Re:ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOURCES ON 5.18 350~397

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Document 350

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
December 19, 1987, Saturday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 1; Column 4; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1046 words
HEADLINE: ANTI-REGIME PROTESTS SPREAD IN SOUTH KOREA
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Anti-government protests spread Friday in Seoul and the southwestern Cholla region, challenging the victory of Roh Tae Woo in Wednesday’s presidential election.

National police headquarters reported more than 1,100 demonstrators had been detained over two days in Seoul alone. They included 993 students and dissidents who had occupied the Kuro district office building and vote-counting station in Seoul for two days, holding about 100 officials hostage. Police retook the building in a massive assault Friday morning.

Late Friday, the official Central Election Management Committee issued the final vote count, showing Roh Tae Woo first with 8.28 million votes (36.6%), Kim Young Sam second with 6.34 million (28%), Kim Dae Jung third with 6.11 million (27%), and Kim Jong Pil fourth with 1.82 million (8%).

Roh Suggests Meetings

Roh called for individual meetings with each of the three major defeated candidates but received no immediate response.

The second and third finishers, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, rejected the election results Thursday, charging electoral cheating by Roh’s ruling party. They vowed to overturn the results and backed a protest campaign launched by the dissident National Coalition for Democracy.

At midday Friday, several hundred students engaged in a sharp, brief clash with riot police in the Myongdong district in downtown Seoul. After stopping traffic and hurling several volleys of rocks and gasoline bombs at the police, they were dispersed with tear-gas grenades. Two police substations were attacked during the fighting.

Later, at the Christian Broadcasting System building, a center for religious and anti-government organizations, including the National Coalition for Democracy, a larger street battle broke out. Several rounds of tear gas were fired into the lobby of the building, and students filled the streets outside, chanting anti-Roh slogans.

Throwing bricks from a nearby construction project and paving stones pried out of the sidewalks, they battled police to a standoff as their supporters cheered them on from the balconies of the broadcast building. At dusk and after heavy tear-gas barrages, the protesters melted away.

In Kwangju and some other major cities of the Cholla region, Kim Dae Jung’s power base, demonstrations continued Friday. In Kwangju, protesters threatened foreign journalists on the streets, accusing them of not fully reporting the election fraud which, they contended, stole the election from Kim Dae Jung.

Protests in 12 Cities

Except for pronouncements by Roh and President Chun Doo Hwan, his political sponsor, the politicians largely turned the agitated aftermath of the fiercely fought election over to the protesters, who took to the streets in 12 cities.

Chun, an unpopular president who leaves office Feb. 25 in what is billed as South Korea’s first peaceful turnover of power, declared in a statement: “Everyone should humbly accept the will of the people. The winner should warmly embrace the losers, while the losers should heartily congratulate the winner.”

With the election past, he warned, “The administration will now sternly deal with any and all illegal and disorderly acts that disrupt everyday life and inconvenience innocent people.”

Reconciliation Move

A spokesman for the ruling Democratic Justice Party said Roh plans to establish next week a commission of about 50 citizens “from all walks of life” to discuss ways to reconcile South Koreans after the bitter campaign. The No. 1 issue, the spokesman declared, will be how to heal the scars of the Kwangju incident, the bloody military repression of an anti-government uprising there in 1980.

Meanwhile, Lee Dai Soon, the ruling party floor leader in the National Assembly, reasserted the party’s plan to reform the assembly law and carry out a National Assembly election in February. The opposition favors electing new assemblymen in April. By moving earlier, Roh’s party could catch the opposition still disheartened and divided.

The most dramatic development of the day was the police assault on the occupied district hall in Kuro. Students, primarily supporters of Kim Dae Jung, had held the building since election day when they found election officials with a ballot box hidden under some bread boxes in a pickup truck. Declaring the situation apparent evidence of fraud, the student poll watchers seized the box and the officials.

At 6:30 Friday morning a force of more than 4,000 riot police moved against a crowd of nearly 1,000 students in and around the building. Students on the roof of the five-story structure hurled gasoline bombs and roof tiles down on the advancing police, who fired rifle-launched tear-gas grenades under protection of riot shields.

Fight Room to Room

The battle lasted more than two hours, with police and students fighting with clubs, rocks and their hands, room to room, until the final holdouts were captured on the roof. Authorities reported 36 people were injured, most of them policemen.

Before charging the building, the police pushed air bags against the sides to try to prevent serious injury to anyone who jumped from the roof or out of an upper window. Nevertheless, one policeman was seriously injured when he fell from a ladder at the third-floor level when students threw firebombs at him. Yang Won Tae, a student who jumped from the fifth floor, broke both legs.

In the building, which was trashed by the fighting and earlier by students seeking material for barricades, police found the captive district officials unhurt, and three sealed ballot boxes.

For some South Koreans, the election led to self-inflicted violence:

-- Hoh Ki Yong, 38, a neighborhood association leader in Seoul, was critically burned Thursday when he soaked himself in gasoline and lit it. The newspaper Chosun Ilbo said Hoh shouted as he tried to immolate himself: “I have received 25,000 won ($31) from the ruling party during the election. Fraudulent elections should be ended even at the cost of my life.”

-- Kim Su Chol, a member of Kim Young Sam’s party, tried but failed to disembowel himself with a straight razor in despair over the failure of his party leader and Kim Dae Jung to agree on a single opposition candidate to face Roh.

GRAPHIC: Photo, A bleeding anti-government protestor is dragged away by Seoul riot police. Associated Press; Photo, At left, demonstrator hurls a gasoline bomb, and police fire tear gas into a Seoul vote-counting station, which they retook from dissidents. Election protesters took to streets in 12 cities. Reuters

Document 351

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
December 18, 1987, Friday, Final Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A34
LENGTH: 618 words
HEADLINE: Kwangju Police Disperse Kim Backers’ Protests
BYLINE: Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea, Dec. 17, 1987
BODY:

Riot police fired dozens of volleys of tear gas today to disperse about 2,000 rock-throwing students who began gathering in the center of this opposition stronghold to protest yesterday’s bitter election defeat of favorite son Kim Dae Jung.

This city, scene of some of the most ferocious antigovernment protests in the past, was bracing for a possibly larger outbreak of violence on Friday. Students and members of the defeated opposition are scheduled to hold a rally then to protest what Kwangju residents say was massive election fraud by the ruling party on behalf of its presidential candidate, Roh Tae Woo, who won the country’s first direct election since 1971.

The rising tempers and the sporadic street battles, which continued into the night, seemed to be the exceptions to what so far is an unexpected mood of resignation, accepting that even if isolated cases of voting irregularities did occur, Roh’s victory margin was too wide to attribute to election-rigging.

“The people here are confused,” a second-year college student said.

Today’s demonstrations were far smaller and more tame than expected, particularly compared to the street protests of June. Also, some longtime observers here noted that today’s protests seemed confined mainly to student groups, attracting few local residents. Most of them darted into stores and restaurants with handkerchiefs covering their faces to avoid the choking tear gas.

“We want to go out and protest, but they are firing tear gas everywhere,” said a florist in the southwestern section of town. “We can’t do anything.”

Others, however, remained defiant and promised to take to the streets.

“If the people continue to protest, Roh will have problems,” said a supporter of Kim who owns a record and video shop in the same part of the city.

“I don’t think this election was very fair,” said the Rev. Byun Han Kyu, a Presbyterian minister. “I guarantee we will have violent action, demonstrations in the street. This will not be temporary. It will continue for a long, long time.”

While most of those residents who were asked accused the government of massive cheating, their anger appeared somewhat tempered by fear that popular protests may bring only violence. Most residents here said they did not want to see a repeat of May 1980, when Kwangju rebelled against President Chun Doo Hwan’s military government and troops responded by killing hundreds of people. Since then, the Kwangju massacre and a desire for retribution have become the driving forces behind this city’s politics and its militant rejection of the military-dominated regime.

“I really wanted Kim Dae Jung to win this election, but I don’t want any kind of demonstrations,” said drug store merchant Chung Shook Ja. “That means I don’t want another May 1980.”

Kwangju residents gave more than 90 percent of their vote to Kim Dae Jung and, driven by their regional pride, seemed convinced that the rest of the country would follow the trend. With Kim placing third, behind Roh and rival opposition leader Kim Young Sam, Kwangju has begun casting about to place the blame.

A few here blame the two opposition Kims for failing to rise above their own personal ambitions and the demands of their followers and settle on a single candidate. “I don’t think this election was fair,” said a laboratory technician at a private medical clinic here. “But there was a failure of unification by the two leaders of the opposition.”

“If Kim Dae Jung had dropped out of the race, he would have been a hero -- a bigger hero than if he were the next president. But instead, he chose the path of stupidity,” said a young graduate student who works part-time as an English translator.

Document 352

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
December 16, 1987, Wednesday

SECTION: International; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 732 words
HEADLINE: S. Korea: hope amid anxiety
BYLINE: Daniel Sneider, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul

HIGHLIGHT: Mood mixed as voters head to polls in presidential elections
BODY:

South Korea’s democratic experiment has reached voting day under fire, but proudly intact.

An estimated 90 percent of the almost 26 million eligible voters are expected to go to the polls in exercise of their hard-won right to directly select their president.

Apprehensions about whether the system will survive now shift to the aftermath. The question being posed is fundamental to any democracy: Will the losers in South Korea’s first free election in 16 years accept defeat?

The two leading opposition candidates have preemptively refused to accept the legitimacy of a ruling party victory. For Kim Young Sam, the election is actually a ‘‘struggle between forces of justice and an antidemocratic clique trying to prolong a military rule.’’

Kim Dae Jung has already ruled out the possibility that ruling party candidate Roh Tae Woo can win fairly. The opposition has asserted that large-scale irregularities are under way. Yesterday Mr. Kim warned, ‘‘I must advise the ruling camp that it will face a tragic end or people’s harsh judgement if it tries to win the election through fraud.’’

On college campuses across the nation, student organizations have already set the time and place for post-election protests should Mr. Roh win.

‘‘We won’t leave him alone,’’ vowed a student leader at the prestigious Yonsei University. They will gather on campus the day after voting, moving into the center of the capital on Friday.

Roh, the man whose victory will be most difficult for Koreans to accept, is naturally sounding a different theme. ‘‘I strongly propose that all the runners solemnly accept the people’s judgment and open a new chapter for national harmony,’’ he told reporters yesterday.

Former General Roh, and other members of the South Korean establishment, will have the opportunity to prove that if either Kim wins. There is widespread skepticism that the military will tolerate such a real change in government.

Government critics contend that Roh’s apparently magnanimous attitude is based on the knowledge that the vast power of the government machinery is being used to ensure his victory. Evidence points to a pattern of government officials at all levels employing tactics of pressure and intimidation on voters.

While the students almost universally believe Roh cannot win by any means than foul, the popular response will depend on the perception of the fairness of today’s vote. The 1960 election was blatantly rigged; and when students revolted, they did so with popular backing, forcing the President Syngman Rhee to resign.

Though most Korean citizens desire an end to military involvement in government, they may also place the burden of blame for a possible Roh victory on the split in the opposition’s ranks. In the heady days of summer when the middle class joined the students on the streets to force democratic reform, the two Kims were united. By October, the two men had decided to go it alone. Though both Kims deny it, many South Koreans believe their lust for power is the crucial factor giving Roh the opportunity for victory, even with manipulation.

Students, who have been demonstrating in recent weeks for the opposition to form a ‘‘single candidacy,’’ do not deny the Kims’ responsibility. ‘‘But the split between the two Kims will not be reason to stop students and other sympathizers from rising up,’’ says the Yonsei leader. He acknowledged that they are concerned whether the citizenry will back them. ‘‘If citizens don’t seem to cooperate, we will have to rethink our strategy.’’

Korean observers will anxiously watch the reaction of the citizens of Cholla, the southwest region that is expected to vote 80 to 90 percent for favorite son Kim Dae Jung. A Kim defeat, perhaps even by opposition candidate Kim Young Sam, could trigger unrest in Cholla.

The Army may intervene there in response to even small-scale protests, fearing a repeat of the massive 1980 revolt in Kwangju, the largest city in Cholla. Army troops quelled that rebellion, killing hundreds of citizens.

Ominously, Yonsei students have been filling an auditorium to the rafters four times a day for the past week to watch an underground film containing banned footage of the Kwangju massacre.

Outside the campus, however, there is still great optimism that this election will bring real change that all South Koreans can live with.

