan, scene of bloody clashes in recent days, a crowd of at least 4,000 tried to march on the city centre, only to be blocked by police barricades.

Eyewitnesses saw demonstrators hijack at least four buses, eject the passengers and drive the vehicles at speed towards police lines - a tactic used in Taejon last Friday when a riot policeman was knocked down and killed

The bystanders said police averted a similar incident this time with barrages of teargas which caused the drivers to lose control.

Police seemed to have adopted a new, tougher policy towards protesters. Pusan police headquarters said that at least 800 people were detained during the day but the local state radio station put the figure at more than 1,000.

Document 409

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
June 20, 1987, Saturday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 1; Page 4, Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 717 words
HEADLINE: South Koreans’ Anger at Rulers Is Also Turned Against U.S.
BYLINE: By SUSAN CHIRA, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea, June 19
BODY:

The anti-Government demonstrations over the last week have also been an occasion for many Koreans to vent their anger at the United States.

The most bitter expressions of anti-Americanism come from students, who contend that American support of the Government for military reasons blocks democratic progress in South Korea. But many ordinary Koreans who otherwise declare themselves friendly to Americans also lament what they see as the United States Government’s failure to exert more pressure for change.

Demonstrators have burned an effigy of President Reagan, and several students chanted anti-American slogans along with anti-Government ones. Many American reporters have been met with chants of ‘‘Yankee go home!’’ from students and some bystanders, although others have appeared to welcome reporters.

In Pusan, the second-largest city, a recent exhibition of photographs of the Kwangju uprising in 1980 drew huge crowds, stirring up enough feeling that the police fired tear gas into the Roman Catholic center’s administrative building, site of the exhibit, to disperse crowds.

Many South Koreans blame the United States for the South Korean army’s suppression of the uprising in that southwestern city, charging United States support freed Korean special forces to suppress it.

U.S. Consulate Protected

Demonstrators in Pusan in the last few days have repeatedly tried to approach the American Consulate, which has been ringed by riot policemen.

Nonetheless, anti-American feeling does not seem nearly as intense as last spring, when some Americans received telephone threats and when student protesters spent as much time denouncing ‘‘American imperialism’’ as they did the Government of President Chun Doo Hwan. What seems more widespread now is a sense of disappointment, not rage.

‘‘Many people are watching the U.S. now,’’ a businessman here said the other day. ‘‘We used to have good feelings about them, but now it is quite different because the U.S. authorities support a dictator. Everyone thinks the U.S. stands for peace and liberty, but they just watch and keep quiet in their own interests.’’

His comments were echoed by several Koreans who approached American reporters to chide them for their country’s stance.

South Korean newspapers have given prominence to comments over the last few days by State Department officials and Secretary of State George P. Shultz describing the demonstrations as an internal matter for South Koreans to resolve. Mr. Shultz was also quoted as saying that Mr. Chun alone was not to blame for his decision to end debate on constitutional revision, and that the opposition parties had been reluctant to compromise.

‘‘I’m really upset about what I read,’’ said a young company employee who sought out a reporter the other day. ‘‘Can’t Americans help us become a democratic country out of the goodness of their hearts? We used to feel friendly toward the U.S., but these days we feel hostile.’’

Ambassador Meets With Chun

State Department officials maintain that the United States has expressed its dismay over human-rights violations in South Korea and its hopes for a transition toward democracy. Such statements, they say, often go unreported in the South Korean press, which usually reprints only the comments that could be construed as favorable to the Government.

Today, the United States Ambassador, James R. Lilley, met with President Chun for an hour and a half and delivered a letter from President Reagan urging restraint in dealing with the demonstrations.

Other diplomats say many South Koreans overestimate the power of the United States Government. They point out that Mr. Chun, then a general, did not heed American calls in 1980 for the army to relinquish control of the Government after the Kwangju uprising.

Moreover, they say, the citizens’ longing for decisive American action may reflect a traditional vision among many older South Koreans of the United States as a benevolent protector - an attitude that implies a sense of subservience that the United States is not eager to encourage.

‘‘There are expectations in the public mind,’’ a Western diplomat said. ‘‘But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to keep expectations low. It’s good not to be seen as a puppet master, because we are not.’’

Document 410

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
June 18, 1987, Thursday

SECTION: International; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 1098 words
HEADLINE: S. Korea’s two sides claim same goal
BYLINE: Takashi Oka, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul

HIGHLIGHT: But Chun and opponents define ‘democracy’ differently
BODY:

The most encouraging thing about South Korea’s crisis is that both the ruling party and the opposition say they want dialogue.

The two sides profess similar goals, but remain far apart on details and are deeply suspicious of each other’s real intentions.

Demonstrations have spread from Seoul across the nation, and include elements of the politically conservative middle class. But it would be misleading to portray masses of ordinary citizens as ready to take to the streets, or to liken what is going on among 42 million South Koreans to the wave of ‘‘people power’’ that swept Corazon Aquino into the Philippine presidency.

People power may come to full flower in this prosperous but politically discontented country some day. When it does, it is bound to take its own uniquely Korean form.

Both government and opposition are groping their way forward: the goal is democracy, but each group has its own scenario, and so far what passes for dialogue consists mostly of shouting these contrasting scenarios at each other.

‘‘Down with dictatorship!’’ cried a passenger in a taxi passing by Myongdong Roman Catholic Cathedral. Bystanders applauded, and a bored-looking policeman waved the taxi on. By now this shouting has become almost routine, at least here in Seoul.

The government itself would agree it is pledged to move toward greater democracy. Police these days use tear gas much more sparingly than they did at the start of the current series of downtown demonstrations on June 10.

Does this indicate that the government is moving from an almost visceral reaction against the slightest manifestation of discontent or disapproval to one of relative tolerance, so long as demonstrations remain reasonably nonviolent?

So far there has been no conclusive evidence of this. But there are indications that since Roh Tae Woo was chosen as the presidential candidate of the ruling party June 10, he has been trying to establish his own public image as a person respectful of President Chun Doo Hwan, but with his own ideas and approaches to problems.

At the same time, the conflict between government and opposition basically is over power and who shall exercise it. Is power to remain indefinitely in the hands of the authoritarian administration established by Mr. Chun, a kind of extension of 18 years of stern rule by Park Chung Hee (assassinated in l979)?

Or do the democratic principles that lead to new faces in office mean that the opposition is to be given a real chance of unseating the government? That, to the opposition, is what the words ‘‘peaceful transfer of power’’ should mean.

But Chun himself seems to have a much narrower interpretation of that phrase, which he has used almost from the day he took office seven years ago. (He was de facto ruler for a year before assuming the presidency.) He seems to mean merely handing over his office to a candidate from his own, ruling, Democratic Justice Party - Mr. Roh.

The ruling party’s difficult (some would say impossible) task is to persuade opposition forces that it intends to hold genuinely free and fair elections even if the vote results in its own defeat. The opposition forces comprise not only the main opposition party, the Reunification Democratic Party, but religious leaders, lawyers, professors, students, and other groups.

Those who take the Realpolitik view of South Korea say that it simply is not realistic to expect that Army generals used to wielding power since the early 1960’s would suddenly be willing to concentrate exclusively on the nation’s defense.

In the Philippines, Mrs. Aquino came to power not only because of people power but because at a crucial moment the Army leadership, represented by the defense minister and the chief of staff, came over to her side. In South Korea, there is no sign that any general is willing to play a similar role on behalf of the opposition.

That said, the Chun government has been bedeviled from its inception by the question of legitimacy - by the refusal of large blocks of people to accept that it is entitled to rule. A major reason for this rejection is the Kwangju incident of May 1980, in which hundreds - some accounts say over two thousand - were killed during a student-led insurrection suppressed by troops.

Bitter feelings over Kwangju remain strong among many ordinary citizens and have colored attitudes toward the United States even of older people who have reason to remember the US’s support for South Korea in the Korean War. (The US is accused of authorizing the movement of Korean troops used to suppress the uprising.)

Others would argue that Realpolitik is not all - that many, perhaps most, South Koreans, feel the Korean War was fought for freedom and democracy, not merely for national survival. To them, a South Korea without these goals somehow lacks its very raison d’etre.

The noticeable contrast between the spectacular economic progress achieved by South Korea and the rigid authoritarianism of the nation’s politics seems to be becoming increasingly less tolerable. Ten years ago, most citizens were too busy trying to improve their daily lives to have much energy left over for politics.

The demand for democracy, as embodied in direct presidential elections, is not likely to go away. It will continue to be the key item in the opposition forces agenda for dialogue.

University exams are not far off, and after them, the long summer vacation. The next serious wave of protests is most likely to come in the fall. Until then, the gradual tapering off of demonstrations will not mean that the agenda has been buried or forgotten.

(Wire services report that authorities closed at least 28 universities prematurely and began summer vacations yesterday to prevent further demonstrations, after students refused to take end-of-semester examinations.

In Singapore yesterday, US Secretary of State George Shultz urged government opponents in South Korea to halt demonstrations and said the US was involved in the ‘‘extremely tricky’’ process of encouraging democracy there.

‘‘Obviously, we believe the best thing that could happen would be for the demonstrations, with their potential for violence, to stop and the dialogue resume,’’ he said. ‘‘We believe that discussion between the various contending parties about the structure of the election and so on should be started up and pursued.’’

Meanwhile, in London, the International Olympic Committee said yesterday that recent political demonstrations in South Korea have made ‘‘absolutely no change’’ in its plans to hold the 1988 Games in Seoul.)

GRAPHIC: Picture, Riot police in Daejon City, South Korea: they’ve been facing daily demonstrations since June 10, JOHN NORDELL/FILE

Document 411

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
June 18, 1987, Thursday

SECTION: SECTION I; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 1768 words
HEADLINE: Economic Miracle, Political Debacle; South Korea
BYLINE: Maggie Ford, Seoul
BODY:

Something changed in South Korea last week. After seven years of hoping that democratic change might come through the institutional channels set up by the military government, the people’s patience ran out.

For the first time since President Chun Doo Hwan came to power, the Government decided to make a conciliatory gesture by withdrawing its riot police from central Seoul. Thousands of students were joined for the first time in years by ordinary Koreans, including thousands of office workers, in a stunning show of opposition to continuing military-backed rule.

The hundreds of thousands of educated South Koreans - since 1966, more than 750,000 students have graduated from South Korean universities - have shown that they want more than just economic development.

Under the governments of both President Chun Doo Hwan and President Park Chung Hee, this new, youthful middle class has superintended South Korea’s miracle of growth. As bureaucrats and company managers in the professions and the universities, they have turned the country into one of the economic success stories of the decade.

But political development has failed to keep pace. Now, the middle classes are speaking out.

The latest outburst of frustration was sparked off by the President himself. On April 13 he announced in a nationwide broadcast that talks between the Government and the opposition to revise the constitution and hold genuinely democratic elections would be called off. He said the decision was forced by deep divisions in the opposition, which threatened South Korean’s political stablility.

The Government moved at the same time to prevent the main opposition leaders, Mr Kim Dae Jung and Mr Kim Young Sam, from engaging in politics. The two Kims had shocked the Government by forming a new and united opposition party under their leadership. Known as the Party for Reunification and Democracy, its drew a majority of MPs from the fragmented New Korea Democratic Party.

Mr Kim Dae Jung has been placed under long-term house arrest, denied visitors and his telephone and mail are monitored. Mr Kim Young Sam has encountered serious difficulties in setting up the new party, with many of its supporters under arrest and its meetings disrupted. Under the country’s national security laws, even the party platform could be declared illegal.

Disillusionment with the Government did not happen overnight. It was a gradual process that followed the long-term breakdown of dialogue between the Government and the opposition.

In dribs and drabs, statements in favour of democracy began to come out. First, scholars and academics, leaders of the educated community, risked promotion prospects by signing public calls for democratic change.

They were followed by authors and journalists, film makers and artists, lawyers, pharmacists and dentists. Women, denied the professional job opportunities of men, but just as well educated, also made a stand.

Meanwhile, on the campuses, the students continued their show of protest in favour of democracy. Backed by the Catholic church, which has continually argued for peaceful change, the pro-democratic forces showed their hand for the first time publicly last week.

With anger fanned by revelations of the death of a student tortured by police, combined with a fraud scandal involving several senior businessmen, the educated middle class came out of its offices and cheered on the demonstrators. The students’ tactics in provoking the use of tear gas by police at a recent soccer match sounded a warning heard loud and clear in the offices of those organising next year’s Olympic Games.

The made their views known on the day that President Chun’s chosen successor, Mr Roh Tae Woo, was being elected by the ruling party as its presidential candidate. The election, to be held later this year under the old constitution, does not allow the opposition to win - the electoral college which chooses the president is stacked against them.

The political atmosphere in Seoul since then has been charged with a mixture of both excitement and anxiety. “We are enduring,” said one graduate businesswoman. “We all want to demonstrate, but we know we must not provoke them too far.”

The educated class well remembers the events following the assassination of President Park Chung Hee in 1979. A small door leading to democracy opened then. But when the people rushed through, they found it closed behind them by President Chun, who took power in a military coup two months later. They are determined not to let that happen again.

The Government’s decision to withdraw riot police from around Seoul’s main cathederal on Monday and allow occupying students to leave without being arrested demonstrated the wisdom of their decision to exercise self-restraint.

The success presents the established political parties with the challenge of regaining the initiative from a movement which has acted without leaders. The people’s message is clear: they want change with stability. They are prepared for it to be gradual, but it must start now.

Mr Roh has offered some oportunites for dialogue with the opposition; but so far they have not seen the overtures as sincere. Any plans he may have for liberalisation - more progress on freeing the press, or the offer of some kind of fair elections - will be boosted by the strength of the people’s attitude.

The demonstrations will also provide encouragement fot he soft liners in the ruling party, who suffered a severe setback in the aftermath of the President’s April speech.

For the established opposition, the picture is less clear, not least because Mr Kim Dae Jung, its most charismatic leader, is permanently confined at home and has not been allowed to appear in public for seven years.

Members of the middle class are keen for information about Mr Kim, who has been branded as an authoritarian radical by the ruling camp. They are not sure whether or not he is in tune with their ideas, nor indeed even how he sees the political and economic development of the country.

In an interview after President Chun’s speech, Mr Kim said the president had made a “grave mistake.” Predicting correctly that the people would severely criticise this undemocratic attitude, he said he believed that they would succeed in achieving their goal of democratisation and reconciliation. Economic stablilty would lead to freedom, he added.

As to the people’s feelings about him, he said they recognised his loyalty to and faith in democracy. “As long as the suppression goes on, the people will not abandon the leader with the best credentials,” he said.

Mr Kim’s banning from political activity dates from his conviction on a charge of sedition in the early days of the Chun Government. He was accused of fomenting the civilian uprising in the provincial city of Kwangju while he was in jail. Hundreds died in that uprising and the fear remains in middle class circles that the desire for revenge among Mr Kim’s supporters will be too strong for him to resist - thus making him an unacceptable leader to the military.

His co-leader of the Reunification Democratic Party, Mr Kim Young Sam has also suffered continuous harassment over the years for his political activities. His more conservative instincts appeal to the middle classes, but concern remains that he does not have the strength of conviction and moral authority needed in any future democratic state.

Both men will be watched carefully to see whether they can lead a united people’s oposition movement. Both have strong links with the Christian church, which played a prominent role in the last week’s events.

Christianity in South Korea is a growing faith, now followed by about 25 per cent of the population. A minority are Catholics, but nuns and priests have been active in helping underprivileged groups. Cardinal Stephen Kim, the primate, has been exceptionally careful in his public statements, but last week he came out firmly in favour of democracy. The church’s negotiations with the police were crucial to the peaceful departure of the students to their campus on Monday.

Buddhists, normally uninvolved in the political process but representing a majority of South Korean believers, have staged demonstrations in the weeks following the May commemoration of the 1980s Kwangju uprising. Police in Seoul fired tear gas into the city temple while the Buddhists were holding a memorial service for the uprising’s victims.

Unlike most demonstrations of feeling against an unpopular government, workers have not been at the forefront of this protest. This is partly because traditional trade unions are banned in South Korea - the few strikes which have occurred in recent years have been firmly put down by company management helped by the police.

Workers, who are provided with substantial company benefits on the Japanese model, frequently live in compounds attached to large industrial sites situated well away from the main urban areas. They are believed to be keen not to jeopardise the continued improvement in their standard of living by joining in politicial activity

The middle class is now returing to its basic task: further improving South Korea’s economic performance (growth was up to 15.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year), working out ways to deal with inflation and other problems arising from the country’s first trade surplus (Dollars 4.8 bn last year) and studying whether changes ought to be made to the country’s export-led development strategy.

Some of the more influential members will continue their campaign to allow foreign investors into the country’s stock market, while at the same time protecting it from what they see as the possiblity of exploitation.

Exploitation is a word that particularly comes to South Korean minds when they think about the US. Mr Roh, in his speech last week, referred to the “self seeking rivalry of the superpowers” over Korea’s future and the “vicious trade war.”

While many older South Koreans remain deeply grateful to the US for its help during the Korean war, and appreciative of the 40,000 troops stationed in the country, the middle class continue to wonder about Washington’s real motives. For many, US protestations - about non-interference in Seoul’s internal affairs and about promoting South Korean democracy - ring hollow. Democracy, they believe, is far less important to the US than the role the country plays in US regional policy and the convinction runs deep that the US wishes to maintain the military-run Government in power.

GRAPHIC: Picture, no caption

Document 412

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
June 17, 1987, Wednesday

SECTION: International; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 809 words
HEADLINE: On the streets of Seoul
BYLINE: Takashi Oka, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul

HIGHLIGHT: Stirrings within the South Korean middle class could widen scope of antigovernment protests
BODY:

‘‘I am more afraid of the ignorance and indifference of the people than I am of the tear gas of the police!’’

The olive-shirted young worker, his voice hoarse, was appealing to spectators to join his little band in shouting, ‘‘Down with dictatorship! Rescind the Constitution!’’

The lunch-hour crowd’s response was applause, but no slogan-shouting.

The scene, which took place at the foot of the slope leading up to Myongdong Roman Catholic Cathedral in the center of Seoul’s shopping district, symbolized the present stage of South Korea’s opposition movement.

On the one hand, President Chun Doo Hwan’s government is concerned that the scope of protests has gone beyond students to include workers and even salaried office people.