GRAPHIC: Picture 1, South Korea’s moment of truth. Voters head to the polls today for the country’s first direct presidential election in 16 years. All eyes are on the three main candidates. Will losers accept defeat?; NEAL MENSCHEL - STAFF; Picture 2, Opposition aspirants Kim Young Sam and, Kim Dae Jung have already refused to accept legitimacy of victory by ruling party’s Roh Tae Woo, JOHN NORDELL; Picture 3, Opposition aspirants Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung have already refused to accept legitimacy of victory by ruling party’s Roh Tae Woo, JOHN NORDELL; Picture 4, Opposition aspirants Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung have already refused to accept legitimacy of victory by ruling party’s ROH TAE WOO, NEAL MENSCHEL - STAFF

Document 353

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
December 16, 1987
LENGTH: 1095 words
HEADLINE: South Korea thirsts for political stability
BYLINE: From JASPER BECKER
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

The rival opposition Mr Kims traded insults yesterday on the eve of South Korea’s presidential elections today amid fears of post-election violence.

Mr Kim Dae Jung accused Mr Kim Young Sam of being ‘immoral’. The latter had demanded on Monday that Mr Kim Dae Jung withdraw from the race.

‘I have always suspected Kim Young Sam might lack principles and morality,’ Mr Kim Dae Jung said yesterday, revealing that Mr Kim Young Sam’s party had printed a leaflet saying Mr Kim Dae Jung is ‘likely to withdraw’ and support his rival.

‘It was the most shameful act. No other presidential candidate in Korean history has ever done such a thing’ Mr Kim Dae Jung charged.

Mr Kim Young Sam’s camp shrugged off the charges as evidence of panic.

After 30 years of fraudulent elections and military-backed rule, the scene in the city of Chonju last Thursday was as typically Korean as kimche, the picked cabbage eaten here every day.

Chanting slogans and hurling rocks, a mob of South Korean youths attacked riot police amid smoke from burning fires and exploding teargas canisters. More than 100 people were injured in the fighting.

‘Who cares who wins this election, as long as we have political stability at last?’ a matronly woman said to a group of people who had dived into her house to escape flying rocks and were contemplating the scene from her roof.

Everyone laughed, some bitterly. For whatever happens today, when 26 million South Koreans vote in the first open presidential election in 16 years, few believe the outcome will be a stable democracy.

The month-long campaign has been a glorious national drama played with passion by the emotional Koreans and with every trick in the book: pork-barrelling, sex scandals and the cliff-hanger suspense of last-minute negotiations on a single opposition candidate.

Yet by Korean standards, the campaign has been open and the voting and balloting is expected to be fair.

If the results do bring stability, the repercussions for the rest of the world could be significant. Handing on the outcome are next year’s Olympic Games, a relaxation of military tension with North Korea, and a reduction of the 40,000 US troops here, with implications for the whole region.

Nowhere is the Cold War colder than along the demilitarised zone between the Koreas, where one million soldiers confront each other in a war that has never officially ended.

Against a background of growing detente between Moscow and Washington, and support from Peking, the new South Korean President might hope for a breakthrough in the stalemate with North Korea, perhaps symbolised by North Korea’s participation in the Olympic Games.

Six months ago South Korea looked as if it was going to pass its exams and join the club of liberal free market democracies, crowning its economic success and the international recognition brought by hosting the Olympic Games.

In the euphoria last June, when Mr Roh Tae Woo, President Chun Doo Hwan’s hand-picked successor, astounded everyone by yielding to anti-government unrest and promising direct presidential elections, a peaceful transfer of power seemed within reach. It also seemed as if the opposition might easily win.

Instead, it has fled into two camps, and the three leading candidates have engaged in a bitter name-calling campaign inflaming regional rivalries.

From such a close race, no one may emerge a clear winner. In the absence of reliable polls, some pundits even believe that the 55-year-old Mr Roh is the frontrunner. He has the support of the ruling military and business elite, as well as that of his prosperous home province of North Kyongsang.

The ruling party’s financial and organisational muscle has been his chief asset, but he has had to try, perhaps unsuccessfully, to distance himself from the little-loved Mr Chun. A former general and classmate of Mr Chun, he helped Mr Chun to power in 1979 and, by association, is held responsible for the bloody suppression of the Kwangju uprising in 1980.

A reminder of the North Korean threat - the timely arrival yesterday of the woman suspected of blowing up the South Korean airliner two weeks ago - will boost his chances in the poll.

Violent student protests and an uprising in Cholla South province, where the Kwangju incident took place, are expected to follow. The riots in Chonju (in Cholla North) are a foretaste of what might happen. Mr Kim Dae Jung, a native of Cholla, has more or less threatened to make the country ungovernable if Mr Roh is elected.

Recognising this, Mr Roh has offered to hold a referendum after the Olymlpics if he wins. A common patriotic desire to make a success of the Games may restrain some from opposing his rule until then.

Mr Kim Dae Jung, who can count on the almost total support of the less prosperous Cholla region, has blown up inter-regional antagonisms into a main threat to South Korea’s stability. By comparison, issues such as economic policy, the rich-poor gap, and North Korea, have faded into insignificance.

Mr Kim Dae Jung is by far the most impressive of the three main candidates and is the choice of the working class and students. Peasants may also vote for him if they believe his promise to cancel the farming debt.

His charismatic powers as an orator and his refusal to compromise have won him the most ardent supporters, although he has only been able to create a party organisation within the past month. His supporters throw donations at his rallies and pass on the bribes from the ruling party. ‘Kim Dae Jung, First President of the World’, read a banner at a rally on Sunday.

Mr Kim Dae Jung has had to live down reputations as a Communist and as a capitalist as greedy as the rest. He is regarded with deep hostility by the military.

In the middle is Kim Young Sam, a conventional politician supported by the middle class and his home province of south Kyonsgang. His campaign peaked two weeks ago, when he was regarded as the frontrunner.

But since then his rivals have tried character assassination. They have flooded the country with stories of womanising and of financial support from the fringe religious cult known as the Moonies. Also, a blunder which seemed to point up that he did not know the difference between withdrawing US nuclear weapons and closing nuclear power stations has not helped.

Only the results will show whether floating voters will polarise to choose either Mr Roh or Mr Kim Dae Jung, or whether they will move to the middle and elect Mr Kim Young Sam.

Document 354

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
December 15, 1987
LENGTH: 485 words
HEADLINE: Army on alert for S. Korean poll
BYLINE: From JASPER BECKER
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

South Korea’s police and army were put on maximum alert yesterday as the opposition presidential candidate, Mr Kim Young Sam, made a final plea to his rival to drop out of tomorrow’s race.

Mr Kim Dae Jung should make ‘a courageous decision’ to ‘ensure the end of military rule’ urged the other Kim who claims to be the front-runner.

The appeal was ignored but a lesser opposition candidate, Mr Paek Ki Won, did withdraw. Shedding tears at a press conference, he blamed himself for failing to pull together ‘a grand coalition of democratic forces’. Contrary to expectations he did not endorse the campaign of either Kim.

With the oppossition camp divided, the ruling Democratic Justice Party has predicted an easy victory for its candidate, Mr Roh Tae Woo. Yesterday, the party broke election rules by revealing the result of an ‘objective’ poll which allegedly showed Mr Roh leading by 1.5 million votes.

The DJP, however, suffered a setback when the Minister of Construction, Mr Lee Kyu Hyo, resigned in disgrace yesterday.

Fearing possible violence, the authorities announced that armed police were being stationed at each of the 13,657 balloting and counting stations around the country. The General Prosecutor, Mr Lee Jong-Nam, also ordered a harsh crackdown on anyone caught destroying ballot papers or boxes, fabricating votes or setting fire to election centres.

The country’s 800,000-strong military is already on high alert against attempts by North Korea or ‘impure elements’ in the South to subvert the election.

The campaigning, which ends today, has been marred by mob violence, slander, bribery and intimidation, but Western diplomats believe the actual balloting and counting will be clean.

The DJP is said to have personally contacted every Korean of voting age with a mixture of gifts and threats. Mr Kim Dae Jung has alleged that a soldier was beaten to death for voting for him in the absentee ballot already held among servicemen.

The Ministry of Defence described such allegations as a ‘malicious campaign tactic,’ adding that the young recruit died of head injuries when he fell backwards after being pushed on the chest by one of his seniors in a disciplinary action.

Mr Kim Dae Jung has also accused Mr Roh of taking part in the 1980 Kwangju incident in which he asserted 1,000 died when the military brutally suppressed an uprising. The official death toll was 193.

The whole country has been so caught up in the campaigning that prices of food, daily necessities and construction materials have risen. So many people have been attending rallies that shipments of vegetables have stopped, pushing up costs.

‘Gift offensives’ have emptied supermarkets of beer and whisky and the prices of construction materials have shot up by as much as 30 per cent because of the surge of new building projects started on the basis of election promises.

Document 355

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
December 14, 1987, Monday

SECTION: International; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 955 words
HEADLINE: Long shadow of S. Korea’s military
BYLINE: Daniel Sneider, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Seoul

HIGHLIGHT: Army denies it will meddle in vote, though temptations exist
BODY:

The South Korean presidential election is shadowed by the persistent fear that the powerful military will not abide by its results.

The strong possibility of an opposition victory over ruling-party candidate Roh Tae Woo in Wednesday’s election, has spawned a flood of rumors about Army plots.

Opposition candidate Kim Dae Jung charged Friday that he had information that ‘‘a few Army generals’’ are preparing to act during or after the vote. (Related campaign story, Page 9.)

There is no evidence, sources familiar with the South Korean military say, of actual military preparations for intervention. But the reports have been taken seriously enough to prompt US officials to reiterate American opposition to a military move. Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur, in a speech on democratization in Asia, warned last week: ‘‘We cannot foresee any circumstance under which the election would have to be postponed or canceled.’’

Privately, South Korean officials have reacted angrily to the Sigur speech as favoring the opposition. ‘‘He doesn’t know what is going on here,’’ said a senior Defense Ministry official. He pointed to antigovernment violence by radicals during the campaign. Mr. Sigur, he said, ‘‘should condemn the antidemocratic, violent ... forces which are agitating to disrupt’’ the process.

Korean police officials say they are preparing for attacks by radicals on voting places, including attempts to burn ballot boxes, in the event the ruling party appears to be winning. According to Korean press reports, the Minister of Defense, Chung Ho Yong, has ordered the Army onto a ‘‘special vigil’’ to be prepared for ‘‘possible provocations by North Korea’’ and ‘‘disorder by subversive elements’’ during the election period.

Officials deny, however, any military plans to intervene to change or overrule the election outcome. ‘‘Our military is a peoples’ military,’’ says Hyun Hong Choo, deputy secretary-general of the ruling Democratic Justice Party. ‘‘They will respect whatever the people think is right.’’

Thus the fact that military intervention would be rejected by the vast majority of South Koreans - no matter what the pretext - seems a major constraint.

‘‘At this stage, their public policy is to accept the results,’’ says a longtime observer of the Korean military. ‘‘But it is very easy at a later stage to say the situation has changed. ... Security is a bona fide issue but they will use it for other objectives.’’

The expert cites two basic factors that might tempt the military to ‘‘veto’’ the results of the election.

Firstly, since the 1961 military coup led by General Park Chung Hee, the officer corps has acquired substantial positions of power and influence throughout Korean society. Secondly, senior officers connected with the current government of President Chun Doo Hwan fear reprisals for incidents during their rule.

‘‘The major issue,’’ says the expert, ‘‘is the survival of the society as they have known it, in which their position is secure.’’

Aside from their direct role in politics, military men have spread into positions of economic leadership. According to a survey by Prof. Ahn Yong Sik of Yonsei University, half the board members of 26 government-funded firms including the major electrical utility, the largest television network, coal companies, and agricultural marketing firms, are military men. Former generals are fixtures in many large private firms as well.

The fear of reprisals is most associated with the so-called Kwangju incident of May 1980, in which military troops brutally crushed a popular revolt against martial law. Hundreds, some say more than a thousand, were killed. The issue has been a constant theme of the campaign, particularly that of Kim Dae Jung. He is the candidate most feared by the armed forces. He is considered a radical, even a ‘‘pro-communist,’’ and the man most likely to overturn their privileges.

But in recent weeks, the possibility of a military ‘‘veto’’ may have been extended to the more moderate opposition candidate Kim Young Sam as well. The reason, the longtime observer says, is Mr. Kim’s threat to prosecute members of the senior military command for their involvement in an intra-military takeover in 1979.