On the other hand, this is not yet a situation remotely near the massive ‘‘people power’’ movement that swept Ferdinand Marcos out of office in the Philippines.

(The Associated Press reported that clashes between demonstrators and police continued in cities across South Korea yesterday. Meanwhile in Washington, a State Department official said South Korea can achieve political stability only through a broad-based political dialogue and a ‘‘willingness of all sides to compromise.’’)

Back in Seoul, knots of people well dressed and old enough to be considered office workers rather than students gathered here and there in the cathedral compound in a Korean version of Britain’s Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. But this was more serious.

The groups were small, and there was real discussion back and forth between speaker and listeners.

‘‘We don’t want this government stepping down or full democracy right away,’’ said an older man in one such group. ‘‘What’s more important is to show the government what people are thinking and what they really want. Ignorance is our biggest enemy. As long as the government thinks the people can be ignored, it will continue its manipulations. We have to show it we cannot be ignored.’’

The worker who had led the slogan-shouting earlier said he was 24, a construction worker, and a Protestant since the age of four.

‘‘I love my country, and that’s why I am in this struggle. It’s a small sacrifice compared to what happened to Jesus Christ when he spoke up against the corruption of his period.’’ He said he was politicized when, as a high school student in a provincial city, he heard of the so-called Kwangju massacre of 1980. (Government troops crushed a student-led rebellion, causing many fatalities.) Since he is in the construction business, he said, he can move around the country from job to job, taking time off to take part ‘‘wherever the democratic front needs me.’’

More bombastic was a yuppie-ish young man in light suit and tie who said he was a well-paid junior executive in a foreign-owned insurance company. He did not participate in the marching group led by the construction worker, but was active in the discussion groups inside the cathedral compound.

‘‘If you don’t see me tomorrow,’’ he said, ‘‘it is because I will have been taken away by the Korean CIA.’’ Someone asked, ‘‘These are office hours and you aren’t at (work). Aren’t you afraid you’ll be fired?’’

‘‘Well,’’ he replied, ‘‘I’m 30 and I’ve reached the stage where I have my own secretary. So if I have to stay here much longer I’ll ask her to bring me my papers so I can work on them here.’’

‘‘But what if you are fired?’’

‘‘I’ll just go back to my native province and farm.’’

‘‘Wouldn’t your wife be mad at you if she knew you were here?’’

‘‘On the contrary, she’d throw me out of the house if I hadn’t come today. You see, there was a meeting like this here yesterday. I spoke out and became something of a leader. Now I’m committed and can’t very well back out.’’

A man in his 60s, who said he owned his own small business, agreed that merchants had considered student protests a nuisance, a hindrance to their daily sales. ‘‘But this regime had taken power by force and now - (referring to the decision to choose the next president by indirect election) - it is doing what it wants without listening to the people. The whole situation is outrageous. So even if sales are damaged, we feel we should support the students.’’

Brave words, these. But the crowd of spectators gathered at the foot of the cathedral slope (as distinct from those who feel committed enough actually to join the discussion groups going on under the church spire) were still far fewer than the crowds packing the shopping streets just a few hundred yards beyond. Still, something new is stirring within South Korea’s middle class. Of that there is no doubt.

Will what one speaker called ‘‘this small flame’’ become a fire steady and strong enough to cause real political change? The committed few are calling to the sympathetic but uncommitted many, and as yet the response is uncertain.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Student demonstrators at Sogang University in Seoul fleeing police tear gas Tuesday, AP

Document 413

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
June 16, 1987, Tuesday

SECTION: International; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 845 words
HEADLINE: Why one S. Korean student protests
BYLINE: Takashi Oka, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul

HIGHLIGHT: Activist unconvinced by government’s promise of democracy
BODY:

Kim faces a dilemma. His family wants him to go back to the university from which he was expelled a little over a year ago. ‘‘But I have different plans,’’ says the gangling youth.

If Kim had not been jailed for antigovernment activities, he would by now have graduated from one of Seoul’s most prestigious universities.

Today, after having spent a year in prison, he still has a chance of being readmitted by his former school. But Kim says he would rather find a job at a small factory. ‘‘I want to share the sufferings of the workers and help to liberate them,’’ he says.

Is this impossibly romantic? Idealistic? Perhaps. But this is the direction in which some student activists are moving, and it causes the government great concern.

Kim, interviewed recently in Seoul, did not want to be photographed or have his real name appear in print. He is out of jail, but remains under police surveillance.

He is very happy about the strength and scope of student protests on and since June 10, when much of downtown Seoul became a swirling battlefield between students hurling stones (and some gas-filled bottles) and helmeted police firing tear gas canisters. He is happy at the support shown to students by many ordinary citizens.

(Reports gathered by the Associated Press indicated that some 64,000 students at 45 universities nationwide were involved in antigovernment protests yesterday. Clashes again broke out around Seoul’s Myongdong Cathedral, the site of a five-day student occupation that ended Monday, as police tear gassed and charged several thousand demonstrators.)

‘‘As of now, students are the only organized social force opposing dictatorship,’’ Kim says. ‘‘But in time, these forces will grow, as they did in the Philippines.’’

He does not think much of opposition politicians. ‘‘The Reunification Democratic Party (the main opposition party) could never have organized the June 10 rallies by itself. It’s only when the RDP joined with the students and the National Coalitition for a Democratic Constitution (an umbrella organization that coordinated the rallies) that the opposition movement showed such strength.’’

Kim says he is a nationalist, and therefore, by definition, not only antiregime but also anti-American. He has a litany of complaints and accusations against the United States, very similar to those raised by European or Latin American leftists: The US is in Korea not to protect the Koreans but because of its own superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union. Korean government leaders, he says, are only proxies of American imperialists.

But the specific thing that made him anti-American, Kim says, was the Kwangju incident of May 1980, when Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, now President, and his co-officers suppressed a student-led revolt at the cost of heavy casualities not only among protesting youth but among innocent citizens. The government says less than 200 were killed. Unofficial estimates go as high as 2,000.

Many Koreans - not just students - believe the US could have prevented the massacre by refusing to authorize the movement of South Korean troops into the area. The original duty of these troops was to protect the demilitarized zone against North Korean invasion. The US, some say, could and should have refused to allow their use for other purposes. Radicals, including students, believe that the US went further - that it ordered or actively helped to perpetrate the killing.

Kim’s situation is not unique. Over the years, some of the best students at the best universities have been expelled for participating in antigovernment activities. Few have been allowed back, and even if they are, no major company will accept them after graduation. Some have managed to get into small companies or factories, either as white- or blue-collar workers. Others go to work for religious organizations. Wherever they go, they promote radicalization, because they see no future for themselves in the regimented society in which they live.

‘‘It’s a Catch-22 situation,’’ says a Roman Catholic priest who has spent many years working with factory workers. ‘‘Management hates workers who try to organize labor unions, and tries whenever possible to get rid of them as troublemakers,’’ the priest says. ‘‘Expelled workers tend to make common cause with expelled students. They have nowhere to go, so they just make more trouble.’’

Is there any way the government can regain the allegiance of students like Kim? Today, dialogue seems out of the question, since there seems to be no way Kim and his friends can be persuaded that Mr. Chun and his nominated successor, Roh Tae Woo, really do intend to move from authoritarianism to democracy.

On the contrary, Kim thinks that ‘‘people power’’ will ultimately overwhelm police and military forces. ‘‘They are Koreans, too,’’ He says, claiming that there have been secret meetings between students and cadets at the police and military academies. ‘‘The majority of soldiers want only to defend the nation. It is Chun and his followers that are the rebellious minority.’’

GRAPHIC: Picture, Seoul: protesters near cathedral Monday, AP

Document 414

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
June 14, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Opinion; Part 5; Page 1; Column 1; Opinion Desk
LENGTH: 1216 words
HEADLINE: SOUTH KOREA WRITHES IN REPRESSION
BYLINE: By Edward W. Poitras, Edward W. Poitras, professor of historical theology at the Methodist Theological Seminary in Seoul, has lived and worked in Korea since 1953.
DATELINE: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
BODY:

As South Korea lurches from one tense political confrontation to the next, it appears ever more likely that far from improving, the domestic situation will either continue to explode in violence or further deteriorate into even worse repression. The government has said that it will deal severely with all who “sabotage” preparations for next February’s “peaceful transition of power.” After increased levels of both protest and police response in the most recent clashes Wednesday, the situation has become far more strained.

In recent months, hopes for real political change, raised by the success of the opposition in 1985 National Assembly elections, have been dashed repeatedly by an intransigent authoritarian regime. Censorship, police power and political manipulation have been used in the regime’s attempt to shut down opposition efforts at focusing attention on the need for a change of rule. On April 13, President Chun Doo Hwan announced the arbitrary termination of debate on constitutional revision, a move that generated widespread public resentment. The government’s position has become even more insecure after recent revelations of financial scandal and the exposure of police brutality in the torture death of a university student. The economic miracle in Korea is also a potential threat to the government, for the slightest economic downturn would almost certainly result in widespread domestic disaffection.

In this context many have been calling for dialogue and compromise, but all attempts have failed and confrontation continues. To understand why compromise is not forthcoming, one must examine the underlying structure of this political standoff. The military has controlled politics in South Korea since Park Chong Hee led a coup in 1961. The Chun government came to power in a far more violent military takeover, and all attempts to cover up the bloody legacy of the Kwangju massacre in 1980 have failed to resolve the problem of the regime’s legitimacy. This military-backed government has repeatedly shown no intention of surrendering power. In addition to the natural reluctance to preside over its own electoral defeat, the regime obviously also fears the retaliation which might follow.

Appeals for moderation, dialogue and compromise by the government deliberately avoid the fundamental issue of facing an open democratic election in which it could be voted out. Recent public-opinion polls have consistently found a substantial majority in favor of a system allowing for just such free elections. The opposition, for its part, does not intend to be drawn into a “dialogue” that evades this central issue, hence will not discuss concessions that would only allow government to wear a conciliatory disguise.

The closest parallel to the Korean political confrontation is the apartheid struggle in South Africa, where those who seek the one meaningful change -- dismantling of the unjust system itself -- are unwilling to cooperate in minor improvements, however desirable, that would only further entrench a minority regime. Therefore attempts by the United States and others to “moderate” either situation, however well-motivated, are likely to be subverted by both regimes for their own consolidation and political ends. By repeatedly calling for dialogue and compromise in Korea, an apparently reasonable position, the United States has put itself at the service of a dictatorial regime intending to extend its power through a “peaceful transition” that merely replaces one ex-general with another carbon copy. The heir apparent, Roh Tae Woo, has actively participated in the regime’s repugnant destruction of human rights and the consequent undermining of true security. Roh was a key figure in the bloody Putsch of December, 1979, and the spring massacre of 1980. He participated in the strengthening of Draconian government controls, permitting preventive detention, the arbitrary extension of prison sentences and the application of police power to deter free assembly.

Recent attempts to portray Roh as a “moderate” are unconvincing in view of his record. He would take the reins of a system with control structures intact, not subject to National Assembly review. The United States now officially acknowledges that a democratic system based on genuine popular support in South Korea would be the best assurance of strength in the contest with the communist north. Recent U.S. appeals for improvements in human rights and democracy, however, are widely interpreted as attempts to protect America’s image in case the Chun government, like the Philippines government of Ferdinand E. Marcos, invites its own collapse.

The opposition in South Korea, led by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, is a moderate, even conservative political force. Government attempts to paint them as anti-military or pro-communist contradict everything the mainline opposition has ever said. Opposition leaders repeatedly affirm support for U.S. military presence and belief in an American-style capitalistic system. But they also challenge the negative anti-communist ideology of the military-oriented government and suggest that reduction of north-south tensions and eventual reunification should be primary goals instead. Now one opposition assemblyman is in prison and the new Reunification Democratic Party faces mounting harassment. Yet reunification has been official government policy for about 15 years. The opposition makes its proposals in part to stave off more radical student calls for reunification preceding democratization -- a stance suggesting accommodation with communism that the democratic opposition cannot accept.

With one of the world’s highest literacy rates, a demonstrable desire for free elections and a widening experience on the world stage, South Korea deserves a much better system. It is disheartening to see how the government has exacerbated Korea’s regional rivalries and historical tensions to divide the opposition.

Opposition leaders, for example, have struggled to overcome traditional Korean prejudice against people from the two Cholla provinces, Kim Dae Jung’s home area, so that unity can be maintained with Kim Young Sam and his group, from the Kyongsang area on the other side of the peninsula. But the ruling group has exploited every opportunity to magnify such differences. Instead of seeking ways to unite the people and overcome internal divisions, the regime thereby invited allies like the United States to write off Korea as “not ready for democracy.” Now many Koreans perceive the Americans as supporting a regime feared, despised and even ridiculed by its own subjects.

The situation in Korea does not parallel the Philippines of Marcos’ last days; South Korea’s geography, culture, religion, social structure and style of corruption are quite different from what produced sudden change in Manila in 1986. Those differences are small comfort for the clique in power, however, or for the United States as it tries to pacify a worsening conflict.

The United States could make a mistake by using Korea’s 1988 Olympic Games and the desire for social stability at all costs as reasons for bolstering a military regime that polarizes the nation. Harsh, police-state rule has been in place far too long.

Document 415

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
June 4, 1987, Thursday

SECTION: International; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 623 words
HEADLINE: Chun protege faces test of legitimacy in bid to head S. Korea
BYLINE: Takashi Oka, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul
BODY:

The next President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) will almost certainly be Roh Tae Woo, chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party.

Whether Mr. Roh, a retired four-star general, will achieve legitimacy in the eyes of an unmistakeable majority of his countrymen is another matter. A high-ranking Western source who has been involved with Korean politics for many years says that formidable obstacles stand in the way.

The Democratic Justice Party (DJP) is scheduled to name Roh its candidate for the presidency at a national convention here June 10. But Roh has already cleared the essential first hurdle: on Tuesday he received dour President Chun Doo Hwan’s personal accolade.

‘‘Let me recommend ... chairman Roh who is knowedgeable in security affairs and has a wide experience in administrative affairs,’’ a news agency quoted the President as saying.

Under the indirect election system prescribed by the present Constitution, Roh is considered a shoo-in to succeed Mr. Chun come Feb. 24, l988.

But the controversy about his government’s legitimacy, that has dogged Chun’s seven years in power, will continue into the Roh era and diminish the effectiveness of his government unless obstacles cited by the Western source are somehow surmounted. These obstacles are: first, that Roh comes from the same military background as Chun; second, that an indirect election under the present Constitution will not give Roh the popular mandate he needs; third, that the opposition continues to demand constitutional revision for direct 1987 elections.

In short, the opposition rejects both President Chun’s April 13 statement deferring constitutional reform until after the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and Roh’s personal promise that once the Olympics are over, constitutional reform, in consultation with opposition parties, will be at the top of his agenda.

The Reunification Democratic Party (RDP), the largest opposition party, has already castigated the Roh nomination as ‘‘the first act of a political scenario aimed at eternalizing the current dictatorial regime.’’

Other opposition groups, made up of students, religious leaders, and intellectuals, oppose elections under the present Constitution. They plan national protests to coincide with the DJP convention June 10. And, as the government will no doubt deploy massive police power to prevent such movements, tensions are bound to rise.

Opposition activists recall that Roh and Chun were classmates at the Korean Military Academy, and co-leaders of the l979 coup that brought Chun to power. They note that Roh was one of the inner circle of decisionmakers involved in the so-called Kwangju massacre of May 1980, when hundreds - some say thousands - were killed. In short, they say, Roh can no more be separated from Chun than a man can from his shadow.

Opinion is divided among Korea-watchers as to whether positive factors involved in Roh’s nomination outweigh the negative. Those who incline to accentuate the positive say that Roh shows much greater flexibility than Chun and has gotten along with opposition legislators as well as with DJP stalwarts. His attitude towards Kim Dae Jung, chief opposition leader now under a form of house arrest, is scarcely less compromising than that of Chun himself. But he has shown himself open to the idea of a meeting with RDP President Kim Young Sam.

Meanwhile, there is so little trust between the DJP and the RDP and other opposition groups that very few people among the opposition accept Roh’s conciliatory remarks at face value. Somehow Roh must convince the opposition of his bona fides, of his genuine desire to move from ‘‘we-know-best’’ authoritarianism toward participatory, pluralistic democracy.

Document 416

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
May 19, 1987, Tuesday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 422 words
HEADLINE: South Korea Police Crack Down Hard On Kwangju Protest
BYLINE: Maggie Ford, Kwangju, South Korea
BODY:

South Korean security police cracked down harshly yesterday on the people of Kwangju as they tried to commemorate those killed in the 1980 uprising against a military government led by President Chun Doo Hwan. About 250 had been detained by the evening.

Almost 10,000 riot and combat police along with plain clothes security men patrolled the streets of the south western city indiscriminately firing tear gas at bystanders, religious groups and members of the victims’ families attempting to show their support for democratic change in the country. Only two gatherings were allowed.

In a graveside ceremony outside the city about 350 family members of the dead burnt an effigy of the president and called for his resignation and for democratic change. Earlier 10 angry bereaved mothers set a government car on fire after security police had confiscated another effigy. Riot police subsequently threw tear gas cannisters into the mourners’ bus as it returned from the cemetery. Three people were injured.

At the city’s main cathedral about 3,000 people attended a memorial service for the victims. About 1,000 mourners were allowed to hold a peaceful demonstration outside the church for about an hour before police moved in with a barrage of tear gas.

Thousands of students at Kwangju’s universities were prevented from marching to the cemetery by riot police firing tear gas. More than 20,000 students demonstrated nationwide in favour of democracy.

At the cemetary, community officials read condolence messages from the country’s two leading opposition politicians, Mr Kim Dae Jung and Mr Kim Young Sam. Mr Kim Dae Jung, who was born in Kwangju area, was sentenced to death for his alleged seditious role in the May 1980 uprising. He was released under US pressure, travelled there for medical treatment, and returned to South Korea in
February 1985.

Southern National Assembly members from the Reunification Democratic Party formed early last month by the two Kims attended yesterday’s emotional ceremony at which the formal launching of a coalition of church leaders, students, lawyers, academics and dissidents working towards democracy was announced.