The issue surfaced with the surprise endorsement of Kim Young Sam by former Army Chief of Staff Chung Sung Wha. Mr. Chung was arrested on Dec. 12, 1979, along with other officers, by Chun Doo Hwan, who then headed the Defense Security Command, the military’s internal security arm. Candidate Roh was at that time the commander of the Army’s 9th Division and his troops were used in what Chung says was an illegal Putsch. Chung was charged with involvement in the October 1979 assasination of President Park Chung Hee.

Chung has written and spoken extensively on this matter, reminding voters of Roh’s military past and undermining his attempt to cultivate an image as a democrat. Support for Roh has been slipping in the last few weeks and party officials acknowledge Chung’s role in this.

More seriously, Kim Young Sam’s Reunification Democratic Party has issued propaganda which threatens to court martial those involved in the ‘‘military coup.’’ A leaflet passed out last week contained a list of the names of 30 military men, described as ‘‘the key members of the Dec. 12 incident who should have been harshly punished as traitors of democracy.’’ The target list includes Chun, Roh, and numerous other members of the military high command and government.

The military, analysts stress, is by no means monolithic in its views. ‘‘There is a tremendous consensus for seeing this through to the end,’’ comments one Western diplomat. ‘‘It is a consensus supported by most soldiers.’’

GRAPHIC: Picture 1, Seoul military parade in September: Will Army show its force if opposition wins Wednesday vote?, NEAL MENSCHEL - STAFF; Picture 2, Roh, shielded by aides, at rally last week: foes criticize his military past, AP

Document 356

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
December 14, 1987, Monday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 6; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1112 words
HEADLINE: VOTE FRAUD WOULD RENEW MAJOR S. KOREA PROTESTS, KIM DAE JUNG WARNS
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Populist presidential candidate Kim Dae Jung, rousing a teeming crowd at his final major rally, warned Sunday that election fraud by the ruling party would return massive demonstrations to the streets of South Korea.

The 63-year-old opposition leader, his voice hoarse from the hard campaign for Wednesday’s presidential contest, called on authoritarian President Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, his handpicked ruling party nominee, to abandon what Kim charged were plans to steal the election.

“Look at the many people here,” he demanded, standing on a huge yellow speaker’s stand above a crowd estimated at more than one million. “Surrender to their will. If you don’t and if you continue to rig the election, the people who rose up in June will rise again.

“You will go the way of Syngman Rhee and you will become another Choi In Kyu.”

‘A Warning’

Kim labeled his message a “stern warning.”

The dictatorial Rhee, South Korea’s first president, was driven from power by student demonstrations in 1960, and Choi, his home affairs minister, was executed by the successor regime of Prime Minister John M. Chang for election manipulation under the Rhee government.

Kim accused Roh’s campaign workers of buying with cash and free food a massive crowd that heard the ruling party candidate speak Saturday in Seoul. He ridiculed the “forced” turnout as a “third-rate comedy.”

Responding to charges of fraud by Kim Dae Jung and his opposition rival, Kim Young Sam, a spokesman for Roh’s ruling Democratic Justice Party, declared:

“The two Kims, realizing they’re fighting a losing game with only three days to go to the election, are showing their unwillingness to submit to the election result.”

Watchdog Group

But on the last Sunday of the campaign, the opposition kept the focus on the issue of fraud. At the proposal of the fourth major candidate, Kim Jong Pil, his New Democratic Republican Party; Kim Dae Jung’s Party for Peace, and Democracy and Kim Young Sam’s Reunification Democratic Party formed a unified watchdog committee to scrutinize the balloting.

An official of the combined effort by the rival opposition groups said multiparty teams will be formed to watch the voting, transportation of the ballot boxes to counting centers and the counting itself. Any evidence of irregularities by the ruling party would be shared, he said.

Kim Dae Jung stirred his followers with a 55-minute speech at a large park on the south side of Seoul. He coupled his warning against ballot fraud with promises to head a forgiving government if elected.

One focus was the 1980 Kwangju uprising and its brutal repression by Chun’s military forces, a burning issue with Kim Dae Jung, whose support is centered in the southwestern city of Kwangju and the surrounding Cholla region.

Hate Sin, Not Sinners

“I am asking that the true picture of the Kwangju incident be revealed, that honor be restored to its victims,” he declared. “But for the sake of political stability, I will not punish anybody (involved in the suppression) . . . because I don’t hate the sinners, though I hate the sin; I don’t hate the dictators, though I hate dictatorship.

“I can forgive Roh (then a general and a close associate of Chun) for the Kwangju incident. But at this juncture of the last opportunity to achieve democracy, if Roh intends to become president through unfair elections,” he added in an unspecific threat, “I will punish him.”

Kim’s campaign has alarmed some government and military officials who fear the vengeance of the opposition leader -- jailed, harassed and once sentenced to death by the Chun government -- if he is elected. But Sunday, Kim vowed that no one had reason to worry. He said that if elected, he would remove Chun’s top-level officials and reverse government promotion practices that have discriminated against people from the Cholla region, but he would not prosecute anybody for what he called crimes committed by the Chun regime.

Neck-and-Neck Race

The crowd, constantly interrupting his speech by chanting his name, cheered his repeated pledge to free and restore the civil rights of prisoners jailed for political offenses, “except for Communists.”

His followers, filling the grounds and covering the roofs of buildings on the former air force academy site, gave an air of celebration to the afternoon rally. His earlier rallies, no less enthusiastic, had more of an underdog atmosphere. But in the last week, political analysts here have said Wednesday’s balloting, marking South Korea’s first direct presidential election in 16 years, has become a neck-and-neck race among Roh, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam.

Cho Yoon Hwong, Kim Dae Jung’s campaign manager, surveyed the huge throng and boasted to a reporter that his candidate would pull 10 million votes, at least two million more than the analysts predict for the winner.

“He has sacrificed himself for the country. He’s consistent in his policies,” declared Kim Duck Bo, a 33-year-old construction worker in the crowd, a professed fence-sitter until he decided for Kim last week.

After the rally, tens of thousands of Kim’s supporters marched through the city to Seoul’s main railway station, where the candidate spoke again. There was no violence at either rally, nor at appearances by other presidential candidates.

Roh, campaigning in his hometown, the central city of Taegu, drew another big crowd. “The coming presidential election has deepened conflicts among the people,” he declared, blaming the bitter competition between the two Kims. “A lot of people are worried about the aftereffects.”

If elected, he said, he would try to mend fences with the opposition. “I am not a narrow-minded person,” Roh said. “I will respect the opposition leaders as political elders and will listen to their opinions.”

Whistle-Stop Motorcade

Kim Young Sam led his campaign on a 12-hour, 200-car, whistle-stop motorcade from his hometown, the port city of Pusan in the south, to the Imjin River just below the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. He termed it “a great democratic march” designed to promote national reconciliation and eventual reunification with the north.

Meanwhile, in a press conference this morning, dissident Paek Ki Wan withdrew his presidential candidacy, as he had promised Saturday, after his failed initiative to persuade Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam to agree on a single major opposition candidacy. Paek did not say which candidate he and his supporters, mostly leftist students, would support.

A summer pledge by the two Kims to settle on a single candidacy against Roh melted in October, dividing the opposition.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Giant likeness of Roh Tae Woo at candidate’s rally in Taegu. Associated Press

Document 357

Copyright 1987 The San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego Union-Tribune
December 14, 1987, Monday

SECTION: NEWS; Ed. 1,2,3,4,5,6; Pg. A-1
HEADLINE: Election debate touches Korean community here
BYLINE: Ann Levin; Tribune Staff Writer election in 16 years.

“You want to ask me about fish, it’s OK,” says Moon, manager of the Zion Food Market on Convoy Street, San Diego’s biggest Korean grocery store.

“Business people don’t want to talk politics, just business,” says Moon, scurrying off between neat stacks of 50-pound rice bags.

While that may be true, Moon’s reluctance to talk has something to do with 25 years of military rule in South Korea.

Years of political repression in their homeland have left a mark on the small community of Koreans and Korean immigrants in San Diego County. The 1980 U.S. census counted Koreans here at 2,394, but Koreans say there are nearly 10,000 today, many of them small-business owners like Moon.

Unlike brash Americans, Koreans worry about expressing political views to strangers until they are sure those views won’t harm themselves or family members in Korea.

Rumors abound that President Chun Doo Hwan keeps an army of spies in California to monitor anti-government activity. Stories fly about friends who went home to work for the opposition and were subject to back income-tax audits or unable to get children into schools.

But once the initial reluctance to talk politics is overcome, Koreans here seem as evenly divided on the presidential issue as they are in Korea, where pollsters predict a photo-finish Wednesday among the three top contenders.

One striking difference is between the students of the two nations. According to Ernie Lee, president of the Korean-American Student Association at the University of California at San Diego, the 300 to 400 Korean students on the UCSD campus are more interested in their studies.

This is in contrast to South Korean campuses, where students have played a major role in forcing the government to hold open, democratic elections.

Sally Kim, a naturalized U.S. citizen employed at General Dynamics, isn’t afraid to hold forth on this week’s momentous events.

Eyeing a row of brightly colored lipsticks in a cosmetics store next to the Zion Food Market, Kim says she prefers Kim Dae Jung, the kimono-clad leader who inspires millions of Koreans with a Kennedy-esque charisma. president. People have the chance to do it now for a change, to speak their mind.”

Korean commerce is clustered along this stretch of Convoy. Next to Zion are a cosmetics shop and video store owned by Moon’s relatives. There is a Korean restaurant, Cho Won, and a beauty salon, Seoul City Sue.

Around the corner on Balboa Avenue at the Japanese sushi bar Roppongi, aerospace engineer Se-Tak (Steve) Chang says that professionals are more intensely interested in politics than business people, and San Diego has more of the latter.

Though Chang refuses to announce publicly his favorite candidate for fear of reprisals, he says Korea has moved so far along the road to democracy that it cannot turn back.

“Last summer people said we have the right to live as human beings,” Chang says, referring to the riots last June that forced the Chun government to accept direct presidential elections.

“That won’t change no matter who’s president. No one can challenge the goal that we’re going to be a democratic system,” Chang says.

Along the same commercial strip another Korean businessman who asks to remain anonymous for fear of adverse publicity says he prefers opposition candidate Kim Young Sam, the upper-crust politician who attended elite Seoul National University.

He compares Kim Dae Jung, the son of poor rice farmers, to a piece of bamboo that is always upright and straight, but he says that Kim Dae Jung’s weakness is an inability to compromise. Kim Young Sam, he says, would be able to lead a government based on consensus.

The government candidate, Roh (pronounced no) Tae Woo, has his supporters, too. These people fear that an opposition victory would threaten the economic prosperity of recent years. Proud of Korea’s export-driven economy, they don’t want to rock the boat.

“The people in San Diego support the present government. It’s doing just fine,” says Dr. Donam Hahn Wakefield, director of the East-West Cultural Study Center in Mira Mesa.

“The government brought up the Korean standard of life. That’s all we’re concerned about,” she says. Western forms overnight. We’re approaching it slowly.”

Last summer’s mass demonstrations forced Chun to abandon the Mexican-style political succession that would have let him handpick his old friend and Korean Military Academy classmate, Roh, as the next president.

The two were young generals together when they led a military revolt in 1979 against the government of Park Chung Hee. Roh is accused by the opposition of having played a role in the bloody Kwangju massacre in 1980 when government troops killed hundreds of civilian protesters.

Observers have wondered out loud if the military would permit a victory by Kim Dae Jung, the strongest symbol of government opposition. Kim Dae Jung evokes in his followers an emotional reaction similar to the fervor inspired in this country at different times by Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

Larry Krause, a professor of Pacific Rim studies at the University of California at San Diego, says Kim Dae Jung is “probably the smartest and the most charismatic,” but also the most threatening to those who crave stability and order.

Krause predicts that the election “could go any way.” If Roh wins, Krause said, student radicals will occupy the streets. If their protests don’t subside within a few days, he says the government will put them in jail.

If Kim Dae Jung wins, Krause speculates, the risk will come after the Olympics. Then, if the economy is faltering and it appears that the opposition leader can’t get anything done, the military will step in.

Koreans are split over who should lead their country, but most are united in the desire to show off Korea’s astonishing economic progress to the rest of the world during the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

Dr. Byong Mok Kim, a physician at Scripps Memorial Hospital, is the chairman of a local Olympics support committee.

“We should be able to support whoever wins to accomplish the Olympics without incident,” he says.

But politics in South Korea tend to be a life-or-death matter. Two men recently burned themselves to death to protest the failure of the two Kims to field one opposition candidate against Roh, a move that many say will lead to a Roh victory. Kims have drawn 1 million screaming supporters to political rallies.