The group called for a return to talks on constitutional revisions suspended by President Chun early last month until after the 1988 Seoul Olpymic Games. The bereaved families called on the UN governments to stop supporting military dictatorship. Washington’s role in the Kwangju uprising has provoked marked anti-American sentiment in the city.

Document 417

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
May 19, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 635 words
HEADLINE: ECONOMY UNSCATHED IN S. KOREA PROTESTS
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Students clashed with police Monday here and in Kwangju, the provincial capital where seven years ago almost 200 people were killed demonstrating against a power grab by President Chun Doo Hwan. Monday’s demonstrators at Kwangju burned Chun in effigy.

Coincidentally, the Bank of Korea announced Monday that South Korea’s economic growth in the first three months of the year was an impressive 15.6%.

The economic announcement, coupled with signs of business as usual -- bustling shoppers, the customary traffic jams -- indicated that political unrest has failed to cause any significant disruption, even on the anniversary of what has come to be known as the Kwangju incident.

On May 18, 1980, amid widespread unrest after a military coup that gave Chun, then an army general, effective control of the country, students and dissidents rose up at Kwangju, 170 miles south of here, and seized the city. At Chun’s order, paratroopers stormed the city and put down the uprising.

Among those taking part in Monday’s demonstration at Kwangju were relatives of people killed in 1980, along with members of the National Assembly representing the new, opposition Reunification Democratic Party.

President Chun was denounced. People shouted “Bring back our sons!” and “Bring Chun Doo Hwan here!” They stoned a city government car, then set fire to it. An effigy of Chun was stabbed and burned.

Kim Young Sam, president of the Reunification Democratic Party, sent a message threatening “all-out struggle . . . if our demand for democratization is blocked.”

Hundreds of riot police turned back people trying to get into the cemetery where the demonstration took place. Only relatives of the dead and selected opposition representatives were permitted to enter.

At Kwangju’s Chonnam University, thousands of policemen forcefully prevented about 2,000 students from breaking out into the streets.

Gas Used Against Students

In Seoul, policemen closed all the gates leading into Dongguk University and fired canisters of eye-stinging pepper gas at students trying to break out.

Sporadic scuffles also broke out at Korea University and Seoul National University. At Yonsei University, about 1,500 students met to commemorate the Kwangju incident and denounce Chun.

Protests have been gaining momentum since April 13, when Chun halted all debate on constitutional revision until after the 1988 Olympic Games, which are scheduled to take place here in October of next year. Earlier he had promised to allow the legislature to revise the constitution before his successor is chosen next February.

All across the country, the entire force of 120,000 policemen is reported to be on full alert, with orders to suppress any sign of protest. Yet dissident activity is expected to continue at least until the universities close next month for the summer vacation.

Meanwhile, Chun’s Democratic Justice Party issued a new threat to the opposition. It said that if the Reunification Democratic Party refuses to revise its platform, which pledges to reunify South Korea with Communist North Korea, it will be “subjected to historical punishment.”

Kim Jung Nam, a spokesman for the ruling party, said, “Our party wishes to make it clear that the Reunification Democratic Party will be held responsible for all consequences that may result from its refusal to revise its platform.”

Earlier, ruling party officials had threatened to take steps to abolish the new party, formed May 1 by Kim Young Sam and former opposition presidential candidate Kim Dae Jung. The party includes 66 of the 274 members of the National Assembly.

The Bank of Korea’s announcement said that economic growth between January and March was the highest for any three-month period since the first quarter of 1979, when growth was 16.1%.

Document 418

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
May 18, 1987, Monday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 505 words
HEADLINE: STUDENTS, POLICE CLASH AT SEOUL CATHEDRAL
BYLINE: By AP
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Anti-government students hurled bricks, rocks and sticks and charged with flagpoles at riot police Sunday in a battle that began in front of Seoul’s Roman Catholic cathedral when students were blocked from marching into the streets.

About 500 students, waving flags and banners and shouting “Down with the military dictatorship!” tried to march out of Myongdong Cathedral in downtown Seoul after a memorial service Sunday evening.

Students earlier paraded at the service with coffins, symbolizing the nearly 200 people killed in the Kwangju uprising of May, 1980.

South Korea has been hit by a weeklong wave of protests as opposition groups mark the Kwangju uprising and demand the removal of President Chun Doo Hwan’s government.

Hundreds of helmeted riot police in green combat uniforms and carrying shields and batons poured out of back streets Sunday and sealed off all roads leading away from the cathedral, Catholic church headquarters in South Korea.

Students Charge Police

Students charged the lines of police at the cathedral gate, hitting out with flagpoles, kicking and punching, as police were forced back. Onlookers cheered and clapped as police gave way.

Police regrouped, and police commanders warned the students over loudspeakers to disperse as they tried once more to march. Some students began hurling rocks at the police.

Catholic priests rushed in between the two sides, yelling at the students to stop the rock-throwing. They persuaded most of the protesters to go back into the cathedral grounds, where the students began an all-night protest vigil.

Frightened pedestrians caught in the middle ran for safety, weeping and gagging as tear gas wafted across streets. Hundreds of people watched from behind police lines.

Violence in Kwangju

In Kwangju, about 170 miles south of Seoul, students Sunday twice attacked police stations, throwing rocks and firebombs and injuring three officers, the Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

About 100 students were in the second attack but were quickly dispersed by police firing tear gas, it said.

Last week, students battled police on campuses across the country, and more protests are expected.

Police are on maximum alert, and reinforcements have arrived. The Korea Times said Sunday that police were mounting special guard details on police stations and arsenals lest dissidents try to seize weapons and explosives.

Opposition groups insist that Chun must withdraw his April 13 decision to suspend debate on political reforms, including the opposition’s demands for a direct popular vote in presidential elections at the end of the year instead of the present electoral college system. Chun says suspending debate on constitutional change is necessary to preserve national stability and protect the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Chun, whose seven-year term ends next February, says he will not run again for president, but the opposition says the present electoral system will work to keep Chun’s party and his choice for president in power.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Student protesters in Seoul lash out at riot policemen who blocked path of march Sunday. Associated Press

Document 419

Copyright 1987 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
May 18, 1987, Monday, HOME DELIVERY TWO

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 474 words
HEADLINE: Students, police wage pitched battles in Seoul
BYLINE: AP
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

SEOUL (AP) - Anti-government students hurled bricks, rocks and sticks and charged with flagpoles at South Korean riot police yesterday in a battle in front of Seoul’s Catholic cathedral.

About 500 students, waving flags and banners and shouting “Down with the military dictatorship!” tried to march out of Myongdong Roman Catholic Cathedral in downtown Seoul yesterday evening after a memorial service.

Hundreds of helmeted riot police in green combat uniforms and carrying shields and batons poured out of back streets and sealed off all roads leading away from the cathedral, church headquarters in South Korea.

Students charged the lines of police at the cathedral gate, hitting out with flagpoles, kicking and punching, as police were forced back.

Onlookers cheered and clapped as police gave way.

Police regrouped and warned the students over loadspeakers to disperse as they tried once more to march out. Students began hurling rocks and bricks at police.

Police moved back several more times, then flung tear gas grenades into the middle of the student column. Plainclothes officers charged into the protest.

Crying and choking from the tear gas, students ran for cover inside the cathedral grounds as police seized at least 25 people.

Students earlier paraded at the memorial service with coffins, symbolizing the approximately 194 people killed in the May, 1980, Kwangju uprising.

South Korea has been hit by a week-long wave of protests as opposition groups mark the uprising and demand the removal of President Chun Doo Hwan’s government.

During yesterday’s clash, Catholic priests rushed between the two sides, yelling at the students to stop throwing rocks.

They persuaded most of the protesters to go back into the cathedral grounds, where the students began an all-night protest vigil.

Frightened pedestrians caught in the middle ran for safety, weeping and gagging as tear gas wafted across streets.

In Kwangju, about 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of Seoul, students twice attacked police stations, throwing rocks and firebombs and injuring three officers, the Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

About 100 students were in the second attack, but were quickly dispersed by police firing tear gas, it said.

Last week, students battled police on campuses across the country, and more protests are expected.

Opposition groups insist that Chun must withdraw his April 13 decision to suspend debate on political reforms, including demands for a direct vote in presidential elections at the end of the year.

Chun says the action is necessary to preserve national stability and protect the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Chun says he will not run again for president, but the opposition says the present electoral system will work to keep Chun’s party and his choice for president in power.

Document 420

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
May 18, 1987, Monday, Capital Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A22; AROUND THE WORLD
LENGTH: 107 words
HEADLINE: Clash in Seoul
BYLINE: From News Services and Staff Reports
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

Antigovernment students hurled bricks, rocks and sticks and charged at riot police with flagpoles in a battle that began in front of Seoul’s Catholic cathedral when students were blocked from marching into the streets.

About 500 students, waving flags and banners and shouting “Down with the military dictatorship!” tried to march out of Myongdong Roman Catholic Cathedral in downtown Seoul on after a service marking the May 1980 Kwangju uprising.

In Kwangju, about 200 miles south of Seoul, students twice attacked police stations, throwing rocks and firebombs and injuring three officers, the Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

Document 421

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
May 18, 1987, Monday, Final Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A25
HEADLINE: KOREAN CONFRONTATION

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, Students lash out at police blocking them from marching from a cathedral in Seoul after a service marking the 1980 Kwangju uprising. AP

Document 422

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
May 15, 1987, Friday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 841 words
HEADLINE: S Koreans Have Democracy In Mind
BYLINE: Maggie Ford

HIGHLIGHT: Maggie Ford reports on the anniversary of the Kwangju uprising
BODY:

Moon Jae Hak, a student at Kwangju commercial high school, was only five days short of his 16th birthday when he died seven years ago. Along with 100 others killed by troops sent to crush a people’s rebellion, his body lies in the municipal cemetery.

On Monday, the anniversary of the first day of the uprising, the cemetery will again be the focus of the South Korean people’s resentment at the lack of democratic change in the country. A memorial mass for the victims and a march to the cemetery are planned and a substantial turnout of protestors is expected.

This weekend’s anniversary comes at a time of growing political tension in the country. Last month President Chun Doo Hwan announced that because of divisions within the opposition parties and stalled negotiations, he was calling off plans to revise the constitution.

In the interests of stability, a new president would be elected under the old constitution, under which the opposition cannot gain, and democratic reform would be put off until after the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988.

The decision has deepened the unpopularity of the Chun Government and led to increasing protests by opposition leaders, students, academics, religious leaders and other dissident groups. Despite the Government’s obvious success in improving the economy and raising living standards, South Koreans appear united in their dislike of the country’s leadership. The rebellion at Kwangju is at the root of their discontent.

The events of May 1980 came in the aftermath of the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, Mr Chun’s predecessor, who had himself taken power in a military coup 19 years earlier.

The assassination followed a series of student demonstrations over the withdrawal of political rights from Mr Kim Young Sam, one of South Korea’s two main political leaders, who was then head of the main opposition party. An interim period followed in which, although the country was under martial law, there were hopes that democractic change could be accomplished. Mr Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s other leading opposition politician, was released from house arrest and led a strong campaign for swift democratic change.

He did not, however, reckon on the speed with which Mr Chun, then a three star general in charge of the investigation of President Park’s killing, would move. Along with a number of colleagues, including Mr Roh Tae Woo, presently chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party and the likely next president, Mr Chun staged what was effectively a coup in December 1979.

Mr Kim is the favourite son of the people of Cholla province, one of the poorest areas in South Korea. His home town of Mokpo, where he was brought up by his fisherman father in impoverished circumstances, is only about 40 miles from Kwangju, the provincial capital.

The people of Kwangju, outraged at seeing their hero back in jail, rose up against the martial law administrators. Led by students, the people took over the town, holding it for nine days until they were forced to surrender by the army. The death toll was officially just under 200, but church and opposition estimates put it much higher.

Anger and resentment at the military’s harsh treatment persists to this day. But the strong feelings of the people of Cholla province against the Government are not based only on the violence of 1980. This agricultural province has also been deprived of most of the benefits of South Korea’s economic boom.

The visitor travelling from Pusan to Kwangju cannot help but notice the difference. Apart from new buildings for universities and colleges, few new apartments or industrial estates are evident. Roads are poorly maintained, although noticeably less packed with traffic than elsewhere. Per capita income in the Cholla area is almost half that of the capital and only 73 per cent of the average nationwide. Were it not for the clear disparity of living, the lack of development would be a blessing in disguise. For the city retains the pleasant air of a country university town, with winding streets, attractive cafes and an intellectual atmosphere.

This weekend that atmosphere is likely to be polluted by tear gas as the authorities seek to prevent violent incidents when Kwangju, and the nation, remembers its dead.

Neither Mr Kim Dae Jung, again under continuous house arrest, nor Mr Kim Young Sam, again threatened with government action against his political activities, can be there. For them, both the parallels and the differences between 1980 and 1987 are striking and promising. For a start, they are working together, not in competition. Second, they do not believe there is an ambitious clique in the military hoping to take power.

Democracy will be on everyone’s mind this weekend at what is sure to be an even more emotional anniversary than usual. As one Kwangju churchman said: “President Chun says he will step down at the end of his term next February. This is our last chance to show him how we feel about the way he took power.”

GRAPHIC: Map, no caption

Document 423

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
May 15, 1987, Friday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 2; Column 2; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 83 words
HEADLINE: THE WORLD
BODY:

Nearly 10,000 South Korean students staged anti-government protests on campuses across the country, and at least 50 people were reported injured in battles with police. Police said nearly 3,000 arrests were made. Protests have mounted since President Chun Doo Hwan announced April 13 that he was suspending debate on constitutional change. Some protesters were preparing for Monday’s anniversary of the start of the 1980 Kwangju uprising, in which troops killed as many as 200 people.

Document 424

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
May 11, 1987
LENGTH: 1575 words
HEADLINE: Special Report (Part One of Two): The spectre of slaughter - Kwangju
BYLINE: By SIMON WINCHESTER
BODY:

Seven years on, and Korea’s great south-western city of Kwangju still sounds like a city at war. The thud and rumble of heavy artillery echoes down from the distant hills, shaking the cherry blossoms and the magnolia trees; jet fighters scream across the skies; there are, even by Korean standards, an unusual number of soldiers on the streets, and ordinary policemen in the nearby villages patrol with machine guns at the ready. The authorities say it is all just coincidence - the nearby army base is conducting gunnery practice, the air force is carrying out essential and long-scheduled aerial manoeuvres, the police are on routine patrols. But the inhabitants of Kwangju, who have seen this all before, smell a rat.

The reason for the unease, both of the military authorities and the local people, is the mournful anniversary that is shortly to be commemorated here. Seven years ago this month an event - known variously, depending on one’s political persuasion, as the Kwangju Massacre, the Kwangju Insurrection, the Uprising, or the mere Incident - set this otherwise indistinguished industrial city firmly alongside Amritsar, Sharpeville and Londonderry, as a place where violent tragedy made political history.

Kwangju, in May 1980, was the setting for a week of killing and mayhem on a horrendous scale. The truth behind the events of that week may never be fully known; but the myth, or the legend, of Kwangju is now indisputably central to the development of the presently debilitated state of South Korea’s politics.

The city death statistics for May 1980 show that 2,600 people died - 2,300 more than the monthly average. Disinterested observers - Irish Catholic priests, hospital workers, Buddhist monks - who watched the paratroops storm into the city to quell a student rising (the incident that sparked the city-wide ‘insurrection’ and triggered the anarchic orgy of the next seven days) believe the figures. ‘I have no doubt more than 2,000 were killed that week,’ said an Irish Columban father from County Kerry, a man who has spent the best part of the last three decades in and around Kwangju.

‘I saw bodies piled in the local taekwondo hall. I saw young boys being kicked savagely about the head. I saw youths being pulled off buses, tied up with barbed wire and hauled off screaming into alleyways. I saw women with their breasts cut off. I heard of disembowellings. I saw a youngster whose head had been smashed into what looked exactly like porridge. ‘

‘The week was the most depressing, most horrifying, of my life. It is quite ludicrous of the government to insist that only 200 died. Two thousand is far more likely. ‘

The official figure, bad enough by global standards, is just 191. I went to the Kwangju cemetery one afternoon to count the graves. The local sexton, clearly alarmed at the presence of an inquisitive outsider, telephoned for help. Within minutes two men arrived in a jeep, took my name and passport number, then pointed to a hillside lined with identical gravestones. Each grave held the body of a youth or girl. The Chinese characters on the granite headstones showed that most had been born in the late Fifties, and all had died in May, 1980. Even these, the official dead, presented a shameful sight - twice as many official victims as at Sharpeville, ten times as many as at Bloody Sunday.

The numbers, one might say, do not really matter. The arguments over precisely how many died that terrible week - the hunt for the hidden burial sites, the search for ‘lost’ hospital records, the accusations and counter-accusations about official statistics - continue even now. Yet they do so not so much to indicate the scale of the atrocities, but rather to demonstrate what critics claim is the unremitting mendacity, as well as the systematic cruelty, of the present government.

President Chun Doo-Hwan was, after all, the military commander specifically assigned to ‘clean up’ Kwangju. The manner in which he did so - using an entire brigade of paratroopers, and Special Forces dispatched, with full American knowledge, from beside the Demilitarized Zone on the North Korean border - led ultimately to his own seizure of political power four months after the massacre. Yet Kwangju has never been admitted by this government as anything more than ‘a tragedy. ‘ Sorrow is expressed in a perfunctory manner, and President Chun and his brother officers display an almost Zen detachment towards the event, in spite of its extraordinarily potent political legacy.

A report written last year by the American organisation Asia Watch asked, pointedly, ‘whether the man ultimately responsible not only for that tragedy, but for the prevention of the democratic transition 1979-80, can be trusted when he says he will lead the nation to democracy in 1983.’

The suspicion was remarkable for its prescience. Three weeks ago, in a nationwide television address, President Chun announced that the proposed constitutional changes, which might have led the country back towards some form of civilian democracy, had been abolished. Thanks to Chun’s decision the next President of South Korea - who will be well established in power by the time foreigners flock into Seoul for the Olympic Games - will be with very little doubt, an army general.

That means, in the view of diplomats, religious leaders, students, monitoring organisations like Asia Watch and Amnesty International and, of course, in the view of Korea’s enfeebled and divided political opposition, that the repression, killing and torturing, so firmly established in the Korean political process since Kwangju, will continue.