Against this dramatic backdrop, some analysts fear that the military dictatorship will refuse to give up its power while others are hopeful that Korea is on the threshold of Western-style democracy.

The Rev. Jong Lee of the Young Nak Presbyterian Church in Linda Vista is one of the hopeful. Religious leaders in Korea -- Buddhist, Catholic and Protestant -- are a key element in the opposition.

Lee says that even some members of the military believe that the time has come to turn the reins of government over to civilians.

“I think not many people like the present government, the Chun government, because he is a person from the military,” Lee says. “This time people are anxious to have a civilian. In my personal opinion, even if Kim Dae Jung got elected, the military would follow the civilian government.”

GRAPHIC: 1 PHOTO BYUNG MOON RELUCTANT TO TALK POLITICS - But Koreans here keep an ey

Document 358

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
December 13, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 18; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 912 words
HEADLINE: S. KOREA OPPOSITION ASSAILS ROH’S ROLE IN 1979 MUTINY
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Major opposition candidates Saturday lashed out at the role of ruling party nominee Roh Tae Woo in a 1979 military mutiny and the brutal repression of a 1980 civilian insurrection.

As the hotly contested campaign for the South Korean presidency entered its final weekend, the opposition standard-bearers campaigned in Seoul and the provinces, and all the major candidates made their final television appearances, bidding for votes in Wednesday’s election.

Kim Young Sam, nominee of the Reunification Democratic Party, toured his hometown of Pusan, where he told supporters:

“Eight years ago today, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo staged a mutiny. . . . They ousted their superior, threatened the president and took power. We cannot forget that night of terror. One of them (Chun) became our president and the other is now running for president.”

Roh Backed Takeover

In the Dec. 12, 1979, mutiny Roh, then head of the 9th Infantry Division, ordered elements of his command into Seoul to back the overthrow of the armed forces chief of staff. Five months later, on May 17, 1980, Chun, with Roh’s support, took power in a coup.

Kim’s main opposition rival, Kim Dae Jung, campaigning in the central city of Taejon, accused Roh of plotting with Chun and other generals to provoke an insurrection in the city of Kwangju the next day,
May 18, by brutally attacking demonstrators protesting Chun’s coup. Suppression of the demonstrations and subsequent insurrection was designed “to rationalize their illegitimate takeover of power,” the leader of the Party for Peace and Democracy declared in a statement.

The third major opposition candidate, Kim Jong Pil, told a rally here in the capital that Roh “was one of the key figures who masterminded the so-called Dec. 12 incident of 1979,” which he said “blocked the progress of the nation and smeared its constitutional history.”

All three Kims accused the ruling party and its presidential candidate of planning to steal Wednesday’s election by fraud. Kim Jong Pil demanded that Roh withdraw his candidacy immediately for what he called “deceitful electioneering.”

In other developments Saturday:

-- The Defense Ministry admitted that a 21-year-old corporal died of barracks violence on Dec. 4 but denied the charge of Kim Dae Jung’s party that he was beaten to death for voting for Kim on an absentee ballot.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said the soldier, Chong Yon Gwan, was shoved by a superior in a disciplinary dispute and suffered fatal head injuries when he fell. The spokesman called it a “pure accident.”

A fatality at the hands of authorities, the police-torture death of a university student last January, was a leading cause of the student unrest that led to June’s nationwide demonstrations and President Chun’s grudging acceptance of Wednesday’s direct presidential elections, South Korea’s first in 16 years.

-- Police raided 31 university and college campuses in Seoul and neighboring cities Friday night to deter possible student protests at Roh’s big Saturday rally in the capital. Searching student halls, club offices and other facilities, officers seized nearly 900 gasoline bombs, iron rods, political leaflets and other materials.

Seoul Police on Alert

In Seoul, police were put on maximum alert and 21,000 riot policemen were deployed at rally sites. A planned rally protesting the Dec. 12, 1979, mutiny was banned, and hundreds of green-uniformed riot police patrolled the site throughout the day.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Chung Ho Yong announced that he has ordered a military alert to guard against any move by the army of Communist North Korea to disrupt the election. Western diplomats said earlier in the week there had been no sign of unusual movements north of the demilitarized zone that divides the two Koreas.

-- Kim Jin Ki, a former army provost marshal who lost his job in the wake of the 1979 mutiny, joined Kim Young Sam’s party. He was the second major military figure of the incident to throw in with Kim. The first was Chung Seung Hwa, the army chief of staff ousted by the mutiny.

A fourth candidate campaigning Saturday, dissident Paek Ki Wan, told a rally of student supporters that he intends to withdraw before election day because his initiative to get Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung to agree on a last-minute, single opposition candidacy has failed.

Minor Candidate Withdraws

Meanwhile, a minor candidate, Kim Son Jok of the Unified Democratic Party, pulled out of the race Saturday and threw his support to Roh, reducing the field to six.

One of the more controversial statements of the day came from Kim Dae Jung, who said that about 1,000 civilians were killed by the military in the 1980 Kwangju uprising, attributing the figure to former U.S. Ambassador William Gleysteen, who headed the American Embassy here at the time. Kim is a native of the Cholla region, and he has made the 1980 killings in Kwangju, the region’s principal city, a centerpiece of his campaign against military-dominated government here.

Roh’s ruling Democratic Justice Party immediately demanded that Kim produce evidence for his charge. The government puts the figure at 194.

Gleysteen told reporters here on a visit last January: “We talked to everybody, and I think our conclusion was that we couldn’t really tell. But that at the time . . . it seemed for sure that the number was not more than 1,000. Maybe more than 200 but less than a thousand.”

Document 359

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
December 9, 1987, Wednesday

SECTION: Opinion; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1246 words
HEADLINE: The Dec. 16 challenge of Korean democracy
BYLINE: Ben Blaz;Ben Blaz, Guam’s delegate in the US House of Representatives, is a retired Marine Corps brigadier general who served in Korea during the ‘‘police action’’ there. He sits on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs and the House Armed Services Committee.
DATELINE: Seoul
BODY:

IT is the best and worst of times for South Korea. For the first time in 16 years, voters on the strategic peninsula are set to cast ballots for the direct election of a president, a momentous step that could pave the way for a peaceful transfer of power from military to civilian rule.

But the election also is fraught with dangers that jeopardize not only the transition to democratic rule but also the stability and security of the region. Much that is vital to that nation’s political and economic development and the continued strength of the United States alliance in East Asia hinges on the outcome of the Dec. 16 vote.

The challenge to Korean democracy is how to end authoritarian rule and ensure a stable transition to genuine democratic leadership by bringing about reconciliation between military and civilian leaders and overcoming regional rivalries.

The people of South Korea clearly want an end to the military dictatorship. The decision by incumbent President Chun Doo Hwan, following protracted, large-scale civil protests, to allow the election is the clearest sign that the military’s rule is no longer acceptable to the electorate.

Equally clear is the general agreement that democracy is long overdue in South Korea. At the same time, the people and leaders there want social and political stability and continued economic prosperity, with a balanced sharing of benefits.

The 1988 summer Olympic Games, with South Korea as the host, have focused an international spotlight on the political process, adding a scrutiny and urgency seldom felt here.

Roh Tae Woo, the candidate of military government and a retired Army general, was designated the choice of the ruling party - the Democratic Justice Party - by incumbent President Chun Doo Hwan. A former classmate (Korean Military Academy) and confidant of President Chun, Mr. Roh served in several Cabinet positions before he was appointed chairman of the government party.

As a major general, Roh participated in the coup of 1979, which brought the current regime to power, and he was in charge of the Defense Security Command at the time of the 1980 Kwangju incident, when government troops massacred 200 civilian protesters.

His campaign, which has been hard hit by violent demonstrations whenever he has ventured into opposition territory, has been aimed at trying to distance himself from the current regime, projecting a fatherly image, and assuring voters of his ability to rein in the Army. His public appearances have been greeted by sparse to medium crowds and punctuated by hostile or sullen audiences. He has used these incidents to warn that an opposition victory would result in chaos.

But he has powerful advantages: virtually exclusive use of government-run television and the backing of government economic policy, which has been holding down inflation while increasing pork-barrel and welfare benefits for farmers, labor, and regional constituencies.

Kim Dae Jung, one of the two major opposition candidates, is the product of turbulent Korean politics. He was made prominent by the media’s reporting on his repression by successive military governments, which viewed him and his followers as dangerous radicals. He claims the mantle of ‘‘chief martyr’’ in a nation that honors the unswerving commitment of the zealot and highly values personal sacrifice ‘‘for a cause.’’

He broke with the main opposition party a few weeks ago when it became clear the Reunification Democratic Party would nominate his chief rival. Kim Dae Jung has formed his own splinter group. At 63, he
May well view this as his last chance. He has called for an investigation of the Kwangju incident to prosecute those responsible. He is seen by some critics as a ‘‘populist troublemaker’’ whose campaign focus has raised the specter of retaliation against the Army and whose election would, in turn, invite military retaliation. The current Army chief of staff, for example, has been widely quoted in the Korean press as warning that Kim Dae Jung’s election could trigger a backlash by those who fear retaliation.

Kim Young Sam, the 59-year-old chairman and candidate of the major opposition party - the Reunification Democratic Party - campaigns on his record of government and party leadership and position as a moderate, who opposes military rule, but urges the politics of reconciliation.

Since first elected to the National Assembly as the youngest representative ever, he has served three times as the chairman of the major opposition party. He has been suppressed by both the Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan dictatorships, the latter banning him from political activity from 1980 to 1985. His strongest appeal is to Korea’s middle-class voters.

His focus on reconciliation politics was sharpened recently by the endorsement of a former chief of staff of the South Korean Army, Gen. Chung Sung Hwa. General Chung was jailed during the 1979 coup that brought the current regime to power. He opposed the coup and military rule but retains considerable influence among South Korea’s military leaders. His support is believed to signal that Kim Young Sam would be able to keep the Army out of politics and strengthen civilian rule.

Clearly, a unified opposition behind a single candidate would have the best chance to defeat the government party candidate. There is, therefore, an understandable concern that the split between the major opposition leaders increases the chances for a Roh Tae Woo victory.

Given the dynamics of the campaigns for the opposition candidates - the intense competitiveness and the presidential ambitions - it is quite possible there will not be a unified opposition.

Any candidate, regardless of party, must be able to demonstrate pragmatism, not zealotry, toward the national regional factions as well as the military. He must be able to show he has enough support in the Army to forestall any thoughts of a coup. Yet hU must be committed to strengthening civilian rule and broadening the base of democratic support for the new government.

Part of the answer lies, I believe, in recognizing the positive contributions of the Army in defending the nation during the early 1950s and protecting the state from the northern threat, maintaining the political stability that has allowed South Korea’s economic miracle.

Moreover, the regional antagonisms between the southeastern and southwestern provinces, deeply rooted in history and previous colonial rule, will play a significant role. Kim Dae Jung’s base of regional strength lies in the rural, underdeveloped, and generally poorer southwestern region, while Kim Young Sam and Roh Tae Woo are from the more prosperous Southeast. These alignments fuel resentment and fear that one region will suffer under an administration headed by a leader from the rival region.

Because of these factions and factors, the outcome of the vote is difficult, at best, to predict. Whoever wins faces a herculean task of reconciliation at this critical period in the nation’s development. Indeed, because of these complexities and the continuing demonstrations and campaign violence, it is even possible the election could be called off or the new government ousted in an Army coup.

The 25 million voters of South Korea face an immense challenge in a highly volatile situation at this historic crossroads. Their response will shape the future not only of their development but also their alliance with us and the region.

Document 360

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
November 30, 1987, Monday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 8, Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1104 words
HEADLINE: Seoul Candidate Faces Violence at Kwangju Rally
BYLINE: By SUSAN CHIRA, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea, Nov. 29
BODY:

In the worst outbreak of violence yet in this country’s presidential campaign, the ruling party candidate, Roh Tae Woo, dodged rocks, sticks and tear gas canisters today as he faced crowds aflame with bitter memories of the harsh Government suppression of a 1980 uprising here.

At the same time, the largest crowds of the campaign jammed into a plaza in Seoul to cheer Kim Dae Jung, an opposition candidate for president whose stronghold is Kwangju.

The huge turnout in Seoul clearly stiffened Mr. Kim’s resolve to stay in the race. Standing before crowds estimated at one million, Mr. Kim called on his chief opposition rival, Kim Young Sam, to withdraw in his favor for the Dec. 16 election.

The crowds in Seoul also heard a former general reveal new details of the Kwangju uprising of 1980, which left nearly 200 dead by Government count and 2,000 by the opposition’s tally.

Also Attacked on Last Visit

The repercussions of today’s violence in Kwangju were not clear. Some disturbance was to be expected in Kwangju. The city has long been vehemently anti-Government, and Mr. Roh was also attacked on his last visit here, in October, when relatives of the Kwangju victims pelted him with eggs and tear gas.

A volley of rocks and eggs forced Kim Young Sam to cut short a rally in Kwangju two weeks ago. President Chun Doo Hwan has already issued a stern warning against campaign violence, which had largely subsided in the last two weeks.

Mr. Roh played down the disturbance in Kwangju. But the sight of a crowd here chanting Kim Dae Jung’s name and throwing rocks, together with the huge turnout for Mr. Kim in Seoul, may raise fears among Government and military officials, who despise Mr. Kim and label him a demagogue.

Surrounded by a phalanx of guards holding clear plastic shields, wooden placards and metal folding chairs to protect him, Mr. Roh today appealed for calm as rocks and sticks sailed through the air and landed on the speaker’s platform.

At Least Three Hurt

Mr. Roh was not hurt, but at least three people, including a ruling party legislator and a reporter for a Korean newspaper, were injured. His bodyguards’ suits were wet with broken eggs.

‘‘Please calm down,’’ Mr. Roh shouted to the crowd of tens of thousands of people, which responded with boos and volleys of rocks. ‘‘I have already given in to you through the June 29 declaration.’’

On that day, Mr. Roh pledged sweeping democratic changes after nearly three weeks of widespread anti-Government protests.

Undeterred, the crowd interrupted Mr. Roh’s speech with cries of ‘‘Murderer!’’ Many people here charge Mr. Roh with complicity in the events of May 1980 because he was part of a group of military officers who seized power in December 1979 and who were able to consolidate that power after crushing the Kwangju uprising.

Prepared for Trouble

Mr. Roh and his entourage came to Kwangju prepared for trouble. He flew here this morning and was driven swiftly to a well-guarded hotel high in the hills of the city.

As he approached the railway station where his rally was scheduled to be held this afternoon, he moved from his bus to an open jeep. Hundreds of bodyguards and young men wearing headbands surrounded the jeep as the crowd booed him, their shouts of ‘‘Kim Dae Jung!’’ drowning out his supporters’ chorus of ‘‘Roh Tae Woo!’’

The crowd began pelting Mr. Roh’s car with eggs, rocks and sticks. They burned his campaign leaflets and placards, and the acrid smell mixed with stinging tear gas as demonstrators threw small gas grenades at the platform. The police did not charge the protesters’ lines until after Mr. Roh left the rally.

His face red and his eyes half-shut against the powerful tear gas, Mr. Roh raced through his prepared speech. He called for reconciliation and pledged to promote economic development in a city that has largely been shut out of the fruits of South Korean economic progress.

‘‘People of Kwangju, I believe that it is time now to forget the unhappiness of the unfortunate past and move toward reconciliation,’’ he said. ‘‘I will put all my heart into solving the Kwangju problem.’’

Less than 15 minutes after he arrived, Mr. Roh left the rally in a closed jeep and sped off toward the hotel as crowds threw rocks and sticks at the motorcade.

‘Democracy Is Difficult’

While one of his aides denounced the violence in Kwangju as unjustifiable, Mr. Roh said in an interview that it was necessary for him to brave the hostility and visit Kwangju in the spirit of national reconciliation.

‘‘Democracy is difficult,’’ he said. ‘‘I am prepared for even worse situations. I am prepared to endure to the end. I am ready to sacrifice myself for democracy.’’

He added: ‘‘There are areas where I get more support and areas where I get little support. This is one of the areas where I get little support. This is only a small part of our 40 million populaion. There were many Kwangju people who stayed home and were not violent. I think the people responsible for the violence will regret it as time goes by, and the response of Kwangju people will get better.’’

In Seoul, the crowd remained orderly during hours of speeches and a three-hour walk from the vast plaza in the southwestern Yoido section to the downtown plaza near City Hall. Tens of thousands of supporters marched through streets as onlookers jammed pedestrian overpasses and leaned out windows to cheer.

Chung Ung, a former general who commanded an infantry division in Kwangju during the 1980 uprising, told the crowd that his superiors had ordered him to suppress the demonstrations harshly. He described a meeting of senior military and politicial officials here in which the officials vowed to ‘‘teach Kwangju a lesson’’ by crushing the uprising.

Plans No Retribution

Mr. Kim told his audience that only he could heal the wounds of Kwangju and called for a thorough investigation, although he said he would not seek retribution.

Gesturing to the huge crowd, Mr. Kim said the turnout proved the nation supported him, and he called on Kim Young Sam to withdraw, promising that if he did, members of his party would have a place in a Kim Dae Jung cabinet.

‘‘In the coming presidential election, Kim Dae Jung has already triumphed,’’ Mr. Kim said of himself. ‘‘Our great people have already triumphed. Let us rejoice! There is no one in the world who can prevent our victory.’’

A spokesman for Kim Young Sam, however, clearly rejected the call to withdraw. ‘‘The support of the people is for the Reunification Democratic Party only,’’ the spokesman said, referring to Kim Young Sam’s party.

GRAPHIC: Photo of Roh Tae Woo (South Korea) (Reuters)

Document 361

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
November 22, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 5; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1247 words
HEADLINE: MIX OF IDEALISM AND COMIC BOOKS; IN KOREAN CAMPAIGN, IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

The “Commoner of Yonhidong,” dressed in a blue business suit and carrying a pennant promoting democracy, strides across the cover of a comic book that is making the rounds in South Korea.

Who is this man, caricatured with Dumbo ears and flashing the victory sign? Why, it’s Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party’s presidential nominee, just an ordinary citizen of Yonhidong, a neighborhood in western Seoul. Or so it says in his campaign comic book.

But isn’t Roh the former general, the man who helped move troops to Seoul to support a December, 1979, army mutiny that set the stage for a military coup five months later? Well, yes, but his image-makers would rather depict him as the friend of democracy and the common man who, on June 29, threw his support behind far-reaching reforms for South Korea.

“We’re pursuing the trinity idea,” explained Chin Kyung Tak, deputy director of the ruling Democratic Justice Party’s publicity bureau. “June 29 equals democratization equals Roh Tae Woo. By doing that, we will reduce his image as a military man.”

At the respective headquarters of opposition politicians Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, the image-makers are busy, too, approving posters and campaign slogans and thinking about delivering their message through tape recordings and videotapes.

The Dec. 16 election, the country’s first open presidential test in 16 years, promises both ballyhoo and high political drama. The opposition seeks to shake off decades of repressive, military-dominated rule. The two Kims were among the victims. The ruling party seems determined to change its stripes, promoting Roh’s June 29 call for an open, democratic system as a response to “the people’s will.”

The result is a mix of idealism and gloss, ambition and comic books.

Lee Man Woo, the jovial general administrator of Kim Young Sam’s campaign, recently laid out the approach of his candidate: “First, to present him as a fighter for the opposition in the struggle to overthrow the military government.”

Kim’s comic book, entitled “24th Hour at Sangdodong (his Seoul neighborhood),” recounts his tribulations as a longtime member of Parliament under a succession of military strongmen, but it accents the image of a moderate, a man of the middle supporting gradual change and clean government. The implication is that there would be no change with Roh and radical change with Kim Dae Jung.

On the cover of the comic book -- 300,000 copies were printed -- Kim is shown smashing with his fists and feet boards representing the authoritarian constitution of the late President Park Chung Hee and last spring’s refusal by the current president, Chun Doo Hwan, to reform the constitution. (Chun since has reversed himself.)

In person, gray has returned to Kim Young Sam’s once-dyed hair, befitting a man of presidential stature. His followers raise their hands with thumbs and index fingers making a circle, the other fingers held straight out. The message is zero-three, in the Korean language pronounced Young Sam. This is new for this campaign.

Military Man

Roh’s staff has a bigger problem with image-building. Their man was handpicked by Chun to succeed him in the presidency. He was a career military man until 1981, when Chun moved him into government. And he lacked the name identification of the two Kims, whose long struggles were well known even though they were non-persons in the government-controlled press.

And just as the official campaign got under way recently, the December, 1979, mutiny came back to haunt the candidate as the opposition demanded a full accounting of his role. His explanation of the incident at a press conference did not satisfy his rivals. For Roh, at least in image-making, it has been tough from the start.

“Frankly,” said Chin, the publicity bureau official and former journalist, “just after June 10 (when Roh was nominated), we were in a difficult position. The students and riot police were clashing in the streets. I was disappointed about our prospects.

“But then came June 29 (when Roh endorsed direct elections) and the situation changed. I got calls of support from my college and newspaper friends.”

That date -- June 29 -- produced the Roh campaign’s strategy. The Roh comic book, “The Commoner of Yonhidong,” depicts the candidate as a man who made “a lonely and heroic decision,” Chin said.

The military image remains the biggest problem; steps are being taken to counteract it.

Returning from his trip to Washington and Tokyo in September, the candidate was seen on television newscasts carrying his own briefcase, not having it toted by an aide as a general might. The impression was deliberate.

“Let me put it this way,” Chin said. “A candidate is no longer a private person. He belongs to the public. There’s some stage-acting involved.”

One Roh poster, labeled “Promise for the Future,” shows the candidate listening attentively to a young girl. Another is a caricature of Roh with oversized ears, a spinoff from a June press conference in which an American television correspondent set up his question by saying: “Mr. Roh, they say you’re a man with big ears. . . . “

None of the campaign posters shows Roh with Chun, a military hard-liner.

The third major candidate, Kim Dae Jung, is pitching his campaign to reflect his longtime struggle against military rule and what he sees as his unique capacity to bring about reconciliation. His staff calls it the three Cs -- for courage, conscience and capacity. A videotape in preparation is entitled “Conscience in Action.”

Kim, a native of the Cholla region, was arrested and convicted of sedition for an alleged role in planning the Kwangju uprising of 1980, brutally put down by Chun in a display of military power that earned him the undying hatred of the region’s people.

Kim says that only he can heal the wounds. But his antipathy to military government has brought him under such heavy propaganda attack that his campaign staff faces a struggle in erasing the radical image it projects. Their strategy is to look past it, to accentuate the positive.

The Color Yellow

Yellow is the dominant color in Kim’s posters. It is said to represent hope and stability, and, perhaps by coincidence, it was the color of Philippine President Corazon Aquino’s successful campaign against dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Inaugurating his new Party for Peace and Democracy recently, Kim unveiled the party banner -- a white dove in a black circle on a yellow field. As he has in recent appearances, the candidate wore a traditional black Korean gown, which appeals to the nationalism of his followers.

All the opposition candidates -- including former Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil -- face two basic problems in their campaigns -- money and media access.

“They’ll outspend us a thousand to one,” a press spokesman for Kim Dae Jung said of the Roh campaign.

“It is quite natural,” admitted Chin, the Roh aide, that the ruling party will have access to more funds. None of the campaign staffs would disclose their budgets, but Roh’s machine turned out 500,000 comic books to Kim Young Sam’s 300,000. The comics are aimed at people between 20 and 30 years old who, Chin said, “seem to like them.”

But Chin insisted that the money gap is not as large as the opposition makes it out to be. Kim Young Sam’s campaign is turning out “as much or more (printed material) as we are,” he said, “and the quality is quite high. I can’t believe they have so little money.”

GRAPHIC: Photo, Roh Tae Woo with poster of himself at recent campaign rally. Reuters

Document 362

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
November 16, 1987
LENGTH: 964 words
HEADLINE: Korean Kims war over the spoils of power
BYLINE: From MATTHEW ENGEL
DATELINE: KWANGJU
BODY:

There was a medium-sized incident in Kwangju at the weekend. Violent demonstrations halted an election rally attended by about 70,000 people; 21 people were arrested, a good many were injured and there was considerable criminal damage, mostly to South Korea’s attempted democracy.

There has been worse political violence in this city. The Kwangju incident, an anti-government rebellion in 1980, caused at least 200 deaths. But this was vicious enough and it summed up succinctly the problems this general-infested country faces in getting rid of its military rulers.

The rally was for Kim Young Sam, one of the three Kims opposing the government candidate, Roh Tae Woo, in the presidential election on December 16. However, Kwangju, the largest city in the south west, is the stronghold of his rival, Kim Dae Jung, whose belated change of mind and entry into the campaign threatens to let General Roh win on a majority vote.

Kim Young Sam comes from the south east. His stronghold, Pusan, is only 140 miles away but there is a world of difference between the two cities. ‘If Koreans had divided this country instead of the Russians and Americans’, a political scientist in Seoul explained, ‘we would have split it east and west, not north and south’.