Protest at Chun’s announcement was inevitable, though it came more quickly, and was much more widespread and violent than had been expected. The universities in Seoul, in Pusan, in Kwangju (and there are scores of universities in Korea, catering for the education-hungry products of the great post-war baby boom) erupted. The authorities, who administer perhaps the most ruthlessly effective riot-control machine in the world, tried to put the risings down with tear-gas, baton charges and hundreds of arrests. But all the signs suggest that disruption will continue and evolve into something more subtle and insidious. In Kwangju itself, where it all began, a group of 17 Catholic priests are now on hunger strike, to show their disapproval at Chun’s decision. As many as 60 across the country are staging similar protests, attempting to display to their parishioners the gravity, as they see it, of the deteriorating political and humanitarian situation. The religious protest is likely to have very considerable significance - the growth of Christianity in South Korea in the last 20 years has been a phenomenon without parallel. As many as nine million Koreans, nearly a quarter of the population, are now regular and devout churchgoers. While the Catholic Church represents a small fraction of Korea’s Christians, it appears now, as a matter of ecclesiastical policy, to have taken the high moral ground away from the political opposition in staging protests towards the Chun regime.

Stephen Cardinal Kim, the senior Catholic prelate in Seoul, is outraged by what he sees as the ruthlessness of the Korean generals. He is a quieter and less ebullient figure than his opposite number in Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, a man who can fairly be said to have been one of the principals in the toppling of the Marcos regime. Yet his influence is growing steadily, and he and a corps d’elite of younger Catholic priests appear to have decided to awaken the world to what they see as the urgent need for peaceful change in Korea, and the grave dangers of denying the popular will.

The Chun government is not without influence, however. Late last month the country’s Catholic bishops voted by 11 to six to stifle a fast-growing Catholic farmers’ Organisation - a radical opposition group that was exasperating President Chun and his colleagues in Seoul’s Blue House. Cardinal Kim was dismayed.

‘It has to be said that much of the Catholic hierarchy is in the government’s pocket,’ said a senior foreign Catholic missionary. ‘Stephen Kim is brave enough to stand up to pressure. A lot of priests in cities like Kwangju, where they take great pride in their opposition to the regime, are brave enough to say what they think. But this is a country where opposition is very ruthlessly put down. You take an awful risk trying to stand up to the government. The generals here don’t play games. ‘

They certainly will not be playing games when they come to deal with the people of Kwangju, who are now preparing for their annual memorial to the uncounted dead of the 1980 tragedy. The local Catholic leaders - not merely those on hunger strike - believe themselves to be under close surveillance; student leaders have gone underground fearing pre-emptive arrest, foreign missionaries, whose general status in Korea is now particularly delicate, are bracing themselves for trouble.

Kwangju is a nervous city just now - readying itself, like the whole country, for an outburst that seems likely only to get more serious as the clock ticks towards the Olympic Games, 18 months away. Korea has had a chronic political problem ever since Kwangju; now, in the wake of President Chun’s formal denial of the coming of democracy, it appears to have moved from the chronic to the acute.

Document 425

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
April 25, 1987
LENGTH: 790 words
HEADLINE: Setbacks for Korean opposition: The problems of the two Kims
BYLINE: By JASPER BECKER
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

South Korea’s opposition, led by the ‘two Kims,’ has been out-manoeuvred by President Chun Doo-Hwan, the dour and colourless leader of the world’s most dynamic economy.

A chastened Mr Kim Young Sam admitted in an interview that ‘we are now in an awkward position. ‘

Since April 8 his co-leader, the charismatic Mr Kim Dae Jung has been isolated from his supporters under tied house arrest, and the opposition party has broken apart amid mutual recrimination and bitter factional squabbling.

Only two years earlier South Korea’s Opposition movement was sweeping all before it after President Chun’s greatest opponent, Mr Kim Dae Jung, returned from the United States.

National Assembly election victories in 1985 united students, intellectuals, Church leaders and Opposition politicians into a powerful coalition that successfully staged huge demonstrations and rallies and forced President Chun to agree to amend the Constitution and allow free elections.

‘If the Government does not revise the Constitution they will be unable to govern the nation,’ boasted the other Kim, Mr Kim Young Sam, a year ago.

Since then the tables have turned and the Opposition is back where it started in 1985.

Other members of the New Korea Democratic Party brawled on Thursday with their former colleagues who were seeking to establish local chapters of their new party, tentatively named the Reunification and Democracy Party.

The two Kims are being accused by their own supporters of behaving in a dictatorial and undemocratic manner by refusing to tolerate a plurality of views within their own party.

‘They were over-confident of their popularity. They thought that whatever they did must be right and democratic,’ complained one Opposition member.

Student activists believe the two Kims have let them down, and their disappointment is widely believed to be shared by many South Koreans.

However, Mr Kim Young Sam believes next month will see ‘a very strong reaction from the students’ as they work up to the May 17 anniversary of the 1980 Kwangju uprising against the establishment of President Chun’s regime.

Mr Kim may be disappointed, judging by the feeble showing during last week’s demonstrations to commemorate an equally significant anniversary in 1960, when a student movement succeeded in toppling a government.

Mr Kim Young Sam says he believes in a non-violent struggle and he still wants to re-engage the Government in a dialogue about democratic reform.

Mr Kim, a Catholic on whose office walls hang large photos of his meeting with the Pope, is an admirer of President Cory Aquino and is less feared by the Government than is the uncompromising Mr Kim Dae Jung.

He claims the Government does not dare move against him because it fears a repetition of the violent protests in the late Seventies in his home town of Pusan. The Opposition is also well aware that if there is massive popular unrest when President Chun attempts the nation’s first peaceful transfer of power by stepping down next February, it could easily trigger intervention by the military.

The military intervened in 1961, a year after student riot’s toppled President Syngman Rhee, and in 1980, one year after President Park Chung Hee was assassinated.

The Opposition’s prospects of repeating President Aquino’s success by calling on ‘people power’ are limited by the country’s rapidly increasing affluence. Within the last five years 80 per cent of Korean households have brought colour television sets, and personal spending is increasing by around 7 per cent a year.

There is much talk, too, of South Korea’s emerging middle class, who, by their own estimation, constitute 60 per cent of the urban population and are widely held to oppose social unrest.

Although the Opposition also appeals to the discontented in South Korea’s new consumer society, President Chun is gambling on people’s determination not to spoil the country’s international image in the run-up to the 1988 Olympic Games.

The Games are felt to be so significant that they figure in every conversation here, and President Chun has promised to resume the dialogue with the Opposition once they end in October 1988.

The Opposition now has two cards to play. It will, Mr Kim Young Sam said, boycott the presidential elections later this year and so deprive the ruling democratic Justice Party of the legitimacy it craves. The Olympics are viewed as South Korea’s ‘coming of age’ as a full recognised member of Western world and would be marred without a legitimately elected government.

Secondly, the Opposition can hope that President Chun’s regime will shoot itself in the foot as it has done often enough in the past.

Document 426

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
April 6, 1987, Monday, Late City Final Edition Correction Appended

SECTION: Section A; Page 1, Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 2984 words
HEADLINE: OPPOSITION TO SEOUL REGIME IS VAST BUT BADLY SPLINTERED
SERIES: SOUTH KOREA: A CRUCIAL MOMENT - Second of four articles.
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: PUSAN, South Korea
BODY:

In a small, private room of a coffee house here, several young men and one woman spoke of democracy, firebombs, torture, America, and what they see as other related subjects.

They spoke softly, for they had been in prison and recalled the pain of beatings and of the ‘‘roast chicken’’ treatment, in which they were trussed and suspended from the ceiling.

One of them, Ko Ho Seok, pointed to a thumbnail that he said he lost to a policeman’s pliers. The nail has grown back, and with it a passionate belief in democracy and the reunification of North and South Korea.

Mr. Ko, whose boyish face belies his 30 years, is a member of the South Korean underground, an evangelist for change.

Small Stones and Large Bricks

‘‘I don’t want to be seen as violent,’’ Mr. Ko said calmly, ‘‘but can it be called violence when a student throws a small stone at the police?’’

Small stones, along with large bricks, have often been hurled at the police in the last several months. The opposition senses vulnerability in the Government and is lunging for change. Its conduct over the next year - and its degree of unity - could shape South Korean politics for many years.

President Chun Doo Hwan has promised to step down by early next year. That transfer of power, and the likely adoption of a new form of government, could create opportunities for the opposition. It could also lead to even tighter control, particularly if leftist students continue to clash with police.

The opposition faces this crossroads divided over tactics and ideology. It is an ungainly movement, comprising silver-haired politicians who vent their frustrations in the National Assembly, Roman Catholic priests trained in prison as well as seminary, and Seoul National University students whose informal curriculum includes the manufacture of firebombs.

The focus is often on the politicians, but at crucial times students have played a pivotal role. In 1960, student protests brought down a president; in 1980 they prompted a harsh and deadly crackdown that colors South Korean politics to this day. No one knows whether the students’ militancy, if unchecked, will lead this year to sweeping democratic change or to increased violence and repression.

The opposition is hampered by a Government security apparatus that pervades the country: tapping telephones, examining mail, interviewing people and arresting and torturing suspects. The police, far more than the military, play this key role, and they appear to be under the tight control of the Government in Seoul.

While torture is banned by the Constitution and deplored by the Government, it appears widespread. In a report to the United States Congress earlier this year, the State Department said: ‘‘The use of excessive force by the police continues to be a pervasive and ingrained problem,’’

A Tactical Split: Politics or Violence

What do opponents of the Government have in common? Little more than that they are the ones without the gas masks at demonstrations. A hint of the fissures among them is seen after the police have fired their tear-gas canisters. The protesters all stagger blindly into each other, but when they recover, the older demonstrators glare at the police and chant slogans. The younger ones hurl firebombs and scream ‘‘Yankee Go Home!’’

‘‘Students who have been arrested and tortured, and who have had friends murdered - how can they control their emotions?’’ asked a thin, intense young man who helps organize dissident activities in Seoul.

Viewed from outside, the opposition tends to be lumped together and associated with graying veterans like Kim Dae Jung, an unofficial leader of the opposition New Korea Democratic Party. Certainly Mr. Kim, who is 63 years old, is a titanic figure: he is so feared by the Government that during a demonstration in February the police not only put him under house arrest - as they have on more than 50 occasions in the last two years - but also parked seven busloads of riot officers around his home.

But in their numbers, the young people may be the most important. Sixty-three percent of South Koreans are 30 years old or younger. They witnessed neither America’s role in ending the Japanese occupation in 1945 nor American intervention in the Korean War, so they feel no special bond with the United States. They do not remember the poverty of the 50’s or even the early 60’s, so they feel little gratitude for the current relative prosperity. They reflect the radicalization of South Korean politics, particularly in the last seven years.

Opposition politicians enjoy the support of much of the population. Even Government figures like Hyun Hong Choo, a prominent member of the National Assembly, concede that the Government is unpopular among some segments of society, like the young.

But whether the disaffected are in the majority is impossible to determine. And many analysts agree with Mr. Hyun’s contention that the disaffection with Mr. Chun has not automatically been transferred to support for the opposition.

Support for the Government is stronger in rural areas and among older people, and the Government is trying to woo the growing middle class, which includes many business people. The Government-controlled press appears to have been successful in linking the opposition to political violence.

But while the middle class has benefited from the economic stability and prosperity, it is disenchanted with repression of civil liberties and what some see as a lack of political or economic vision in the Government. It also seems attracted by calls for greater democracy, to which the opposition devotes much greater emphasis than to its vague economic platform.

The Students: Heirs to Rebel Role

As opposition politicians try to polish their image, they face the challenge of a growing gulf between them and the young rebels.

‘‘Even though the opposition party is shouting ‘democracy,’ it is lip service,’’ said Kim Seung Nam, president of the student council at Chonnam University in the southern city of Kwangju. ‘‘They do not have the strong will to achieve democracy. But we do support them because they are not as bad as the Government party.’’

Mr. Kim, 24 years old, has had his own will tested in prison, as have many of his contemporaries. At a meeting in the icy and disorganized council office, where an empty tear gas canister served as the ashtray, a visitor asked the half-dozen student officers how many of them had been arrested. All raised their hands. ‘‘It is the initiation rite that everyone must pass through,’’ one joked.

Students have been a center of rebellion in Korea for many decades, ever since universities led the resistance to the Japanese occupation of 1910 to 1945. A bit more than 25 percent of college-age Koreans attend an institution of higher education, and it is often there that they are introduced to politics. Limited evidence - such as results of student elections - suggests broad sympathy for the leftists at many universities. But most students keep that sympathy private, for fear of the consequences for them or their parents.

S. Y. Lee, a 19-year-old university student in Pusan, in the southeastern corner of the country, explained: ‘‘Most students think the present Government is a kind of tyranny, and they think that democracy is necessary. But not many students take part in demonstrations. They suffer from an internal conflict: Should they be more concerned about democracy or should they concentrate on their futures?’’

The Two Kims: Allies and Rivals

While the students have stolen some of the attention, Kim Dae Jung remains Korea’s best-known, most-liked and most-hated opposition leader.

Mr. Kim, who was once sentenced to death for sedition, is a native of South Cholla Province, which has a history of rebellion. He officially received 45 percent of the vote in the 1971 presidential election, which was widely regarded as rigged in favor of the victor, Park Chung Hee. He is banned from direct involvement in politics, but he unofficially directs many activities of the New Korea Democratic Party.

Mr. Kim and the other leader behind the party, Kim Young Sam, control rival opposition factions that appear to be based more on personalities and style than on issues. The factions date from the 1950’s, and some analysts say the competition has weakened the opposition.

‘‘I don’t deny that we have been rivals,’’ Kim Dae Jung said, ‘‘but I don’t think it means that we will split the party.’’

Lee Chul, an opposition member of the National Assembly who is not associated with one of the factions, said: ‘‘The biggest problem of our party is factionalism. There are many dangers if you don’t belong to a faction. You don’t get money and you don’t get a chance to be party leader.’’

The two Kims have sometimes been accused of holding on to power so tightly that there is a vacuum of power beneath them. There are also charges that for all their talk of democracy, they do not respect competitors or believe in a system of law.

‘‘We face a dilemma,’’ said Chung Jae Moon, an opposition member of the National Assembly. ‘‘We are supposed to promote democracy. But the party is almost dictatorial - it is controlled by the two Kims.’’

The United States Embassy, which plays a visible role in Seoul, has maintained regular low-level contact with prominent dissidents like Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. Lately there have been some closely watched meetings at the ambassadorial level, with dinners between Ambassador James Lilley and Kim Young Sam and Lee Min Woo, the nominal leader of the opposition party.

Other Voices: Labor and the Churches

The labor movement is one segment of the opposition alliance that has differed sharply from the New Korea Democratic Party. This is partly because the labor movement is deeply fragmented, with some wings supportive of fundamental social change. On the other hand, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions is widely regarded as a Government front.

Fewer than a million workers in South Korea are unionized, out of a labor force of 13 million. But the number of union members is on the rise again, after a sharp drop several years ago because of new and restrictive labor laws. There was a net increase last year of 175,000 members.

Church groups constitute another sector of the opposition. While some Christian sects, particularly conservative Protestants, appear to support the Government, change is actively being sought by elements in the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant groups. (Of the country’s Christians, about three-quarters are Protestant.) ‘‘Without human hands, God can do nothing,’’ said the Rev. Ham Sei Ung, a Catholic priest in Seoul who has been imprisoned three times for a total of two and a half years. Father Ham is one of more than 500 Korean priests who belong to the Priests’ Conference for the Achievement of Justice, which holds monthly seminars on topics related to politics.

Christianity has been gaining converts rapidly, partly because of Christian opposition to the Japanese occupation earlier in this century and to the military governments since then. As much as a quarter of the population is Christian, and by some estimates that share could double within 15 years.

In the last year, Buddhists, who number about 30 percent of the population, have also become restive. Partly they are seeking the same social and political goals as Christian groups; partly they are simply seeking more autonomy from the Government in controlling Buddhist sites such as temples. But despite some demonstrations and rock-throwing, the Buddhists remain far from the forefront of dissent in South Korea.

The Fallout From Kwangju

To understand the bitterness and distrust that absorb many opponents of the Government, it helps to drive down an unmarked dirt road 10 miles east of Kwangju. Surrounded by rice paddies and rolling hills, scores of gravestones mark the resting place of young men and women who were killed in May 1980 when the Government crushed an insurrection led by students. Officially, 191 people were killed, but critics of the Government say the number is many times higher.

Like the Soweto riots in South Africa, Kwangju marked a turning point for opponents of the Government. One poll last year at Seoul National University asked students to name the greatest tragedy in Korean history since 1945. The faculty assumed that the leading response would be the Korean War. Instead, the leading response was the Kwangju incident.

The United States is widely blamed for the Kwangju incident, for authorizing Korean forces under American military command to go to Kwangju and take control. American officials insist, however, that they had little choice and that they demanded unsuccessfully that the Korean soldiers exercise restraint. Their account is little heeded.

Hong Nam Sen, a 74-year-old, white-haired lawyer in Kwangju who was sentenced to life imprisonment - he was later released - for encouraging the Kwangju rebellion, put it this way: ‘‘America was behind the brutal crackdown, and as a consequence students turned to the left. The U.S. is responsible.’’ The Government, when it hears such remarks, sees red. Much of the opposition, particularly students, is branded as Communist, supported by North Korea. A pamphlet distributed by the Government this year stated: ‘‘There is no doubt that the ultimate goal of these ever-growing leftists is to spread socialist ideology among the populace and eventually unify the Korean Peninsula under the control of the North Korean Communist regime.’’

Certainly some of the Government’s opponents are diehard Communists and admirers of the North Korean personality cult of Kim Il Sung. ‘‘Let us go, go to the paradise in the North,’’ reads a leaflet distributed at Sangji University in the northeastern city of Wonju. Yet such people seem rare.

Most opponents of the Government, whether familiar leaders like Kim Dae Jung or obscure rebels like Ko Ho Seok, disavow Communism. Many favor measures to redistribute national income; many also favor stronger labor unions.

Their prescriptions do not sound radical, but to Western ears they may seem imprecise or unrealistic. Many students, for example, speak longingly of ‘‘unification’’ of the Korean Peninsula, but they are vague about how is this to be done.

‘‘It’s the Government’s own fault,’’ a Western diplomat in South Korea said of the interest in reunification. ‘‘If the Government just let students see the North Korean propaganda, and the blatant personality cult there, then they would be turned off immediately.’’

The Prospects: Can Rifts Be Overcome?

Above all, the opposition’s divisions weaken its influence.

Even among religious groups, there are rivalries and even accusations of insincerity and shady financial dealings. This fractiousness is already a problem for the opposition, and it would be a far greater challenge if it assumed power.

The centrifugal forces may derive from a stern, even harsh, view of commitment in the Korean political and cultural tradition. Rebels who fought against impossible odds are revered, even if they eventually were crushed and accomplished little.

‘‘Moderation is just not considered a very positive characteristic in Korea,’’ said a Western diplomat in Seoul. ‘‘What we view as politics -compromise, making deals - is viewed here as something bad.’’

A Korean folk tale reflects the rigid notion of duty that makes compromise difficult. A young woman was crossing a dry river bed with her 10-year-old husband and her aging father-in-law. (Young boys were sometimes married to women twice their age.) A flash flood engulfed them, and the woman had to choose whether to save her young husband or her elderly father-in-law.

Her solution, much admired because it permitted her to fulfill all her obligations, was this: She carried the old man to dry land, leaving her husband to drown. And then she plunged back into the water and drowned herself.

SOUTH KOREA: CRITICAL VOICES

Kim Dae Jung: 63 years old ... convert to Roman Catholicism ... formally banned from politics, but a powerful behind-the-scenes figure in New Korea Democratic party ... former member of National Assembly ... candidate for president in 1971 ... jailed repeatedly for his views ... sentenced to death by military court for sedition in 1980, but released in 1982 ... went into exile in the United states, where he headed the Korean Institute for Human Rights ... returned to South Korea in 1985 ... put under house arrest more than 50 times since then ... supports current policies of rapid economic growth, but advocates redistribution of income ... says he would seek to negotiate with North Korea on peaceful reunification.

Kim Young Sam: 59 uears old ... adviser to New Korea Democratic Party ... a long-time rival of Kim Dae Jung, but has worked with him against President Chun Doo Hwan ... put under house arrest in 1980 ... freed in 1981, but confined again in 1982 ... released in 1983 after 23-day hunger stride ... portrays himself as a conservative, anti-Communist figure.

The Rev. Moon Ik Hwan: 69 years old ... in prison for leading anti-Government protest last year in Inchon ... a Protestant theologian and translator of the Bible into Korean ... head of United Minjung Movement for Democracy and Unification, a coalition including Buddhists ... outspoken human-rights advocate ... repeatedly jailed for criticism of the Government.

Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou Hwan: 64 years old ... leader of South Korea’s Roman Catholics ... Archbishop of Seoul since 1968 ... designated as a Cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1969 ... has assailed prosecution of Government critics ... supports direct presidential elections, but has called on Kim Dae Jung, Kim Young Sam and Chun Doo Hwan to renounce plans to run.

CORRECTION-DATE: April 7, 1987, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition

CORRECTION: A picture yesterday with a biographical sketch of Kim Young Sam, a critic of the South Korean Government, was published in error. It actually showed another critic, Kim Dae Jung. A second picture of Kim Dae Jung also appeared, correctly, with the sketch of him.

GRAPHIC: Photo of Christians staging anti-Government protest (Reuters); Photo of Pusan Council of Democratic Citizens members hanging photo of student who died during police interrogation (NYT/Fred R. Conrad)

Document 427

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
April 6, 1987, Monday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 10, Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 594 words
HEADLINE: A LEFTIST’S STORY: IDEALISM, REBELLION AND PERSECUTION
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

Kim Chong Jung, a solemn 28-year-old, has been a full-time rebel since the day in 1980 when he picked up an M-1 rifle and effectively declared war on the Government.

Mr. Kim was lucky on that day during the Kwangju uprising. He was on the outskirts of the city, where there was no fighting, and so he survived. Scores of other young people who demanded democracy, numbering perhaps in the hundreds or thousands, were not so fortunate. They were killed as soldiers quelled the insurrection.

‘‘The Kwangju incident was the driving force to bring me into this political world,’’ said Mr. Kim. He has since devoted his life to achieving democracy for his country, by almost any means necessary.

He is an example of the angry young men whom the Government calls Communists and who appear to pose a growing threat to the South Korean Government. Mr. Kim reflects the common aspirations and outlook of a key sector of the society, one that is growing in bitterness, in militancy and apparently in influence.

Veteran of an Uprising

Mr. Kim, the son of a carpenter, grew up in Kwangju, 165 miles south of Seoul, and in a nearby village. A Roman Catholic who was baptized with the name Francisco, he became active in a Catholic farmers’ group that was heavily involved in politics. He became secretary general of the group’s Kwangju unit and took part in the uprising in May 1980, in which citizens seized the city after firece clashes with paratroopers and police units. Armed with weapons taken from Government depots, the rebels held the city for eight days before being crushed by fresh Government troops.

Mr. Kim helped organize demonstrations in late 1980 to protest the killings in Kwangju. When the police sought him, he went underground.

He fled to Seoul, where he stayed for several months with friends. They produced leftist pamphlets and distributed them until the police raided the house on May 14, 1981, and arrested the occupants.

‘‘I was beaten all night,’’ said the thin, bespectacled Mr. Kim. ‘‘My head was dunked in water while I was handcuffed, and I was beaten on the knees until the club broke. Even today, my knees still hurt sometimes. Then I was given the roast-chicken torture, where I was trussed up and suspended in the air. In this position I was beaten and my head was dunked in water.’’

Tortured Continued for a Week

Mr. Kim said the torture continued for a week while the police quizzed him about his ideology and his friends. For three days he was not allowed to sleep, he said, and for three months he was held incommunicado.

He was sentenced to four years in prison, although he was released after two and a half.

‘‘I tried to get a factory job, but my application was always rejected,’’ he said. So Mr. Kim, living at home and supported by family and friends, worked full time as an organizer for the Catholic farmers’ organization and a Kwangju youth group. Last May he was arrested again, but he said he was not tortured and was released after three months in prison.

Like many young Korean leftists, Mr. Kim says he believes fervently in the unification of North and South Korea, but he is unspecific about how this could be achieved. He is more specific about who is to blame for the continued separation: the South Korean Government and the United States Government. He accuses both governments of obstructing democracy because they know that most people favor unification.

‘‘There is a bright and dark side to U.S. involvement in Korea,’’ Mr. Kim said, ‘‘but since 1945 the dark side is overwhelming.’’

Document 428

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
March 11, 1987, Wednesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Metro; Part 2; Page 5; Column 1; Op-Ed Desk
LENGTH: 817 words
HEADLINE: S. KOREA’S DEMOCRATIC FUTURE IS UP TO US
BYLINE: By FLOYD K. HASKELL and JAN H. KALICKI, Floyd K. Haskell, a former U.S. senator from Colorado, is a trustee of the International Center for Development Policy in Washington. Jan H. Kalicki is the executive director of Brown University’s Center for Foreign Policy Development and a professor of political science.
BODY:

South Korea’s crucial decision -- how the successor to its President Chun Doo Hwan, whose term will expire in 1988, will be chosen -- must be made this year. If it is made unwisely, the decision could produce riots, civil disobedience and drastic repression.

The United States has a role to play and a real stake in South Korea’s future. About 37,000 American soldiers are at the front line along with their South Korean counterparts. They face a well-armed, aggressive North Korean army. At their rear, in South Korea, anti-Americanism, fueled by past U.S. mistakes, has been growing. Over the past few months there have been encouraging signs that our foreign policy is changing, but Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s recent trip to South Korea has blurred these hopes.

Anti-Americanism began in 1980, when the American general in command of the joint forces released a South Korean division under the command of Gen. Chun. Chun used his division to break up an uprising in the southern city of Kwangju. More than 1,000 people were killed in what is now referred to as the Kwangju massacre. Shortly thereafter, Chun became president, ruled the nation with a ruthless hand and until recently has enjoyed virtually uncritical U.S. support.

Chun is scheduled to leave office next year. But does leaving office mean giving up power? In February, 1985, Chun’s democratic opposition in elections for the Assembly drew a majority vote, but, because of the way in which South Korea’s election laws are written, ended up in a minority position. Respected South Korean leaders such as Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou Hwan of Seoul fear that the government’s proposals to move toward a parliamentary system merely are a subterfuge for Chun and the military autocracy to continue to dominate. No fundamental changes are proposed for a system that rigs the electoral process to guarantee the ruling party a parliamentary majority and, through indirect elections, continued control of the presidency.

To democratic opposition leaders Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam and their supporters, the answer is obvious: South Korea should adopt direct presidential elections and parliamentary elections based on one person, one vote.

Despite recent indications of willingness to negotiate with the opposition, Chun appears determined that this will not happen. As a result, his rule has become increasingly repressive. In 1983, 250 people were imprisoned for “political” offenses -- possession of forbidden literature, expression‎ of forbidden views, assembly in groups of more than two without a permit. In 1984, 57 were imprisoned; in 1985, 1,300; last year, more than 3,400.

Many in responsible positions fear that students, workers and others insistent on democracy will take to the streets and that a military crackdown will occur. The result could be a revolutionary spiral that would imperil both security and freedom.

Until last November the United States had done nothing and said nothing that could be construed as being critical of President Chun. But in November our new ambassador, James Lilley, presented his credentials and pointedly observed that democracy and security were intertwined. Last month U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Gaston J. Sigur, in a speech to the U.S.-Korea Society in New York, suggested that good relations with the United States depended on South Korea’s adoption of “a more open and legitimate political system.” He urged South Koreans to begin “permanently civilianizing their politics.”

This news arrived in South Korea three days after 35,000 riot police broke up a demonstration by 10,000 citizens; 400 were arrested, and a column of Buddhist monks and their followers were tear-gassed. The demonstration was to mark the 49th day -- significant to Buddhists -- since the death of a student, Park Jong Chul, who died while being tortured by the police.

At a press conference after meeting with Chun, Shultz read a carefully worded statement on “the aspiration of all Koreans” for political development, human rights and free elections. It sounds great, but it is an earlier statement that will be remembered in South Korea.

Shultz said that the government responded to Park’s death “in an interesting way,” and complimented the government for removing the home-affairs minister. What he didn’t know or chose to ignore is that the incumbent minister was replaced by Gen. Chung Ho Yong, a hard-line military-academy classmate of Chun who is known in South Korea for his participation with Chun in the Kwangju massacre.

Time is running out. Chun’s successor must be chosen this year. The Administration should make clear that the United States is committed to South Korea to secure the survival of freedom, not to perpetuate a dictatorship. Failing this, violence may be inevitable, and both freedom and security from the communist threat to the north will be lost.

Document 429

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
February 23, 1987, Monday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 3; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 719 words
HEADLINE: In South Korea, A Smoking Volcano
BYLINE: By Edward W. Poitras; Edward W. Poitras teaches at the Methodist Theological Seminary.
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Political confrontation in South Korea seems to be heading toward another crisis, and the United States should try to prevent it from becoming violent.

Twice within four months, armies of police have been deployed to prevent demonstrations, most recently on Feb. 7, when citizens tried to congregate to mourn the death of Park Jung Chul, a university student who was tortured to death by police.

The Government has tried to get the unpleasantness over with before universities reopen in March. President Chun Doo Hwan and his aides seem uncertain about how to proceed, though most people are bracing for further repression and unrest.

Sensing that continued backing for an unsteady Government could be politically risky, American officials recently have begun to express support for democratic change. Gaston Sigur Jr., the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, endorsed democratic elections in a speech earlier this month, and his forthright mention of the issue of legitimacy encouraged President Chun’s opponents. Still, it’s hard to know what will happen next or what to expect of Washington.

The world praises South Koreans for their energetic pursuit of economic success yet fails to sense the parallel growth of a repressive police state. Most South Koreans consider President Chun to be vicious because of the blood spilled in his rise to power, especially the Kwangju massacre of May 1980.

Mr. Chun’s opponents have lately taken an aggressive stance, publicly ridiculing him and his wife. Meanwhile, President Chun and his cohorts are preoccupied with their likely fate should they lose power. The legitimacy of the Government has never been established despite attempts to prove respectability through elections, which were questionable.

During recent months, even middle-class citizens who usually keep their opinions to themselves have openly expressed disgust at intensifying, widening repression. The lack of public support is compounded by anger over widespread corruption. While the structure of corruption may differ from the Philippines or Indonesia, it is endemic and South Koreans encounter it regularly.

The Chun Government has done everything possible to foster division and thus weaken the opposition. Distrust based on regionalism, character defamation, threats and bribery are exploited, but the yield of such tactics seems to be declining. Many are also beginning to see the hypocrisy of the regime’s advocacy of reasonable discussion even as it maintains through violence its one-party control of the National Assembly.

United States economic and military interests in South Korea make it difficult for most Reagan Administration and Pentagon officials to face the possibility of a change in the military-oriented Government. The complexity of the Japanese involvement in South Korea, tensions in the region involving North Korea and the Soviet Union and the recent atmosphere of visceral anti-Communism in Washington all combine to make it difficult for the United States to modify its support for the Chun Government.

For the sake of long-range regional stability, however, Washington must openly encourage free expression‎, even the voting out of the present regime. That implies more than Mr. Chun leaving the Presidency. It means an end of political rule by the military, and a large number of younger officers would support that.

Despite any reservations Washington may have about two key opposition leaders, Kim Dae Jung or Kim Young Sam, no other figures have the support or visibility to lead the opposition at this time, so the United States must come to terms with them. If these mainline political leaders are losing ground, it is to a growing, violent radical fringe, which is an ominous sign accompanied by intensifying anti-Americanism.

If change cannot come soon through elections, then violent confrontation will continue to escalate. At present, there is no contest, since the Government can mobilize the force needed to keep the lid on. If, however, the United States helps to redress the balance by supporting the legitimate demands of the opposition and the public, then a peaceful solution could be possible. This could be Washington’s last chance for a long time to contribute to South Korea’s peaceful democratic progress.

Document 430

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
February 19, 1987, Thursday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 30, Column 4; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 402 words
HEADLINE: SEOUL REGIME MUST TAKE A CHANCE ON KOREANS; Free, but Also Fair
BODY:

To the Editor:

‘‘Take a Chance in South Korea’’ contains some inaccuracies and what I view as interpretive errors.

You call Park Jong Chul, who was tortured to death by the police, a ‘‘political detainee.’’ Mr. Park was a ‘‘C’’ category dissident, according to the Chun Doo Hwan dictatorship, meaning that he had not been politically active for more than six months. He was taken into custody for questioning about an activist friend.

You characterize as ‘‘highly unusual’’ the dismissal of the Interior Minister and the national police chief ‘‘for their role’’ in Mr. Park’s death. What is highly unusual is not so much their dismissal as their replacements. The new Interior Minister commanded the paratroops in the 1980 Kwangju massacre, and the new national police chief, Lee Young Chang, led the harsh crackdown on student protest at Konkul University last October.

You implicitly liken the opposition’s insistence on direct presidential elections to a carpetbagger’s ploy, attributing it to the eminent electability of nationally popular leaders such as Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. The opposition, however, is resonating with popular desire to hold direct presidential elections for the first time since 1971. A national survey conducted last year by a pro-Government newspaper showed that 63 percent of Koreans favored direct presidential elections, while only 6.1 percent supported the parliamentary system.

Finally, you commend Lee Min Woo’s proposals to ‘‘consider parliamentary rule in exchange for guarantees of broader political freedoms and truly free elections.’’ The parliamentary system President Chun proposes will be tantamount to continuing the present dictatorship. As chairman of the ruling party, he will control the political process with the power to designate the nominal president and the all-powerful prime minister. Any ‘‘broad political freedoms’’ guaranteed for the sake of political expediency now may very well be abrogated.

Further, under the current electoral code, rural districts, where the Government is strong through manipulation, are vastly overrepresented, while urban districts, the opposition stronghold, are underrepresented. With such disproportionate representation, ‘‘truly free’’ elections will not do. They also have to be truly fair.

CHOI SUNG-IL Executive Director, Korean Institute for Human Rights Alexandria, Va., Feb. 5, 1987

Document 431

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
January 25, 1987, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: OUTLOOK; PAGE B1
LENGTH: 2595 words
HEADLINE: Is South Korea Going to Be The Next Philippines?
BYLINE: Selig S. Harrison
BODY:

WILL SOUTH KOREA become another Philippines? Although the two cases differ in many ways, there is one crucial similarity that helps to explain why Gen. Chun Doo Hwan faces increasingly bitter and widespread opposition. Corruption in the Korean military regime, in some instances touching Chun’s family, has now reached proportions that could eventually rival those of the Marcos period.

Relatives of Chun’s wife, Lee Soon Ja, have been tarnished by a major financial scandal, and political foes have charged that his younger brother, Chun Kyung Hwan, has links to leading organized crime figures.

On a recent visit to Seoul, I asked people in all walks of life why a secret poll taken for the government recently by a leading newspaper showed 66.4 percent “opposed” to the present government, another20.5 percent “strongly opposed” and only 1.6 percent “satisfied.” Middle-class moderates and more committed opposition supporters emphasized different reasons, but nearly everyone talked about the blatant corruption of what many called “this dirty regime.”

Like most of the other factors that fuel the opposition, such as widening economic inequalities, corruption has been magnified by the Korean economic boom. South Korea’s annual 7 percent growth rate presents a striking contrast to the virtual economic collapse of the Philippines during the last days of Marcos. But one of the keys to such rapid growth is a tightly centralized economic system that has provided a built-in invitation for abuse of power by insiders.

Emulating Japan, successive Korean military rulers have built an integrated network of government-supported conglomerates and affiliated banks designed to give Seoul a coordinated competitive thrust in world markets. In contrast to the Japanese business-government partnership, however, with its democratic checks and balances, this close-knit Korean economic structure emerges from a police state and is inherently vulnerable to manipulation from the top.

Leading banks and corporations were easily induced to cooperate when a finance company set up by relatives of Chun’s wife concocted a grandiose scheme for illegally profiteering in promissory notes -- a scheme so audacious that it could have been dreamed up only in the heady atmosphere of authoritarian power unchecked by a free press or parliament.