The south east has got the rich pickings ever since the Korean war, particularly under the Park regime of the 60s and 70s. Most of the generals and ministers came from that area and the south west grew resentful. But all other Koreans seem to regard the south-western people as different - a bit backward and thick.

There is an Irish joke aspect to this. But there is a harsh edge to the joking and it veers towards contempt, of the sort the Japanese have for Koreans in general. ‘Where my wife told my prospective in-laws about me’, an Englishman married to a Korean said, ‘their first question was ‘he’s not from that province, is he?’ When she said I was English, they were very relieved.’

The word that keeps recurring about the south-westerners is ‘untrustworthy’. Kim Dae Jung, who after his years of heroic opposition to the military should perhaps be the man of the electoral moment, is seen as the living embodiment of his region’s shiftiness and his change of mind about his candidacy as absolutely classic.

When Kim Dae Jung spoke in Pusan, his opponents smashed all the windows at his hotel. But in Kwangju, he is unassailable, and his supporters took their revenge swiftly and brutally.

Kim Young Sam’s band marched tunefully up the main street to the square in front of the railway station. The home team supporters headed him off at the corner, set about them and smashed their placards; then, using the poles as weapons, forced their way to the front of the crowd.

As soon as Kim Young Sam tried to speak .. ‘Citizens of Kwangju, please be democratic’ .. they hurled the poles, many of them now nicely jagged, at the platform, along with a supply of stones and eggs. The aide next to Mr Kim appeared to be hit. After two minutes, the candidate retreated into his egg-spattered limousine and headed out of town.

It was not that dissimilar - except in scale - to a Saturday afternoon back home, but there was a puzzling side. Busloads of riot police lurked down a side street; they made no attempt to protect the candidate. And the railway square is overlooked by a police post - the desk officer there said he had seen nothing. Had he moved two feet he would have had a grandstand view.

It was an hour after the meeting disintegrated, with chanting groups of Kim Dae Jung supporters now in possession of the square and bonfires of the speaker’s campaign literature blazing everywhere, before plainclothes men finally moved in.

During the ensuing mayhem, a woman stood up in front of the station and announced loudly that Kim Dae Jung was a North Korean spy. That is a brave remark in this town. As youths tried to set about her, the riot police finally charged and lobbed in teargas cannisters.

By the time this correspondent could reopen his eyes, the square was almost empty. Korean teargas leaves an aftertaste not unlike the local pickled cabbage.

Kim Young Sam’s party, when they reached a safer town, blamed the trouble on the Government, ‘in a conspiracy with impure elements’. It was at the very least a stroke of luck for the ruling party; the biased television news, which normally plays down violence, dwelt on the scenes lovingly and prominently - before showing General Roh surrounded by adoring masses.

Kim Dae Jung had a few rocks thrown at him yesterday, while speaking away from his home ground in Tagu. His aides used their placards and an umbrella to fend off the missiles, so he was able to keep speaking. But analysts in Seoul are saying increasingly, though on fairly scanty evidence, that Kim Dae Jung, and the third Kim, Kim Jong Pil, cannot win and can only act as spoilers. This is worrying all kinds of people anxious to avoid a continuation of a much reviled regime.

Outside St Mary’s cathedral in Seoul, the focus of the June disturbances which led to this election, I came across something very strange. Under the statue of the Virgin where 11 Catholic farmers, wearing headbands, sashes and the stone-faced look of Oriental warriors, all on hunger strike demanding that just one Kim, any Kim, should stand to ensure General Roh’s defeat.

This bizzare tableau was perhaps the most graphic denunciation of the first-past-the-post electoral system ever seen.

There was a half-hearted attempt to teargas the farmers too, but they breed them tough here, and they never flinched. The gas is not good for the pre-Olympic tourist trade. I mentioned it to the hotel receptionist. ‘I think it’s dust, sir,’ he replied suavely.

Document 363

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
November 15, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1196 words
HEADLINE: KIM YOUNG SAM RALLY BROKEN UP IN KWANGJU; ROCK-THROWING, CHANTING PROTESTERS FORCE HIM OFF STAGE IN RIVAL’S HOMETOWN
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

Chanting, rock-throwing protesters broke up a political rally Saturday by presidential candidate Kim Young Sam here in the hometown of his rival in the opposition, Kim Dae Jung.

The visiting politician was driven from an outdoor stage at the Kwangju railway station by a barrage of thrown objects accompanied by a chorus of chants for the local favorite. Kim, his appearance delayed 45 minutes by the boisterous crowd, delivered only a brief scolding before departing.

“My great citizens of Kwangju, whom are you doing this for? This will benefit only Chun and Roh,” he shouted over the tumult, referring to President Chun Doo Hwan and ruling party nominee Roh Tae Woo. “I will not speak under these circumstances.”

The leader of the Reunification Democratic Party, whose political break with Kim Dae Jung has split the opposition, then wheeled and left the stage. Aides whisked him to a waiting car, chased by yelling students who knocked over a food stand in pursuit.

Stage Quickly Emptied

The stage emptied within minutes, leaving only placards, sticks, shoes and broken eggs that had been hurled from the crowd.

Neither Kim nor his party officials were injured in the melee, but two Korean news photographers were reportedly hit by rocks.

The violence here came as President Chun, who will leave office Feb. 25, announced officially that the voting for his successor will be held Dec. 16, which he designated a national holiday. The official 30-day campaign period begins Monday, and the Central Election Management Committee will accept registrations until next Saturday.

Without referring to the incident in Kwangju, Chun denounced “the fanning of regional antagonism.”

Trouble had been expected in Kwangju ever since Kim Dae Jung’s aides had been roughed up two weeks ago in Pusan, Kim Young Sam’s hometown. There, about 300 protesters gathered outside Kim Dae Jung’s hotel, brawling with his supporters and throwing rocks through the windows.

The disruption here in Kwangju underlines the bitter rivalry between the two Kims and the historic antipathy between the Cholla region, of which Kwangju is the major city, and Kim Young Sam’s power base in the Kyongsang region and Pusan.

Avoid ‘Unhappy Incidents’

On Friday, Kim Dae Jung had appealed to the citizens of Kwangju to avoid “any unhappy incidents” at his rival’s rally Saturday, his first venture into the Cholla region since the campaign began for December’s presidential election.

Lee Kwang Woo, a local official of Kim Dae Jung’s new Party for Peace and Democracy, insisted Saturday morning that no trouble was expected and said party headquarters had sent a sound truck through the city of 800,000 calling for calm. “The people of this province are not aggressive,” he claimed. “They just want a fair election.”

An hour before the scheduled start of the rally, however, trouble appeared certain. Supporters of Kim Young Sam had surrounded the stage, awaiting their candidate, but they were ringed by an even larger crowd of Kim Dae Jung backers. A few fights broke out where the rival camps converged.

Long before Kim arrived, his opponents had hijacked the rally. Students supporting Kim Dae Jung pushed through the opposing ranks, chanting his name. Kim Young Sam campaign leaflets were heaped onto bonfires in the square in front of the railway station.

Before the placards started flying, the two camps tried to out-cheer each other, and the square rocked with the racket like an American college football game.

In an attempt to appease the crowd, Kim Young Sam’s aides turned the microphone over to a student leader from Kwangju’s Chonnam University. But his speech only incited further tension. He demanded “clear positions” from Kim on a series of hot campaign and student issues.

Refers to Uprising

Referring to the brutal military repression of a demonstration-turned-insurrection here in May, 1980, he declared: “The problem of Kwangju should be solved by a Kwangju citizen. You (Kim Young Sam) say you are most qualified to solve this problem. We want the execution of the murderers. What is your position?”

The first attempt of the candidate’s motorcade to reach the stage was met by a barrage of stones and eggs, and the cars turned back to look for an alternate entry. When Kim finally got through to the speaker’s stand by a back route, he was met almost immediately with catcalls and flying objects. The bonfires of campaign literature rained ashes on the stage. His appearance lasted just five minutes.

Kim and his party left for the port city of Masan, in Kyongsangnam province, where the candidate will hold a rally today on his home turf. He has no more scheduled visits to the Cholla region.

When he arrived in Masan, according to late press reports, he suggested that “impure elements acting in conjunction with government forces” may have been responsible for the Kwangju protest. An aide, Assemblyman Seo Seok Jae, speculated earlier that the protesters may have been mobilized by the ruling Democratic Justice Party.

In the town of Yesan, where he was campaigning, Kim Dae Jung was reported as saying that it “was very unfortunate such a thing happened.” He said he was sending party officials to investiga1952788000provocateurs were involved in the earlier Pusan violence, but no proof has been offered, and the ruling party labeled the charge an opposition ploy to hide its divisions.

Campaign violence has been a growing problem for more than three weeks, and there is another month to go before the election. In late October, protesters here pelted Roh, the ruling party nominee, with eggs and tear gas. Another Roh appearance was disrupted the next day in nearby Iri, where protesters had also shoved the fourth major presidential candidate, Kim Jong Pil, a few days earlier. More recently, students threw firebombs at Roh’s motorcade in Taegu, his hometown.

Authorities reportedly deployed hundreds of riot police to control Saturday’s rally, but none were seen in the square throughout the disturbance. After Kim Young Sam left the stage, the crowd, estimated at 50,000 or more -- mainly Kim Dae Jung supporters -- fell silent. Later, according to press reports, riot police clashed with students in the area, dispersing them with tear gas.

Elsewhere, Roh’s stumping tour also was interrupted momentarily by violence Saturday in Puchon, a satellite city of Seoul, as scuffles broke out between his party’s new Youth Service Corps, a campaign security force, and about 300 students shouting “End Military Rule!” Earlier, a ruling party office in Inchon was attacked with firebombs and stones.

Arriving in Puchon after the trouble subsided, Roh pledged to end “authoritarian government” and “give ordinary people sovereign status.”

“Respect for ordinary people should replace authoritarianism,” declared Roh, ignoring Kim Young Sam’s attacks on his role in a Dec. 12, 1979, mutiny that led to a military takeover in South Korea.

In a press conference in Kwangju, before his aborted rally, Kim repeated his charges, saying that had it not been for the mutiny, the 1980 Kwangju uprising and repression might never had happened.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Burning rivalry -- Protesters set fire to campaign materials of Kim Young Sam, opposition candidate for South Korean president, at rally for him. Violence forced Kim to cancel speech in Kwangju, hometown of rival Kim Dae Jung. Reuters; Map, SOUTH KOREA, Los Angeles Times

Document 364

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
November 3, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1813 words
HEADLINE: 1980 UPRISING; MEMORIES OF KWANGJU HAUNT KOREA
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

Near the end of a hard dirt road, in a depression among the rice paddies, lies Kwangju City Cemetery.

A sign, written in Korean and English, identifies a knoll covered with simple black headstones. “This is Graveyard III,” the sign says. “This place has become an eternal sacred land where 101 of thousands of democratic patriots lie buried. They were bitterly slain with the military dictator’s firearms.”

Chun Kye Ryang, a retired navy man, walked slowly past the grass-covered mounds and stopped at a headstone inscribed with the name Chun Young Jin.

“This is my son,” he said. “He was a high school student, 18 years old. He was riding on a truck with other civilian militia on May 21 (1980) when he was shot by an army sniper.

Campaign Issue

“Here,” he said, pointing to his head. “One round.”

Chun’s son died in a bloody, 10-day conflict between rulers and ruled that remains the most emotional event in this country since the Korean War. For many Koreans, mere mention of the name Kwangju resonates like the Alamo or Kent State. And this year, it has become a pivotal issue in the campaign for December’s presidential election.

Politicians of all stripes come to Kwangju and try to bend its history to their own purposes.

“To the fallen souls of Kwangju,” intoned Kim Dae Jung, a presidential candidate and the city’s favorite son, on his visit here in September. “Thanks to their contribution, there is now hope for democracy.”

Another candidate, Roh Tae Woo, whom people here regard as bearing partial responsibility for Kwangju, came to the city last month and declared: “I think it my duty to solve the questions arising from the Kwangju incident. So I came here, thinking myself owing something to you.”

Unfolded Amid Turmoil

What happened here 7 1/2 years ago unfolded amid the turmoil that followed the October, 1979, assassination of President Park Chung Hee. Here and elsewhere across the country, students were demonstrating for change, and rival politicians were preparing for the prospect of a presidential election.