Borrowing $ 115 million from two leading banks, the finance company made long-term loans totaling this amount to six financially-pressed corporations, according to Korean press reports. The corporations then signed promissory notes worth $ 522 million -- more than four times the amount of the actual loans; these notes then were resold at this price with bank guarantees. The case came to light after arguments developed over the division of the $ 407 million in profits. Initially exposed by the underground press -- consisting of some newspapers, but also pamphlets and irregularly published journals put out by students, labor unions, religious activists and former journalists fired under pressure from the government -- it eventually went to the courts but received only sketchy coverage in the controlled media, leaving many questions unanswered.

Although Chun’s wife was not implicated in the scandal, her uncle, Brig. Gen. Lee Kyu-gwang, and his sister-in-law, Chang Yong-ja, a glamorous 38-year-old divorcee, were convicted in 1982 on multiple charges including fraud, breach of trust and bribery. The presidents of the two banks later resigned. Lee’s parole from prison has made the case a continuing cause celebre and, according to the underground press, Chang Yong-ja has been given a specially-outfitted cell, furnished like a plush apartment, provoking a sit-in protest by her fellow prisoners.

With its unusually high literacy rate(98 percent), South Korea has a politically super-sensitized public. Since opposition statements generally go unreported or downplayed in the daily press and TV, many Koreans rely as much on the underground press and the coffee house rumor mill as on the controlled media. This polarized journalistic climate makes it difficult to pin down information concerning the alleged role of Chun’s family in certain corruption cases.

An 83-page underground report on politics and corruption has alleged that Chun’s father-in-law, Lee Kyu-tong, was involved in the Myungsung land scandal, in which a newly-formed consortium of 20 companies obtained re-zoning permits that made possible the development of resorts and golf courses in the virgin Sulak and Chiri mountain areas. The underground press has alleged that the Myungsung group, armed with advance knowledge of the permits, had bought up nearly a million acres of land at bargain prices. According to the Korean press, the consortium grossed $ 54 million in 1982 before 22 company officials were sentenced for violations of tax laws, construction codes and forestry regulations.

No direct evidence has surfaced to substantiate charges that the father-in-law or any other relatives were involved. Roh Tae Woo, parliamentary leader of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, dismissed corruption charges as “greatly exaggerated.” He said that there was no evidence linking the president’s family with the Myungsung scandal.

Nonetheless, there is a widespread public conviction that someone in Chun’s inner circle must have fixed the re-zoning permits and shared in the profits. Similarly, despite a lack of evidence, Chun himself has been automatically suspect after underground press reports of several politically uncooperative companies changing ownership. In all of these cases, the enterprises reportedly have been sold or gone out of business after government prosecution for tax evasion or other offenses, only to turn up later under new names, rejuvenated, in the hands of someone close to the president. Roh also denied that the president’s family was involved in the ownership changes.

Chun Doo Hwan’s brother graduated from the Seoul Judo School, the army adjutant school and the Commerce College of Yongnam University. He then earned an M.A. in physical education teaching at the Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn. After a few years in Los Angeles, where he was a familiar figure in local night clubs, “Little Chun” returned to Seoul. He worked first as a bodyguard for the president of Samsung, a leading conglomerate, and later in the palace security force during the Park Chung Hee regime.

When Chun came to power, however, according to a knowledgeable source, Chun Kyung Hwan rapidly emerged as the man to see in Seoul for favorable treatment on tax matters, government construction contracts and import licenses. Controversial relatives of a head of state are not a problem unique to Korea. But unlike Billy Carter, however -- who never held a government position -- Chun Kyung Hwan was appointed by his brother, the president, to be director of the government’s far flung rural public works program, Saemaul, which has a $ 118 million annual budget. Saemaul’s failure to present a detailed budget to the National Assembly has led some legislators to question whether “Little Chun” has misappropriated funds.

On several occasions, most of them not reported in the controlled media, opposition Assembly members say they have attempted unsuccessfully to get “Little Chun” to testify. On one occasion, it was announced that he had suffered a heart attack, though an American embassy official who called to extend his sympathies said he found him on the golf course. On another occasion he pleaded an unavoidable engagement abroad.

The transcript of the National Assembly, which is not published but can be consulted in the Assembly library, is replete with angry exchanges over the secrecy surroundng Saemaul financial records. On
August 26, 1985, opposition deputy Kim Tong-choo, citing Finance Ministry data indicating that Saemaul had received $ 475 million over a four-year period, demanded to know “why the General Accounting Office has not audited these funds even once, and why this Assembly is not given the slightest accounting?” Another deputy, Kim Jong Bo, pointed out that the differential between the import cost and the domestic distribution price of beef cattle totalled $ 542 million between 1980 and 1984 and $ 80 million in 1983 alone. Fisticuffs erupted in a committee meeting when Kim asked where the money had gone.

Beyond questions of misappropriated funds, allegations have been made that Saemaul has put the muscle on businessmen. Opposition deputy Park Youg-man declared in the Assembly that “small businessmen and civic leaders in the countryside are taking out loans in order to pay ‘voluntary’ contributions to Saemaul.” Park noted a report that Saemaul’s assets had increased from $ 17.8 million in 1981 to $ 53 million in 1984, observing that Saemaul should “pass on its remarkable management techniques to businesses struggling in these times of recession.”

Hyun Hong-choo, spokesman for the ruling party, said, “Corruption is a problem, but the president is dealing with it.” Hyun denied charges that Saemaul funds had been misappropriated.

American officials and several businessmen indicated that the president’s wife and brother preside over rival cliques of palace insiders. Although the president’s wife stays in the background, however, “Little Chun” has been highly visible as Saemaul director. The underground press has periodically published stories alleging rakeoffs in import deals, focusing not only on Saemaul cattle imports from the United States but also on bananas from Taiwan.

“Little Chun” left South Korea in August nine days after a bloody nightclub murder in which one gang allegedly killed four members of a rival gang with fish knives. At first, several newspapers hinted vaguely that high officials had links with the godfather of the victorious Mokpo gang, Chong Yu Sop. Then opposition leader Ye Chun Ho said that the president’s brother had given a controversial land reclamation contract to a construction firm controlled by Chong and had walked arm in arm with the godfather after a Saemaul ceremony in his hometown of Shinan. Ye, majority leader of the former ruling party, charged that the leader of the hit squad that allegedly committed the murders, Hong Song Kyu, happened to be Chun Kyung Hwan’s former bodyguard.

After the list of suspects was published, opposition and church leaders said that Hong and several on the list had been members of the official entourage that accompanied “Little Chun” on a 1985 visit to Southeast Asia.

Ruling party spokesman Hyun denied that Little Chun has ties to organized crime leaders.

Ye said in an interview that Hong had recruited his men from the Seoul Judo School. Ye said that the president’s brother had used his influence to elevate his alma mater to the status of a heavily subsidized college, with Chun as the dominant force behind the institution. Some of the graduates find their way into the underworld, and government intelligence agencies draw on the school as a source of strongarm men used to break up opposition meetings, according to a report by a committee of inquiry consisting of church leaders, lawyers and opposition politicians.

The nightclub murders occurred on August 14, and on August 23 Chun Kyung Hwan resigned as Saemaul director and left South Korea. The government announced that he had been chosen to participate in a rural development seminar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Opposition leaders said that the real purpose of the academic arrangement was to get him out of the country. The Kennedy School declined to comment on Chun’s admission except to say that he had been accepted as a three-month special student. Chun Kyung Hwan returned to Seoul in late December. Various efforts to reach him were unsuccessful. The South Korean Embassy in Washington said that allegations about Chun Kyung Whan “are simply lies with no basis or truth.”

The government’s continuing sensitivity concerning the murder case was underlined by its violent reaction to a National Assembly speech by opposition deputy Yu Song Hwan on October 14 in which Yu pointed to the killings as evidence that “gangs favorable to the government are being raised under its protection” and that “high government officials are involved with organized crime.”

Disregarding Yu’s parliamentary immunity, Chun placed him under house arrest, citing his statement that “the unification of Korea should be our most important national priority, transcending the ideology of anti-communism.” The government then called on the Assembly to approve Yu’s formal detention on sedition charges. Opposition members sought to prevent a vote by physically barricading the entrance to the Assembly chamber, whereupon 1,000 riot police stormed the building to block opposition deputies from entering a back room where members of the ruling party convened to vote approval of the arrest.

Apart from the corruption issue, other even more important factors account for the growing strength of the opposition. Cardinal Kim Sou Hwan, the leading Roman Catholic prelate in South Korea and a prominent critic of the regime, argues that the big conglomerates have prospered at the expense of small business, farmers and labor. Fifteen million urban workers, prohibited from organizing free unions, earn as little as $ 3 a day. As college enrollments have burgeoned, so have educated unemployment and the growth of a new middle class seeking greater political participation.

Another intangible but significant source of opposition support is a deep-seated nationalistic upheaval resulting from the division of Korea and the extent of the South’s foreign dependence. For younger Koreans, especially, born after the Korean War, the government’s manipulation of tensions with North Korea to justify military rule in the South is no longer credible even though the North ordered the 1983 bombing in Burma that resulted in the deaths of four South Korean Cabinet members and 13 other South Korean officials. Calling on historical memories of Korea’s ancient national identity, opposition leaders maintain that Chun Doo Hwan repeatedly has bypassed opportunities for greater dialogue and contact with the north. Similarly, recalling Japanese colonialism, opposition leaders underline the south’s growing foreign debt($ 47 billion, as against $ 26 billion in 1980), primarily to Japanese and U.S. banks, and its overwhelming reliance on exports to shaky Japanese and American markets.

Nationalistic feeling underlies the militant radicalism exemplified by five students, including a coed and the son of a leading industrialist, who have burned themselves to death in recent months, and of 65 other students who say they are ready for self-immolation.

At bottom, the most powerful dynamic behind the growth of the opposition is a popular desire to end 25 years of military rule. Chun’s bloody suppression of the Kwangju uprising after he seized power in 1980 made his regime illegitimate from the start, in the eyes of most Koreans. The corruption issue does not excite Koreans for moralistic reasons. It has become a critical weapon in the struggle for a democratic constitution precisely because it has emerged as an increasingly credible symbol of the arrogance of authoritarian power. Selig S. Harrison, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Northeast Asia bureau chief of The Washington Post, has visited South Korea 21 times since 1967, most recently in September.

Document 432

Copyright 1986 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
August 19, 1986, Tuesday

SECTION: International; Pg. 9
LENGTH: 935 words
HEADLINE: South Korean radicals take working vacation
BYLINE: By David Young, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Kwangju, South Korea

HIGHLIGHT: Student activists work fields by day, organize farmers by night
BODY:

What do South Korean student activists do during their summer break? They take a ‘‘working vacation.’’

Unlike many of their less-radical peers - who relax at home, work in the family shop, and go to the beach on weekends - more than 1,500 students are taking part in illegal summer work programs. The programs are banned because the government says they spread ‘‘subversive ideas’’ in the countryside.

During the day, the students work with farmers in the fields. At night they clandestinely organize factory workers and farmers and conduct seminars on political and economic conditions in South Korea. Several prominent student leaders have been arrested in recent weeks for taking part in summer work programs and for mailing letters to high school students denouncing the government.

The student movement in South Korea has long prided itself on its summer service projects. They originated in the 1960s as university-sponsored programs to help teach peasants math and reading. But in recent years, since most South Koreans can now read and write, the emphasis has shifted to politics.

The students say their summer work complements their more direct confrontation with the government of President Chun Doo Hwan during the past school year, when there were more than 300 demonstrations and clashes with police on campuses. Students have long played a key role in South Korean politics: In 1960, student demonstrations led to the end of Syngman Rhee’s 20-year rule.

‘‘Had it not been for the students, the democratic movement in (South) Korea would be stagnant,’’ said the Rev. Moon Dong Hwan, an outspoken left-leaning government critic. ‘‘They are fearless in speaking out. We are gaining ground bit by bit as they protest and go to prison.’’

But not all government critics support the students’ methods. Some, like opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, are concerned that the students’ activities could destroy the moderate opposition’s agenda for political reform. The government, for its part, argues it must control dissent because it says internal instability could invite North Korea to invade.

In some ways, the main demands of the radical students are the demands of society at large. Student leaders say they want to dismantle what they see as a United States-backed military regime, to establish a more humane, participatory economic and political system, and to reunite North and South Korea. These are sentiments shared by many South Koreans, though the students insist militantly that the changes take place immediately and completely.

There are two main radical student organizations: Minmintu and Chamintu, both illegal. They operate underground and nationwide and are similar in their goals - though they differ tactically in who they view as the main enemy, according to student activists at Chunnam University in the southwestern city of Kwangju.

The ‘‘antifascist’’ Minmintu directs its criticism mostly at the Chun government. The ‘‘anti-imperialist’’ Chamintu attacks the US, saying it is ‘‘the puppetmaster pulling the strings of the (Chun) dictatorship.’’

Chamintu tends to be the more extreme of the two. It seeks to drive US armed forces out of the country. Members see the US virtually as an occupying power that uses South Korea as a pawn in a superpower game. Two of the students who immolated themselves in protest this year were Chamintu members.

Minmintu, by contrast, puts more emphasis on raising the political consciousness of the minjung - common people such as laborers and farmers who have been ‘‘left behind’’ by the rapid growth of the economy.

During the past several months, the Minmintu line has been on the ascendency, according to student leaders, though the two groups are still in close dialogue.

‘‘They are two parts, with different ideological focuses, but they are united,’’ said a history student at Chunnam. ‘‘They work together and fight together.’’

The student groups have developed a movement curriculum independent of their formal studies. In secret study groups, members read and discuss works of economics, politics, and philosophy that analyze the South Korean situation. Discussions about socialism are included, though the students encounter Marx primarily second-hand, through critiques of his work, since his writings are banned in South Korea.

Some members of Chamintu and Minmintu call themselves Marxists, though not all are. The unifying thread in the movement is a fierce nationalism and hatred of the military. Because of their clandestine nature, it is difficult to estimate accurately the groups’ strength nationwide, though Minmintu is larger. On the Chunnam campus, 800 of the 20,000 students belong to one of the two groups, a student government leader says.

Leaders of the ruling party say that only a small minority of South Korea’s students are ‘‘radical’’ and anti-American, but this is misleading. Though the number of those who battle police with rocks and petrol bombs is small, the student body is sympathetic to the radicals’ cause. About 5,000 students attended the May 18 demonstration that marked the 1980 Kwangju uprising that has become a rallying cry of the opposition.

Students stress that they are only one of the most visible groups in the anti-Chun forces. Twenty-four groups of laborers, farmers, teachers, students, and clergy make up a coalition called the United People’s Movement for Democracy and Unification, which is considered to be a bit to the left of the moderate opposition New Korea Democratic Party. Minmintu and Chamintu support the movement, but they are not members.

Document 433

Copyright 1986 The New York Times Company The New York Times
June 24, 1986, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 27, Column 2; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 684 words
HEADLINE: WHAT TO DO ABOUT SOUTH KOREA; STOP CODDLING THE REGIME
BYLINE: By Choi Sung-il; Choi Sung-il is executive director of an opposition organiation based in the United States
DATELINE: RESTON, Va.
BODY:

The violence, anti- Americanism and polarization that have marked the rising tide against South Korea’s military dictatorship ought to cause the United States to rethink its policies, which are as much a cause of this worrisome trend as is President Chun Doo Hwan.

Mr. Chun’s opponents were recently buoyed by the prospect of support from Washington after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Their exuberance, however, died quickly, because the Administration has continued to back the South Korean dictatorship while shunning the democratic opposition. This shortsighted approach has only encouraged extremism, with students and workers urging increasingly radical responses. Moderates who have denounced violence, including Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, find themselves abandoned by the United States.

South Korea’s democratic movement has been a centripetal, but never a monolithic one, consisting of students, workers, religious leaders, intellectuals and opposition politicians. Their alliance grew from a shared commitment to democracy, and their espousal of nonviolence was sustained by the expectations that the United States would pressure the South Korean dictatorship for democratic reforms. But the United States has repeatedly coddled the dictatorship. During the Kwangju uprising in May 1980, United States military officers reportedly approved of General Chun’s unleashing his forces against the demonstrators. Hundreds and possibly as many as 2,000 people were killed. In the last six years, the Chun Government has censored the media, placed opposition leaders under house arrest, dispersed political meetings and arrested and tortured critics of the Government. At each turn, the opposition has looked to America to denounce these acts. Too often the Administration has used the opportunity to reassure the Chun regime of its unbending support.

The recent surge of anti-Americanism should thus be understood as a growing rejection of America and not just a protest strategy. America, having missed an opportunity to strengthen the moderates, has made the chances for compromise remote.

Leaders of the ruling Democratic Justice Party and the opposition New Korea Democratic Party are debating a proposed compromise. It calls for a two-level government, with a popularly elected, though weak, president and a powerful prime minister who would be chosen by the National Assembly, which is controlled by the ruling party. President Chun would remain the de facto ruler as chairman of the Council for National Affairs, from which he could continue to direct the military.

Americans ask, ‘‘Will it play in Peoria?’’ South Koreans ask, ‘‘Will it play in Kwangju?’’ The answer is no: not after seven students, demanding democracy, committed suicide; not when an average of 10 students are imprisoned every day and many of them tortured; and not when 1,000 professors have risked their jobs by calling for the return of democracy.

South Korea’s difficulties extend beyond establishing direct, popular elections. Seoul is also burdened by staggering foreign debts and an economy dependent on exports. The people are forlorn from being torn in all directions. On the one hand, they distrust the United States and feel betrayed. On the other hand, they fear Communist North Korea. At home they are increasingly targets of a politicized military.

South Korea is a nation struggling to escape from the present with no clear vision of the future. The United States has an important role to play in that future. It should show unequivocal support for direct elections of a president with the power to govern.

Given the right to choose their own leader, the South Korean people, unabashedly yearning for freedom and self-respect, will form a responsive government that will tolerate political differences in a pluralistic society. A nation that has been so successful in economic development should do equally well in political development. This will help promote not only unity and democracy in South Korea but also restore respect and trust for the United States.

Document 434

Copyright 1986 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
June 1, 1986, Sunday, SUN

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. B5
LENGTH: 1537 words
HEADLINE: Future up for grabs in uncertain South Korea . . .
BYLINE: By Don Oberdorfer Washington Post
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

SEOUL - Two scenes from South Korea tell a story of dramatic change and growing uncertainty:

The symbol of something new in Korean life - the voluntary surrender of supreme national power - is a small one-storey marble building going up behind high steel gates 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the capital.

Few citizens have seen it and virtually nothing about it has appeared in the local press; but everyone knows it is the intended retirement office of President Chun Doo Hwan, who has promised to relinquish power when his term of office is up in March 1988.

Unlike the current leader, the two previous long-serving presidents of the country, Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee, clung desperately to power despite rising discontent until the first was ousted by a student-backed revolution and the second was assassinated.

Cannisters explode

Another symbol - a warning of the political turmoil that may lie ahead in South Korea - is the pop of tear-gas cannisters exploding at an opposition political rally in Inchon last month.

The opposition has been holding a series of rallies, and previous ones were peaceful. But this time, May 3, several thousand students and workers shout anti-American, anti-government and anti-opposition party slogans, and prevent opposition leaders from reaching the site.

Then they hear the tear-gas cannisters explode, and the angry students rush the lines of riot police, throwing bricks, rocks and molotov cocktails. The rally turns into a full-scale riot, the most serious internal disorder in six years.

These two scenes - one hopeful, one ominous - are etched in memory from a seven-day revisit in early May to a country that seems destined to be the site of the next Asian political crisis following the triumph of “people power” over entrenched dictatorship in the Philippines.

With Chun planning to step down and new forces rising among the opposition, the future of South Korea is up for grabs.

Given a history of 25 years of military-dominated rule and the fact that the generals control nearly all the guns, the odds are good that the future will belong to another military strongman.

Struggle for future

But such predictions are clouded by several new facts of life here: the broad unpopularity of the current military leader, the deep yearning for political expression‎ after so many years of tight control, the emergence of a urban middle class that has risen out of povery and of a student generation that has no memory of the war.

The struggle for the future is being played out in a land where age-old temples and traditions survive amid a bustling, modern economy - and where political institutions, having failed to keep pace with the economy, fit neither the old ways nor the new.

My first glimpse of Korea came in August 1953, as I arrived for an eight-month tour of duty as a U.S. Army lieutenant. “Seoul is in ruins that are as complete as anything I can imagine . . . hardly a permanent building standing with four walls and a roof,” I wrote in a diary.

When I went back as a journalist in 1966, economic development was getting under way and the people were becoming accustomed to the military-backed rule of Park, a general. He had taken over in a coup in 1961 but, under heavy U.S. pressure, exchanged his uniform for a civilian suit and ran for president in direct elections. He won three times in reasonably honest national balloting.

Korea in the mid-1960s was no longer rubble-strewn and miserable; but it was poor, with a per capita income of $300 U.S. per year.

Gunned down

By 1972, when I returned to the region for three years, Park was increasingly unpopular and repressive despite abundant signs of economic growth. In the fall of 1972 Park sent tanks into the streets under martial law, scrapping the constitution and direct elections to keep himself in power.

By mid-1980, Park had been gunned down by his own secret police chief across the table at a private dinner and Chun, also a general and once a young protege of Park, was the dominant figure in government after leading a military coup.

There was a sense of dismay among Koreans that one military rule was succeeding another.

The situation that I found on last month’s trip is an outgrowth of trends that were evident before. Economically, the country has continued to grow dramatically, emerging in the past decade as a “middle power” of global importance with a per capita income of about $2,000 per year, which is officially projected to rise to $3,500 in five years’ time.

But political growth has not kept pace with the economy.

As in the past, political expression‎ continues to be stunted by secret police and military controls and severe restrictions on the press. But people seem less inclined to accept authoritarian rule now that there is enough to eat and wear.

“Below $1,000 per year income, if you eat you won’t complain much,” said Sa Kong Il, a presidential economic adviser who believes that the $2,000 stage is “an awkward period” of national development.

Still a powderkeg

One of the country’s leaders, looking out at the Seoul skyline from a 35-storey luxury hotel, mused that impatience and even radicalism grow naturally in the shadow of such skyscrapers.

The dichotomy between rapid economic growth and slow political development results in large part from military domination of politics. And that arises in turn from the continuing high level of military tension in the bitterly divided Korean peninsula - still one of the world’s most dangerous powderkegs.

The problem of political transition in South Korea begins with the weakness of democratic institutions. The country has a facade of civilian rule, including civilian ministries and a sometimes fractious but essentially weak National Assembly. But the real authority is Chun, a few close aides and a behind-the-scenes ruling group of a dozen or so generals.

The generals have become used to the prerogatives and perks of power and are anxious to protect their privileged status. Yet they realize, according to one of the few outsiders in position to know their mind, that they must contend with rising public demand for civilian rule. And they understand too that Chun’s day is drawing to a close.

The central issue in South Korea today, in view of this, is the question of how a new leader is to be selected or elected.

Military figure

Chun, the military leaders and people close to them have insisted on the method devised by Park to keep himself in power, which was continued in Chun’s 1980 constitution: indirect presidential selection by an easily controlled convention of 5,000 citizens elected from the nation’s wards.

This system would maximize the chances for another military figure, such as Chun’s friend Gen. Ro Tae Woo, currently president of the ruling Democratic Justice party, or someone else at least endorsed by the military.

But the major opposition party is insisting on a return to the pre-1972 practice of direct popular election of the president. It calculates that either the controversial Kim Dae Jung, the less militant Kim Young Sam or some other opposition figure would be the public’s choice at the ballot box.

The opposition has only a modest position in the national assembly and little access to the controlled press. Its main leverage is public pressure exerted through mass demonstrations and petition drives.

The opposition’s position will be enhanced over the next several years as Korea heads toward the 1988 Olympic Games, which will be held in Seoul. With Korea in the media eye as never before, the opposition feels freer to act, and the government appears wary of cracking down on demonstrators.

But while the traditional activism of Korean students is an asset in exerting this leverage, radicalism or violence places the moderate opposition in a difficult position.

Anti-Americanism

The students’ major slogans, one of their leaders said, are “Drive Out American Imperialism Hindering National Self-Reliance,” “Withdraw Nuclear Bases Threatening National Survival” and “Drive Away U.S. and Japanese Capital Forcing Recession and Unemployment.”

This anti-Americanism is a sharp break from the past, and it began with a celebrated incident six years ago last month: the brutally suppressed uprising in the provincial city of Kwangju in which about 200 people were killed as Chun cemented his power.

For many Koreans the United States was partly responsible as well, because of the widepread belief that the U.S. command released Korean forces from front-line duty to suppress the disorder. In fact, the Korean generals were only required to notify the U.S. command when moving troops.

Seoul National University students surveyed in a campus poll last year named the Kwangju incident as the single most unfortunate thing that has happened in Korea since 1945 - more serious to them than the Korean war, in which about 5 million people were killed or died of war-related causes, but which the students do not remember.

* Don Oberdorfer was Washington Post bureau chief for Japan and Korea 1972-75.

See related story by William Sexton on page B5

GRAPHIC: Photo South Korean police in gas masks beating protestor

Document 435

Copyright 1986 The Washington Post The Washington Post
May 25, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: Outlook; C1
LENGTH: 3057 words
HEADLINE: Korean Conundrum; Prosperity Could Bring Down Seoul’s Military Junta
BYLINE: By Don Oberdorfer; Don Oberdorfer, a former Tokyo Bureau chief for The Washington Post, covers the State Department.
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

Two scenes from South Korea tell a story of dramatic change and growing uncertainty:

The symbol of something new in Korean life -- the voluntary surrender of supreme national power -- is a small one-story marble building going up behind high steel gates 20 miles south of the capital. Although few citizens have ever seen it and virtually nothing about it has appeared in the local press, everyone knows it is the intended retirement office of President Chun Doo Hwan, who has promised to relinquish power voluntarily when his term of office is up in March, 1988.

Set amid spring flowers and a pear orchard, the building is the “guest house” of the Il Hae Foundation, which was established late in 1983 as a tribute to Chun. Unlike the current leader, the two previous long-serving presidents of the country, Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee, clung deperately to power despite rising discontent until the first was ousted by a student-backed revolution and the second was assassinated.

A warning of the political turmoil that may lie ahead in South Korea is the pop of tear gas cannisters exploding at an opposition political rally in Inchon. Several thousand students and workers are massed in the streets carrying banners and shouting anti-American, anti-government and anti-opposition party slogans when they hear the cannisters explode; the angry students rush the lines of riot police -- throwing bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Before my burning, tearing eyes the May 3 Inchon rally turns into a fullscale riot, the most serious internal disorder in six years. The police bring up a tank-like vehicle spewing a thick fog of searing “pepper gas,” Korea’s own contribution to crowd control. This only angers the demonstrators, who set fire to a car and spread the fighting over many blocks of the industrial port city where Gen. Douglas MacArthur made his daring landing in the early days of the 1950-53 war.

These two scenes -- one hopeful, one ominous -- are etched in memory from a seven-day revisit early this month to a country that seems desined to be the site of the next Asian political crisis following the triumph of “people power” over entrenched dictatorship in the Philippines. With Chun planning to step down and new forces rising among the opposition, the future of South Korea is up for grabs.

Given a history of 25 years of military-dominated rule and the fact that the generals control nearly all the guns, the odds are good that the future will belong to another military strong man. But such predictions are clouded by several new facts of life here: the broad unpopularity of the current military leader; the deep yearning for political expression‎ after so many years of tight control; the emergence of a urban middle class that has risen out of povery and of a student generation that has no memory of the war.

The struggle for the future is being played out in a land where age-old temples and traditions survive amid a bustling, modern economy -- and where political institutions, having failed to keep pace with the economy, fit neither the old ways nor the new.

My first glimpse of Korea came in August, 1953, as I arrived for an eight-month tour of duty as a U.S. Army lieutenant. “Seoul is in ruins that are as complete as anything I can imagine . . . hardly a permanent building standing with four walls and a roof,” I wrote in my little canvas-covered diary. My first impressions were of “miserable and pathetic” country, hungry children, lean-to hovels and a rugged, beautiful countryside dotted with thatch-roofed houses and walled villages.

When I returned as a journalist for the first time in 1966, economic development was getting underway and the people were becoming accustomed to the military-backed rule of Gen. Park. He had taken over in a coup in 1961 but, under heavy U.S. pressure, exchanged his uniform for a civilian suit and ran for president in direct elections. He won three times in reasonably honest national balloting. Korea in the mid-60’s was no longer rubble-strewn and miserable; but it was poor, with a per capita income of $300 per year.

By 1972, when I returned to the area as Post bureau chief for Japan and Korea, Park was increasingly unpopular and repressive despite abundant signs of economic growth. In the fall of 1972 Park sent tanks into the streets under martial law, scrapping the constitution and direct elections to keep himself in power. I went to Seoul at least 25 times in my three-year tour. The thing that impressed me most toward the end was that Park, though he controlled the guns and police, was so fearful that the halls of his own Blue House were emptied when he walked through them as a precaution against assassins.

By mid-1980, when I went back to Korea again, Park had been gunned down by his own secret police chief across the table at a private dinner and Gen. Chun, once a young protege of Park, was the dominant figure in government after leading a military coup. There was a sense of dismay among Koreans that one military rule was succeeding another. Chun, whose position was shaky, was bidding for U.S. approval which he finally obtained as the first White House state visitor at the beginning of the Reagan administration.

The situation which I found on this month’s trip is an outgrowth of trends that were evident before. Economically the country has continued to grow dramatically, emerging in the past decade as a “middle power” of global importance with a per capita income of about $2,000 per year, which is officially projected to rise to $3,500 in five years’ time. But political growth has not kept pace with the economy.

As in the past, political expression‎ continues to be stunted by secret police and military controls and severe restrictions on the press. But people seem less inclined to accept authoritarian rule now that there is enough to eat and wear. “Below $1,000 per year income, if you eat you won’t complain much,” said Sa Kong Il, a presidential economic adviser who believes that the $2,000 stage is “an awkward period” of national development. One of the country’s leaders, looking out at the Seoul skyline from a 35-story luxury hotel, mused that impatience and even radicalism grow naturally in the shadow of such skyscrapers.

The dichotomy between rapid economic growth and slow political development results in large part from military domination of politics, which arises in turn from the continuing high level of military tension in the bitterly-divided Korean peninsula. The permanent showdown with the communist north, moreover, has been used to justify suppression of dissent or opposition on the grounds of national security.

Korea remains one of the world’s most dangerous powderkegs. Heavily armed North Korea, which has recently acquired more modern weaponry through increasingly close relations with the Soviet Union, has a powerful army of nearly 900,000 troops (by U.S. estimate) across a thin demilitarized zone about as close to Seoul as Rockville is from downtown Washington. In response South Korea maintains a heavily-armed force of about 500,000 troops, which is far larger and more powerful than it would be in the absence of the external threat. In addition, some 40,000 American GI’s remain on duty nearly 33 years after the 1953 armistice, as tangible evidence of a U.S. military commitment to the last non-communist foothold on the mainland of East Asia.

The problem of political transition in the South begins with the weakness of democratic institutions. Although the country has a facade of civilian rule, including civilian ministries and a sometimes fractious but essentially weak National Assembly, the real authority is Chun, a few close aides and a behind-the-scenes ruling group of a dozen or so generals, like Chun four-year graduates of the Korean Military Academy. The generals dominate military decisions and are believed to have considerable influence on many three times in reasonably honest national balloting. Korea in the mid-60’s was no longer rubble-strewn and miserable; but it was poor, with a per capita income of $300 per year.

By 1972, when I returned to the area as Post bureau chief for Japan and Korea, Park was increasingly unpopular and repressive despite abundant signs of economic growth. In the fall of 1972 Park sent tanks into the streets under martial law, scrapping the constitution and direct elections to keep himself in power. I went to Seoul at least 25 times in my three-year tour. The thing that impressed me most toward the end was that Park, though he controlled the guns and police, was so fearful that the halls of his own Blue House were emptied when he walked through them as a precaution against assassins.

By mid-1980, when I went back to Korea again, Park had been gunned down by his own secret police chief across the table at a private dinner and Gen. Chun, once a young protege of Park, was the dominant figure in government after leading a military coup. There was a sense of dismay among Koreans that one military rule was succeeding another. Chun, whose position was shaky, was bidding for U.S. approval which he finally obtained as the first White House state visitor at the beginning of the Reagan administration.

The situation which I found on this month’s trip is an outgrowth of trends that were evident before. Economically the country has continued to grow dramatically, emerging in the past decade as a “middle power” of global importance with a per capita income of about $2,000 per year, which is officially projected to rise to $3,500 in five years’ time. But political growth has not kept pace with the economy.

As in the past, political expression‎ continues to be stunted by secret police and military controls and severe restrictions on the press. But people seem less inclined to accept authoritarian rule now that there is enough to eat and wear. “Below $1,000 per year income, if you eat you won’t complain much,” said Sa Kong Il, a presidential economic adviser who believes that the $2,000 stage is “an awkward period” of national development. One of the country’s leaders, looking out at the Seoul skyline from a 35-story luxury hotel, mused that impatience and even radicalism grow naturally in the shadow of such skyscrapers.

The dichotomy between rapid economic growth and slow political development results in large part from military domination of politics, which arises in turn from the continuing high level of military tension in the bitterly-divided Korean peninsula. The permanent showdown with the communist north, moreover, has been used to justify suppression of dissent or opposition on the grounds of national security.

Korea remains one of the world’s most dangerous powderkegs. Heavily armed North Korea, which has recently acquired more modern weaponry through increasingly close relations with the Soviet Union, has a powerful army of nearly 900,000 troops (by U.S. estimate) across a thin demilitarized zone about as close to Seoul as Rockville is from downtown Washington. In response South Korea maintains a heavily-armed force of about 500,000 troops, which is far larger and more powerful than it would be in the absence of the external threat. In addition, some 40,000 American GI’s remain on duty nearly 33 years after the 1953 armistice, as tangible evidence of a U.S. military commitment to the last non-communist foothold on the mainland of East Asia.

The problem of political transition in the South begins with the weakness of democratic institutions. Although the country has a facade of civilian rule, including civilian ministries and a sometimes fractious but essentially weak National Assembly, the real authority is Chun, a few close aides and a behind-the-scenes ruling group of a dozen or so generals, like Chun four-year graduates of the Korean Military Academy. The generals dominate military decisions and are believed to have considerable influence on many non-military decisions.

The generals have become used to the prerogatives and perks of power and are anxious to protect their privileged status. Yet they realize, according to one of the few outsiders who is in position to know their mind, that they must contend with rising public demand for civilian rule. And they understand too that Chun’s day is drawing to a close.

The central issue in South Korea today, in view of this, is the question of how a new leader is to be selected or elected. Since the campaign for president must start sometime next summer or early fall if there is to be one, only about a year of debate and decision remains before this crucial question should be settled.

Chun, the military leaders and people close to them have insisted on the method devised by Park to keep himself in power, which was continued in Chun’s 1980 constitution: indirect presidential selection by an easily-controlled convention of 5,000 citizens elected from the nations’ wards. This system would maximize the chances for another military figure, such as Chun’s friend and military academy classmate, Gen. Ro Tae Woo, currently president of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, or someone else selected by or at least endorsed by the military.

The major opposition party, on the other hand, is insisting on a return to the pre-1972 practice of direct popular election of the president, calculating that either the controversial Kim Dae Jung, the less militant Kim Young Sam or some other opposition figure would be the public’s choice at the ballot box.

The main leverage of the opposition, which has only a modest position in the national assembly and little access to the controlled press, is public pressure exerted through mass demonstrations and petition drives. But while the traditional activism of Korean students is an asset in exerting this leverage, radicalism or violence places the moderate opposition in a difficult position.

The opposition’s position will be enhanced over the next several years as Korea heads toward the 1988 Olympic Games, which will be held in Seoul. With Korea in the media eye as never before, the opposition feels freer to act, and the government appears wary of cracking down on demonstrators.

The May 3 Inchon rally, which exploded in violence between demonstrators and riot police before speechmaking could begin, severely embarrassed the opposition. Opposition party leaders were dismayed by fighting in the streets and appalled by the anti-American and anti-opposition party slogans carried and shouted by student demonstrators.