On May 17, 1980, the government, in effect run by then-Gen. Chun Doo Hwan and other members of the National Security Council, declared martial law and arrested Kim Dae Jung, a longtime rival to Park who is anathema to the military. The next morning, paratroopers were sent into Kwangju to put down the resulting demonstrations. A blood bath followed, with soldiers bayonetting and beating rock-throwing students, other protesters, even onlookers.

The clashes continued, and on May 21 the paratroopers began shooting demonstrators. That afternoon, the students broke into police stations and armories and armed themselves. Within a few days, the demonstrators, calling themselves the civilian militia, had taken control of the city. Kwangju was in the hands of insurgents.

Government forces retook the city on May 27 with overwhelming force, killing a determined core of demonstrators who refused to surrender.

Death Count Varies

The government, now headed by Chun as president, says that 194 civilians were killed in the uprising. In Kwangju, people say that at least 2,000 people were killed. Military losses were fewer than 20, the government says.

Since the day the fighting ended here, anti-government forces have denied the legitimacy of Chun’s presidency, which was proclaimed three months later.

Kwangju will never forget.

“Naturally, it’s become a central, emotional issue because it’s not been treated rightly,” said Chun, the former navy man whose son was killed and who now heads the May 18 Bereaved Families Assn. “All I want is that honor be restored to my son and the others. They should be labeled patriots rather than rebels. . . . I hope the day will come soon. I’m tired of fighting.”

Struggle is not a recent thing in Kwangju. Long before 1980, the southwestern provincial capital, focal point of the two Cholla provinces, had found itself at odds with other powers in Korea. The bitter rivalry between the Cholla provinces and the two Kyongsang provinces in southeast Korea is historic. Relations between Kwangju and the national government in Seoul, to the north, have been little better.

City of 800,000

Kwangju, a David against outside Goliaths, does not appear combative at first look. It is a pleasant city of 800,000. A drive down Kumnamro, the main boulevard, calls up the atmosphere of the American Middle West. At the top of Kumnamro stands the big, white provincial headquarters, placid now but the last redoubt of the insurgents in 1980.

A gray-haired, 74-year-old lawyer named Hong Nam Soon has lived here since the late 1930s and has a long view of the Kwangju issue.

“Under the Japanese, 50 years ago,” he recalled in a chat at his modest offices, “this was a city of 40,000. We were agricultural, rice and barley, but many were rich men.

“It was the people of Kwangju who influenced the banking situation in Seoul. We had five farmers who harvested more than 20,000 bags of rice a year. In Kyongsangdo (the rival eastern region), there were just two.”

Such comparisons are made repeatedly and casually by the people of the Cholla region -- in recent years usually with bitterness.

“Regionalism in Korea dates back to early history,” Hong explained, taking a listener through the time of the Three Kingdoms (57 BC to AD 668), when the Paekche throne was centered in Cholla, and on through more recent centuries, when the east and the north became dominant.

“But it was a friendly competition,” he said. “It was never abnormal, not until Park Chung Hee came to power” in 1961.

Modern Development

Park, a native of the Kyongsang city of Taegu, began the modern development of South Korea, and he launched it in the east. The first superhighway was built from Seoul, through Taegu, to Pusan, the southern port. Industry followed.

“In the economy, military, civil service, all the top jobs were given to people from the east,” Hong insisted. “From top to bottom, 80% of the places of influence are now held by easterners. And Chun Doo Hwan (also from Taegu) has continued these policies.”

Ever since the 500 years of the Yi Dynasty (1392-1910), he said, the Cholla provinces have been suppressed by superior political, military and economic power in the east and the north.

“We got nothing,” the old man said, “so we found satisfaction in culture. The majority of the nation’s best poets, musicians and calligraphers come from Cholla. We are smarter. Even they (the easterners) admit it.

“Even today, people here eat and dress better than in the east. During the Korean War, many people from Cholla had to flee to Pusan. The easterners were poor people then, and they couldn’t cook. We couldn’t stand their food. We taught them how to cook.”

Now, he said, the cuisine in the southeast is bearable. All this, he insisted, has given the easterners a complex about the Cholla provinces.

“Envy,” said Whang Mi Jin, a 22-year-old Kwangju student. “We know regionalism isn’t healthy, but there has got to be better balance. And I think that, given the opportunity, we’ll do better than the other provinces.”

The people in the industrially developed eastern provinces, however, do not see it that way. They portray their western neighbors as sanctimonious bumpkins.

The regional rivalry has long since spilled over into politics, to a point where issues are lost in animosity. Two of the three major candidates for the presidency are easterners -- Roh, the ruling party nominee, and Kim Young Sam, president of the major opposition party. Kim Dae Jung, the opposition leader from Kwangju, will have difficulty winning votes in Kyongsang, whatever the merits of his candidacy, but he will carry the Cholla provinces.

Beyond an honorable resolution of the Kwangju uprising, the people of Cholla want a fair shake on development.

View Toward Japan

“No question about it, they’ve been taken advantage of,” a foreign resident said. “But one thing people here tend to overlook is that development of the east during the Park years was designed for the trade with Japan (which faces the eastern provinces). The Japanese had put investments in there.”

Looking to the future, he pointed out a similar advantage for the Cholla provinces. They face China. South Korea and China do not have diplomatic relations, but third-country trade between the two Asian neighbors has already begun.

The government is already enlarging Kwangju’s port of Mokpo, and Roh said on his visit here that the unused Mokpo airport will be similarly redeveloped. Korean politicians hope for normal relations -- and trade -- with China in the early 1990s.

Yoo Hak Sang, Kwangju director for the quasi-governmental Korea Institute for Economics and Industry, said his staff has prepared a 600-page report outlining development priorities for the area. Deficiencies in transport and communications have already been largely overcome, he said, and local technical high schools turn out more than enough skilled workers.

“Seventy percent of them now have to go east or up to Seoul to find jobs,” he said.

A joint venture of the Daewoo conglomerate and Carrier, the American air-conditioning company, has just entered production, and Pohang Iron & Steel Co., a Korean industrial giant, is building a state-of-the-art mill nearby.

All these promises and possibilities may bring Kwangju and the Cholla provinces back into the South Korean mainstream in the years ahead, but not until the scars of 1980 have begun to heal. That will take more than time.

Some Concessions

Lawyer Hong credits the government with making some concessions after the Kwangju incident. More than 3,500 people were arrested during the uprising, he said, and 300 or more were put on trial. Five were sentenced to death and six to life imprisonment.

“All were freed within three years,” the lawyer said. “That’s unprecedented in trial history.”

But it does not erase what the people here see as the original injustice. Hong, who headed a civilian group that tried to arrange a truce between the soldiers and demonstrators, complained: “I should have been given a big award. Instead I was imprisoned (for 19 months).”

Both Hong and Chun, of the Bereaved Families Assn., whose members received indemnities of $12,500 for each victim, insist that the stain can only begin to be expunged by honor for the dead and democracy for the country.

Chun and his backers want a monument erected to the slain insurgents somewhere in Kwangju. One suggestion is to demolish the provincial capitol and build a park on the grounds.

Lawyer Hong says a fair presidential election in December would be a beginning toward reconciliation.

“I have not voted since the (authoritarian Park Chung Hee’s) Yushin constitution was put in (in 1972),” he said quietly. “This December, if the election’s clean, I’m going to vote.”

GRAPHIC: Map, South Korea/Don Clement/Los Angeles Times ; Map, Kwangiu/Don Clement/Los Angeles Times

Document 365

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 10; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 653 words
HEADLINE: LET AN EX-GENERAL END MILITARY RULE, ROH TELLS SOUTH KOREANS
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

In his first outdoor rally of the presidential campaign, Roh Tae Woo faced head-on Saturday the military issue that stalks his candidacy.

The ruling party nominee told a large throng of supporters, many of them veterans wearing service medals: “If military rule is to be put to an end, the nation should select as president a man who is well aware of the military and capable of forestalling national disasters.”

As a former general handpicked for the presidency by President Chun Doo Hwan, another former general who took power in a military coup, Roh has been labeled by the opposition as a Chun clone. A Roh presidency, opposition candidates say, would be a continuation of the quarter century of military-dominated rule here.

The 54-year-old Roh, who retired from the army six years ago, makes no apologies for his military record. But his campaign has stressed his identification with the beginning of democratic reforms here, a process started June 29 when Roh, after nearly three weeks of anti-government street demonstrations, suddenly endorsed the opposition demand for direct presidential elections.

At his rally in a local stadium, Roh rejected opposition efforts to paint him a potential dictator.

“Is there any nation in the world with a military dictatorship where presidents are chosen in fair, free and direct elections?” he asked.

Security was heavy around the stadium. Roh’s campaign appearances were disrupted three times last week by protesters. In Taegu, his hometown, firebombs were thrown at his motorcade.

Saturday, in Seoul and several other cities, demonstrators staged rallies against the Chun government and Roh’s candidacy, sponsored by the anti-government National Coalition for a Democratic Constitution. Clashes between the demonstrators and riot police were reported in Taegu, Chonju, Cheju and Chunchon. On Friday night, police raided university campuses and dissident offices in many cities in a bid to defuse the planned rallies, seizing firebombs, posters and anti-government literature.

Demonstrators at the Seoul rally appeared to be outnumbered by police, many of them plainclothesmen. There were no major problems.

The sponsoring coalition called the nationwide rallies in support of a proposed interim, nonpartisan Cabinet, which opposition politicians say would help ensure a fair election. Chun has rejected the proposal.

But speakers here, supported by student and workers’ groups, concentrated instead on direct attacks on Chun and Roh and on human rights abuses under the Chun government, including the suppression of the Kwangju uprising in 1980.

“How can a murderer become a commoner?” demanded a student radical, assailing Roh’s claim to be a common citizen. “Execute the murderer,” the speaker shouted.

In his rally speech, Roh tackled that subject too, apologizing for celebrated cases involving the torture death of a university student and the jail-house sexual assault on a young women, both at the hands of police. “I am resolved that their pain and sacrifice will promote human rights,” Roh declared.

The two main opposition candidates were also on the stump Saturday, their first outdoor rally since Kim Dae Jung bolted the major opposition Reunification Democratic Party last week to set up his own party.

At Inchon, the port city of Seoul, Kim Young Sam, 59, the president of the Reunification Democrats, blasted both Roh and his opposition rival. “The secession of Kim Dae Jung, once my closest ally, from the RDP is a tragedy that can by no means be justified,” he said, asserting that he himself is “the only alternative to military rule.”

All three front-runners called for an end to regional politics in the presidential campaign. A test will come today when Kim Dae Jung holds a rally in Pusan, his opposition rival’s hometown.

Later, Kim Young Sam is scheduled to campaign in the Cholla region, home turf of the elder Kim.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Up and over -- Student leader is shoved into a police vehicle by plainclothesmen in Seoul, South Korea. She was detained after attending an anti-government rally. Reuters

Document 366

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
October 29, 1987, Thursday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 5; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 847 words
HEADLINE: KIM DAE JUNG SEES WAR ON DICTATORSHIP; HE FORMALLY ENTERS SOUTH KOREA RACE, ADMITS SPLIT IS POSSIBLE
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung officially -- and finally -- announced Wednesday that he is running for the presidency, and he disparaged the ruling party’s candidate with the remark that “only those who have a clear personal history of democratic struggle are qualified.”

Describing the December election as “a great war in which democratic forces have declared the final decisive battle against military dictatorship,” the 63-year-old opposition politician told reporters, “We will surely win.”

Kim, who at least five times in the past 2 1/2 weeks has said unofficially that he is in the race, acknowledged that with longtime opposition rival Kim Young Sam also running, his own candidacy could split the opposition vote against ruling party candidate Roh Tae Woo.

Kim Dae Jung said he still believes that a single opposition candidacy can be worked out later in the campaign, but he insisted that this is not his primary concern at present.

“Transcending the problem of a unified candidacy at the political party level,” he said, “I have now become the single candidate of the democratic forces.”

Fervor and Popularity

Kim cited the partisan fervor for his campaign that was shown Sunday at a Seoul university rally as proof of his popularity.

Wednesday, when a crew from the government-controlled MBC television arrived at the press conference, Kim aides told them to leave the room, accusing MBC of “maliciously manipulating” film made at the Sunday rally so as to indicate that the crowd favored Kim Young Sam, who was also present.

The TV crew left, and five minutes later most of the Seoul newspaper reporters present walked out in a gesture of solidarity. Only when the MBC crew was invited to return did the press conference begin.

Later Wednesday, Kim Dae Jung’s aides announced plans for forming a new opposition political party as the vehicle for his campaign. The framework is already in place. Two pro-Kim organizations, put together by his supporters over the past few years, have been welded into a single network that will become the new party, tentatively named the Peace Democratic Party.