The major slogans of the student groups, three student leaders told me, are “Drive Out American Imperialism Hindering National Self-Reliance,” “Withdraw Nuclear Bases Threatening National Survival” and “Drive Away U.S. and Japanese Capital Forcing Recession and Unemployment.”

This anti-Americanism is a sharp break from a past in which the United States played the role of savior and role model. The United States drew the dividing line between North and South at the end of World War II, intervened militarily to repel the North Korean attack in 1950-53, aided the country economically throughout most of its remarkable growth spurt and has continued for three decades to provide a nuclear umbrella and other security guarantees that may be essential to South Korea’s continued survival.

Nearly everyone I questioned on the matter, Koreans and Americans alike, said serious anti-Americanism began with a celebrated incident of six years ago this month -- the brutally-suppressed uprising in the provincial city of Kwangju in which about 200 people were killed as Chun cemented his power. Seoul National University students surveyed in a campus poll last year named the Kwangju incident as the single most unfortunate thing that has happened in Korea since 1945 -- more serious to them than the Korean war, in which about 5 million people were killed or died of war-related causes, but which the students do not remember.

Because of Kwangju, Chun is seen as having come to power with blood on his hands and since he has never acknowledged error or apologized he cannot be forgiven. For many Koreans the United States was partly responsible as well, because of the widepread belief that the U.S. command released Korean forces from front-line duty to suppress the disorder. In fact, the Korean generals were only required to notify the U.S. command when moving troops.

U.S. officials have insisted for years that they had nothing to do with the Kwangju suppression and that it was never the U.S. intention to contribute to the killing of Korean civilians, but a clear and emphatic official statement along these lines has been lacking. Repeated appeals by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul for an official statement disassociating the United States from Kwangju have been vetoed in Washington, evidently because of a desire not to embarrass Chun.

A keen sense of disappointment about the recent U.S. role was evident in conversations with Koreans I have known for many years. One of them summed up this view by saying, “We remember Americans as the ones who saved us from the North and helped us out of poverty. We wore U.S. Army blankets for coats against cold winters in this country, and we cheered the U.S. ambassador’s car as it moved through the crowds to tell Syngman Rhee he had to step down in the interest of democracy. But since there has been Kwangju and you’ve stuck close to Chun, and we have a really different feeling.”

Whatever influence the United States has in South Korea -- and Washington officials insist it is less than most Koreans believe -- will be severely tested as the country sorts out its political future in the coming months. The U.S. Embassy in Seoul has been counseling compromise and moderation. But Shultz’ public statements during his recent trip to Seoul seem to have made that role more difficult by seeming to endorse all that Chun is doing, while saying harsh things about the opposition.

History and geography give the United States a huge stake in South Korea as it approaches a crucial transition. But the Reagan administration’s policy, at this point, seems to be little more than “Back Chun.” This approach hasn’t been adequate or successful in the recent past, and it may be courting disaster in Korea’s increasingly uncertain future.

Document 436

Copyright 1986 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
May 22, 1986, Thursday

SECTION: News in Brief; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 69 words
HEADLINE: S. Korean students seize US information building
DATELINE: Seoul
BODY:

Students seized the US Information Service building in the southern port city of Pusan yesterday and caused extensive damage before they were overwhelmed by police, authorities said.

Protesters unfurled banners from windows denouncing the South Korean government and US ‘‘imperialism,’’ and recalling the Kwangju uprising of May 1980. The student-led revolt in the provincial capital was put down by the Army.

Document 437

Copyright 1986 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
May 22, 1986
LENGTH: 285 words
HEADLINE: Koreans ejected from US centre / Youths briefly occupy American cultural centre in South Korean port of Pusan
BYLINE: From our Correspondent
DATELINE: TOKYO
BODY:

Amid widening protests with an anti-American theme, the United States Cultural Centre in the South Korean port of Pusan was briefly occupied yesterday by 20 youths before riot police ejected them.

The youths, armed with steel pipes and sticks, seized the library and an office, according to a police spokesman, and demanded to see the US consul general.

The protest slogans and placards reflected a growing anti-Americanism sentiment in recent demonstrations against the Government of President Chun Doo Hwan, which has United States backing.

One placard displayed by the intruders, believed to be student activists, called for the continuation of the May 1980 uprising in the city of Kwangju. That event seems destined to haunt President Chun: as army strongman he directed the troops who put down the rebellion.

Last Sunday riot police used tear gas to disperse anti-Government demonstrators following memorial services in Kwangju to mark the sixth anniversary of the civilian revolt against martial law. The official death toll in the revolt was 193, but Christian groups say the real figure was much higher.

The victims of the Kwangju uprising were also remembered on Tuesday at Seoul National University, where several thousand students held a rally which turned into a battle

The police moved in to disrupt a speech on the Kwangju revolt by a leading dissident, the Reverend Moon Ik Hwan. The clergyman, who heads a South Korean popular movement for democracy, was arrested yesterday for allegedly instigating the anti-government protest in which one Seoul student died after setting himself alight.

Tuesday’s suicide was the third at the university in recent weeks.

Document 438

Copyright 1986 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
May 19, 1986, Monday

SECTION: International; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 679 words
HEADLINE: South Korea’s ‘two Kims’ - allied opposition leaders who differ over pac of political reforms
BYLINE: By Steven B. Butler, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul
BODY:

Kim Young Sam thinks the South Korean opposition has the government running scared, and that the realization of democracy in South Korea is now within sight.

Speaking in an interview Sunday, on the sixth anniversary of a violent uprising in the city of Kwangju, the opposition leader predicted that the government of President Chun Doo Hwan would soon be forced to give in to opposition demands for democratic reform.

‘‘If this government does not revise the Constitution,’’ Mr. Kim says, ‘‘it will have no way to continue governing the country.’’

The Kwangju anniversary was marked by scattered protests in Seoul and Kwangju. Over 200 protesters, were detained in Kwangju. A group of students there broke up the opposition party’s memorial service. The opposition claims the disruption was orchestrated by the government but the government denies this accusation.

In his home here, Mr. Kim said he was tired but jubilant from a hectic schedule of meetings and public speaking engagements. Until a little over a year ago, Kim was banned from all political activities in South Korea.

In addition to the Kwangju uprising, yesterday marked the third anniversary of the start of a hunger strike that brought Kim close to death. One year later, Kim joined with forces his sometime archrival, dissident Kim Dae Jung, to form an umbrella group for the opposition. Since then, the two have worked closely together.

Kim Young Sam has emerged prominently this year as a powerful speaker and key organizer of a series of opposition rallies to revise the Constitution. He has come into his own with a broad public platform and has grown noticeably more confident and outspoken.

‘‘At the end of last year,’’ Kim said, ‘‘the government refused to consider revision of the Constitution. We started our signature campaign to revise the Constitution on Feb. 12. Then on Feb. 24 the President said he would revise the Constitution in 1989. On April 29 he conceded that it could be revised earlier. This shows what our rallies have achieved.’’

The ‘‘two Kims’’ - they are not related - continue to lead the opposition movement. Although they have maintained their alliance, they differ in political outlook. Kim Dae Jung admits to charges that he is more inflexible. He says the government will use piecemeal compromises for its own propaganda advantage. The opposition, he argues, should push very hard until the government offers meangingful change.

Kim Dae Jung is still legally barred from all political activities in South Korea under the terms of a suspended sentence for sedition. Police have forcibly prevented him from attending any of the mass rallies in recent months. This has isolated him from much of the mainstream political activities and raised questions about his continued leadership of the opposition. Despite these questions, he remains a powerful figure.

His charisma has attracted a fiercely loyal following. Kim Dae Jung is not optimistic that the government will offer meaningful compromises over amending the Constitution, and says the opposition should boycott the next presidential election and take protests to the streets if the election is not held under a system of direct voting.

Kim Young Sam, by contrast, emphasizes how far the opposition has come in a short time, and is confident the government can do nothing to reverse this trend.

South Korea’s National Assembly is expected to convene in a special session next month to take up the question of constitutional amendment. Kim Young Sam says the opposition should go into the National Assembly and negotiate, but it should not give up its strategy of pressuring the government through popular campaigns, including the mass rallies.

The popular campaigns will succeed, Kim Young Sam says, if they continue to be peaceful and moderate. That strategy has been jeopardized lately by the emergence of radical student groups opposed to the moderate opposition. However both Kims say that the students have agreed not to take further action that could embarrass the opposition party.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Students clash with riot police in protest in Seoul last week, AP

Document 439

Copyright 1986 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
May 19, 1986, Monday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 143 words
HEADLINE: Mob Disrupts Korean Rally
BYLINE: Steven B Butler, Seoul
BODY:

An opposition memorial service for victims of the bloody 1980 Kwangju uprising was disrupted by a mob of youths shouting slogans against the moderate New Korea Demoncratic Party yesterday.

The opposition immediately accused the Government of sending in thugs disguised as students and workers to break up the service, although the Government strongly denied the charges.

A split between the moderate opposition and radical students groups surfaced two weeks ago during a rally in the city of Inchon. The rally degenerated into a six-hour battle between police and students.

Opposition leaders Kim Dae-Jung and Kim Young-Sam, however, both indicated at the weekend that efforts to patch up the quarrel with student groups had made progress and that radical students had decided not to take further steps to embarrass the moderate opposition.

Document 440

Copyright 1986 The New York Times Company The New York Times
May 19, 1986, Monday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 10, Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 174 words
HEADLINE: AROUND THE WORLD; Anniversary Rally Broken Up in Korea
BYLINE: AP
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea, May 18
BODY:

Policemen fired tear gas at anti-Government demonstrators trying to gather today for a rally on the sixth anniversary of the Kwangju uprising, and a local news agency said 120 people were arrested.

Earlier today at a cemetery outside Kwangju, about 1,000 people attended a memorial service for victims of the rebellion.

Government officials have said 191 people were killed in May 1980 during nine days of fighting when soldiers entered this city to crush the revolt, but opposition leaders have said the death toll was much higher. Critics have said President Chun Doo Hwan, a general who emerged as South Korea’s strongman after the uprising, was responsible for the bloodshed.

In downtown Kwangju, policemen carrying shields threw tear gas canisters whenever crowds began to form near the provincial government building, the scene of the major battle between the student-led rebels and Government forces in 1980.

About 5,000 people remained in the nearby streets until an evening thunderstorm and charging policemen dispersed them.

Document 441

Copyright 1986 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
May 19, 1986, Monday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A3
LENGTH: 428 words
HEADLINE: 120 held by police as Koreans mark revolt
BYLINE: (AP)
DATELINE: KWANGJU, SOUTH KOREA
BODY:

KWANGJU, South Korea (AP) - Up to 120 people were reported arrested as police fired tear gas at anti-government demonstrators trying to gather yesterday for a rally on the sixth anniversary of the Kwangju uprising.

Earlier, at a cemetery outside Kwangju, about 1,000 people attended a memorial service for victims of the nine-day May 1980 rebellion.

Government officials have said 191 people died during the fighting when troops entered this city of 1 million to crush the revolt, but opposition leaders have said the death toll was much higher.

They claim that President Chun Doo-hwan, a general who emerged as South Korea’s strongman after the uprising, was responsible for the bloodshed.

In downtown Kwangju, police carrying shields threw tear gas cannisters whenever crowds began to form near the provincial government building, the scene of the major battle between the student-led rebels and government forces six years ago.

About 5,000 people remained in the nearby streets until an evening thunderstorm and police charges dispersed them.

Nine relatives of victims killed in the revolt threatened to stage a sit-in on the boulevard leading to the government building. They were arrested after an elderly man threw a rock through the window of a police bus.

One of those arrested was Park Bong-rim, 38. She said her son, Bang Kwang-bun, was 13 when he was shot and killed by soldiers while playing with friends at a reservoir outside the city.

“Give my son back,” shouted Park, wearing a white funeral robe, as she was taken away in the police bus.

About 70 other people were seen being taken away in police buses. Among them was Rev. Sin Giak-sik of the local YMCA chapter.

He had started a sit-down strike after police sealed off the YMCA and pushed away people trying to enter the building. Sin’s followers, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” were dispersed by tear gas.

The Yonhap news agency reported that at least 120 people were arrested in the protests. Kwangju is located 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of Seoul.

Burned effigy

The memorial service at the cemetery was disrupted briefly when members of radical student and workers groups grabbed the microphone away from a senior official of the main opposition New Korea Democratic party.

After shouting anti-government and anti-American slogans, the demonstrators burned an effigy of Chun bearing a sash inscribed “Killer Chun.”

Representatives of the Victims Families Association then took the microphone and called for restraint and reconciliation.

GRAPHIC: Photo Chun Doo-hwan

Document 442

Copyright 1986 The New York Times Company The New York Times
May 18, 1986, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 4; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 39 words
HEADLINE: STUDENTS PROTEST IN SEOUL
BODY:

Riot policemen arresting a demonstraor as hundreds of protesters tried to hold an anti-Government march to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Kwangju uprising, in which at least 191 people died in 1980, in South Korea. (AP)

Document 443

Copyright 1986 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
May 18, 1986, Sunday, SUN

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. B2
LENGTH: 556 words
HEADLINE: South Korean police battle students on revolt’s anniversary
BYLINE: (AP-REUTER)
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

SEOUL (AP-Reuter) - Riot police fired tear gas to disperse anti-government protesters who gathered at two universities and on downtown streets yesterday to mark the sixth anniversary of the Kwangju uprising.

In Kwangju itself, about 50 young Roman Catholics occupied a church office for several hours in an anti-government protest with one threatening to jump to his death if police tried to evict them, witnesses said.

At least 191 people were killed in Kwangju in May 1980 during nine days of violence between police and residents before the uprising was put down by the military. Government opponents say President Chun Doo-hwan, who at the time was emerging as South Korea’s strongman, was responsible for the bloodshed.

Pope leads vigil for Pentecost

VATICAN CITY (Reuter) - Pope John Paul II last night led 100,000 Roman Catholics in a candlelight Pentecost vigil in St. Peter’s Square on the eve of the birthday of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope himself. The date, which comes 50 days after Easter, is considered the birthday of the church and by coincidence, May 18 is the Pope’s 66th birthday.

Jets almost collide in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP) - Two airliners taxiing on intersecting runways nearly collided yesterday at O’Hare International Airport, forcing one of the jets to take off early and roar over the other, federal officials said. “It could have turned into a disaster,” said Mort Edelstein of the Federal Aviation Administration. No one was injured, and the planes continued safely to their destinations, he said.

Arkansas girl killed by tornado

HOUSTON (AP) - Waves of violent thunderstorms hammered western Arkansas and central Texas yesterday, spinning off tornadoes and killing a 14-year-old girl when a tree toppled by high winds slammed into her Arkansas home as she slept. In Killeen, Tex., a tornado hit the central business district, lifting the roof off a cement mixing company’s offices and damaging fire department vehicles across the street, officials said.

Punjab leader to clean shoes

NEW DELHI (Reuter) - Punjab’s chief minister agreed yesterday to clean the shoes of devotees for a week as punishment for ordering a police raid on the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple. The Press Trust of India said the five Sikh high priests imposed the traditional form of punishment for serious religious misconduct on Chief Minister Surjit Singh Barnala at the Golden Temple complex.

14 killed in Sri Lankan battles

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuter) - Fourteen people were killed yesterday in battles between government troops and Tamil separatist guerrillas in northern Sri Lanka, security sources said. The national news agency Lankapuvath said that in one battle, guerrillas attacked the region’s main military base at Jaffna Fort. Aircraft flying in and out of the base came under fire, it said.

Finns sign deal in 7-week strike

HELSINKI (Reuter) - Union leaders yesterday accepted a compromise settlement ending a seven-week strike by 42,000 Finnish state employees which disrupted both commerce and communications. The union of state employees originally demanded pay rises of up to 20 per cent, which it said would give its members parity with the private white-collar sector. Officials said employees would begin returning to work today and tomorrow.

Document 444

Copyright 1986 The Washington Post The Washington Post
May 18, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: First Section; A26
LENGTH: 124 words
HEADLINE: S. Korean Police Disperse Protesters
BYLINE: From news services and staff reports
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

Riot police fired tear gas to disperse antigovernment protesters who gathered at two universities and on downtown streets to mark the sixth anniversary of the Kwangju uprising, in which at least 191 persons were killed.

In downtown Seoul, witnesses said 300 to 400 students scattered leaflets in an area heavily reinforced by riot and plainclothes police officers. As soon as the students swarmed out of side streets into a broad thoroughfare, police fired tear gas to disperse them. Witnesses said some demonstrators were beaten.

About 600 students squared off with riot police at Korea University, while several hundred demonstrators clashed with police at Yonsei University following Kwangju memorial services, students said.

Document 445

Copyright 1986 The New York Times Company The New York Times
May 16, 1986, Friday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 15, Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 309 words
HEADLINE: SEOUL STUDENTS AND POLICE CLASH
BYLINE: AP
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea, May 15
BODY:

Students and policemen clashed with gasoline bombs, stones and tear gas on at least four Seoul campuses today in an intensification of violence three days before the anniversary of a 1980 protest against martial law.

At Yonsei University near downtown, about 500 students were chanting ‘‘Down with imperialism!’’ and other anti-Government slogans when 500 riot police entered the campus. Witnesses said students hurled more than 150 gasoline bombs in the melee, which continued for about an hour. There was a strong smell of tear gas.

At Korea University about 400 students battled riot policemen at the campus gate for two hours before withdrawing to a barricaded library. Students also burned effigies in military reserve uniforms and other materials they said symbolized the United States.

No Reports of Injuries

Similar clashes were reported at two other universities in Seoul and in another provincial university, student sources said.

More than 10,000 students took part in similar clashes and rallies Wednesday on at least 33 campuses, the English-language Korea Times reported.

There were no immediate reports of arrests or injuries in any of the incidents. Anti-Government violence has erupted on campuses throughout the spring.

Sunday is the sixth anniversary of the Kwangju uprising, when rebels protesting martial law seized the southern provincial capital of Kwangju for several days until they were suppressed by soldiers.

Meanwhile, the opposition New Korea Democratic Party conluded its investigation today into disturbances in Inchon on May 3, and renewed its charges that Government authorities provoked the incident.

The party said there had been a deliberate Government effort to split the political opposition and other dissident activitists while hindering the party from holding a scheduled anti-Government rally.