Kim Young Sam will run as the nominee of the Reunification Democratic Party, a fragile alliance organized by the two Kims last spring. Kim Young Sam has scheduled a nominating convention for next week.

Struggle for Support

The two opposition leaders have already begun a struggle for the support of uncommitted opposition politicians from the fractured Reunification Democratic Party and lesser groupings in the National Assembly.

Kim Dae Jung made no mention Wednesday of his opposition rival, Kim Young Sam. He trained his fire on Roh, a former general who is the handpicked candidate of President Chun Doo Hwan.

“The great majority of people, particularly all democratic forces, consider Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan as absolutely no different from each other as military dictators,” Kim said. “ . . . It is beyond a shadow of doubt that Roh Tae Woo is scheming to achieve an unjust victory through a fraudulent election.

“At the same time, how can they who have imposed nothing but suffering on workers and farmers guarantee the livelihood rights of these same workers and farmers? And how can the culprits of the Kwangju incident open the way to reconciliation?”

The “Kwangju incident” is the emotional battle standard of the politics of Kim Dae Jung. In May of 1980, the day after the government, in effect run by Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, declared martial law and had Kim arrested, violent demonstrations broke out in the city of Kwangju, the capital of Kim’s native Chollanam province. Nine days later, at least 194 Kwangju citizens, most of them students, were dead, killed by soldiers sent in to quell the protests that eventually exploded into armed insurrection.

A ‘Victim’ of Kwangju

“I believe, because I am also a victim of the Kwangju incident, that I am the person who can best solve it,” Kim said.

Almost from the day he was arrested in 1980, Kim was in prison, under house arrest or in exile abroad until early last July, when his political rights were restored by President Chun, an act, some political analysts say, designed in part to set the two Kims in competition for the opposition nomination and thereby improve Roh’s electoral chances.

Kim Dae Jung’s declaration of his candidacy underscored the competition.

“I doubt whether his secession from the (Reunification Democratic) party meets the popular aspirations,” Kim Young Sam said.

Kim Tae Ryong, party spokesman for the Reunification Democrats, was seething when he met later with the press. He said Kim Dae Jung’s leaving the party was “a betrayal of the people and will be subject to an assumption that he dances to the purposeful tune of the current regime.”

In a nationwide referendum Tuesday, South Korean voters overwhelmingly approved a series of constitutional revisions that set up the country’s first direct presidential election in 16 years. The election is to take place sometime before Dec. 20. A date is expected to be announced next week.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Kim Dae Jung Los Angeles Times

Document 367

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
October 27, 1987, Tuesday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 940 words
HEADLINE: Rivalry Threatens Seoul Reforms
BYLINE: Maggie Ford

HIGHLIGHT: The path to democracy is littered with obstacles, Maggie Ford reports
BODY:

Regional animosities and violent incidents are marring South Korea’s progress to democracy, as the country struggles to cope with an outmoded electoral system still suffering from the constraints of an authoritarian regime.

In the past few days public concern has mounted over a number of violent incidents mainly affecting the campaign rallies held by Mr Roh Tae Woo, candidate for the ruling Democratic Justice Party. Police have started to crack down on demonstrators who threw eggs and tear gas at Mr Roh. At the weekend a rally in his home town of Taegu, his most successful so far, was disrupted when students threw firebombs and home made tear gas at his motorcade.

A second presidential candidate. Mr Kin Jong Pil, who is standing on the record of the previous authoritarian government of President Park Chung Hee in which he was Prime Minister, also experienced disruption last week when demonstrators tried to tear down a podium where he was due to speak. Mr Kim has asked police not to arrest those responsible.

Concern over the violence is widespread, prompting fears of a hardline crackdown to protect stability. “We are determined to have the election,” one Seoul businessman said. “But we are not sure how to stop this violence.”

Opposition leaders have strongly urged students and dissidents to stop disrupting ruling party rallies and so far the violence has been fairly minor. But a firebombing of a police box in Seoul last week by students belonging to a radical group which wants the overthrow of the Government, rather than elections, added to concern.

Today the nation votes in a referendum on the new constitution agreed by a bipartisan group and approved by the National Assembly earlier this month. The constitution is expected to be approved overwhelmingly, but if voting is disrupted by radical groups, hardliners’ suspicion of the democratic process may be strengthened.

Neither of the two main opposition politicians, Mr Kim Dae Jung and Mr Kim Young Sam, has experienced any violence at their campaign rallies, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic but well-behaved supporters in different parts of the country.

But the two politicians have tended to appeal to the regional feeling of voters in their speeches, stirring animosities which have been latent in South Korea for years and adding to worries about the election outcome.

Regional feeling divides the two provinces of Kyongsang in the south-east of the country and Cholla in the south-west. The rivalry has been exacerbated by strong discrimination against the people of Cholla province in favour of those from Kyongsang under both the Park Government and the present regime of President Chun.

Until recently, Cholla had received few of the benefits of the economic boom, either in industrial or social development, and Cholla people complain of discrimination in getting jobs with big companies and winning promotion in the bureaucracy.

The underdevelopment in the province has caused a mass migration of Cholla residents to Seoul and Kyongsang provinces where many have been forced to take the most menial jobs, creating an underclass. Their feelings of resentment were increased by the Kwangju incident in 1980, when an uprising in the Cholla capital to protest against the jailing of Mr Kim Dae Jung and the imposition of martial law was put down by the military, leading to the loss of at least 200 lives.

The Cholla people’s anger in turn creates fears among Kyongsang people that should Mr Kim win the election he will not be able to keep his promise not to take revenge for the suffering he and the people of his province have endured. This fear is thought to be particularly strong in some areas of the military, especially in the group of Chun supporters.

Last week a newspaper poll reported that 59 per cent of respondents believed that regional feeling was the biggest issue in the election. Fifty one per cent thought this was a bad thing.

While both politicians are aware of the problems that regionalism is causing, and of the danger of destabilising violence produced by the mass rally system of campaigning, there appears to be little that can be done about it without a government change of heart.

A Western-style modern election, with campaigning done mainly on television and some regional indoor meetings could easily be mounted in South Korea, where TV set ownership is at European levels and the population is highly educated and almost 100 per cent literate.

But Mr Roh has failed to make good on his promise last June to introduce freedom of the media. Great strides have been made in the independent newspapers, now free of government interference, but television remains under strict state control. Mr Kim Young Sam last week described the television stations as Mr Roh’s “personal advertising media” and public disgust at the bias on both news and feature programmes is clear. Mr Kim Dae Jung, for instance, has appeared in only two television interviews since his civil rights were restored in July.

These problems will in the end be a matter for Mr Roh, who introduced the democratic reforms in June. Since he is most affected by the violence, he may feel that taking the campaign off the streets is desirable. Such a decision would also enhance his democratic credentials.

On the other hand, he may calculate that concern about the surge in regional rivalries could work in his favour if voters decide that supporting either Kim is too dangerous for future stability. But allowing the present situation to escalate may be dangerous for democracy too.

GRAPHIC: Map, no caption

Document 368

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
October 22, 1987, Thursday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 14; Column 4; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 433 words
HEADLINE: TEAR GAS, EGG HIT ROH AT S. KOREA REVOLT SITE
BYLINE: By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr., Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party nominee for president, was hit with an egg and tear-gassed Wednesday as he brought his election campaign to the heart of opposition country.

Speaking to a tightly controlled audience in a local sports arena, Roh made no mention of the 1980 Kwangju uprising that President Chun Doo Hwan put down with brutal military force. Roh, then a general, headed the Seoul security command at the time. Instead, he stressed the future, saying that “democracy is for the common people, for stabilization, for national independence.”

The arena held 15,000 people, and they responded with loud cheers to Roh’s 12-minute speech.

Earlier, on his way into the arena, Roh was hit in the face with an egg, one of several thrown at the procession. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his face and pressed on.

“Just a side dish of democracy,” he said of the incident at a press conference.

In late afternoon, Roh appeared at a suburban market, and the crowd there was broken up when a tear-gas grenade was thrown from a window of an adjacent building. The grenade landed about two yards from Roh. A government news agency account of the incident blamed a student protester, but said no arrest was made.

In Kwangju, memories of the 1980 uprising are still vivid, and Roh, Chun’s hand-picked nominee, could not have expected a warm reception. Nevertheless, he struck an optimistic tone in his speech, emphasizing his identification with the ruling party’s policy switch to support political reforms that followed nationwide anti-government demonstrations in June.

“We have done a great thing,” he said. “What the advanced Western countries have achieved in hundreds of years, we did in our own time through the independence of spirit of you young people.”

His visit to Kwangju also included a surprise stop at the tomb of a Roh ancestor.

Origins are important in South Korea, where regional rivalries are often bitter, based in part on differences of local custom and dialect. Kwangju is in the Cholla region, in the southwest, and Roh is a native of the Kyongsang region, in the southeast. Opposition to Roh is based in part on this regionalism.

But, Choi Young Chul, a ruling party lawmaker from Kwangju, told the rally here: “Roh Tae Woo’s ancestor is buried here on the Samgak Mountain. He (Roh) is a Cholla person.”

Furthermore, Choi added: “I live near Mr. Roh. Every morning I meet him at the public bathhouse. There, naked, he discusses politics with equally naked neighbors. This is a great common person. He will serve the people as a commoner.”

GRAPHIC: Photo, Woman who threw egg at Roh Tae Woo. Reuters; Photo, Candidate in distress -- Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party nominee for president of South Korea, wipes his eyes after protesters threw tear gas grenades during a political rally in Kwangju. Earlier he was hit with an egg. Associated Press

Document 369

Copyright 1987 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
October 22, 1987, Thursday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A22
LENGTH: 275 words
HEADLINE: Korean candidate hit with egg at site of riot
BYLINE: (Reuter)
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

KWANGJU (Reuter) - The South Korean government’s presidential candidate was hit in the face with an egg and had a tear gas grenade thrown at him yesterday during a visit to Kwangju, scene of a bloody 1980 revolt.

Following a meeting with relatives of some of the 193 people who died in the anti-military revolt, several eggs were hurled at Roh Tae Woo, a close ally of President Chun Doo Hwan.

One egg hit the ex-general in the face as about 20 relatives of victims shouted, “Bring our sons back to life,” “Repent and compensate for the Kwangju massacre,” and “You are not fit to be president.”

As Roh wiped away it away with a handkerchief, the 20 were bundled into a police bus and taken away.

A Reuter photographer saw police kick and punch some protesters before dragging them off.

As the government standard-bearer in the December election, Roh came to Kwangju to try to heal the wounds of the revolt.

“If I come to power through this election, my first priority will go to erecting a monument to appease the spirits of those sacrificed in the Kwangju incident . . . and paying out proper compensation for the agonized families of the victims,” Roh told the gathering.

He played a big role in the 1979 military coup that brought Chun to power. After Chun declared martial law the following May, students and other Kwangju citizens rose up in revolt.

Roh later joked with reporters about the egg-throwing, calling it “just one spicy episode on the road to democracy.”

But a protester then threw a tear-gas grenade into a crowded street market and caused Roh to abandon a scheduled speech there, witnesses said.

Document 370

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
October 22, 1987, Thursday, Final Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A34
LENGTH: 583 words
HEADLINE: Candidate Roh Pelted In Kwangju
BYLINE: Fred Hiatt, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea, Oct. 21, 1987
BODY:

Ruling party leader Roh Tae Woo carried a message of reconciliation into this stronghold of government opposition today, but received a tepid response, showing the challenge he faces in his campaign to be elected president of South Korea.

Roh met small, unenthusiastic and, at times, hostile crowds as he toured this provincial capital, site of a major uprising against the military government in 1980 and stronghold of support for opposition leader Kim Dae Jung. Roh’s reception contrasted sharply with the huge and good-natured crowds that greeted Kim here last month and met opposition leader Kim Young Sam in his hometown of Pusan Saturday.

Campaign aides to Roh, who will be the ruling party candidate in the December presidential election, stressed that Roh is not seeking to compete with the two Kims in attracting huge crowds. They said he should be praised for venturing into unfriendly territory in an effort to ease the bitterness that courses through this nation’s politics.

“When we go to other areas, the response is very different,” said Hyun Hong Choo, deputy secretary general of the ruling Democratic Justice Party. “This is Kwangju. It’s very understandable.”

When a group of Army generals, including Roh and current President Chun Doo Hwan, seized power in a 1980 coup, soldiers here gunned down large numbers of unarmed protesters. The government acknowledged killing about 200 civilians; many Kwangju residents insisted that 2,000 died.

The government never apologized for the incident. Instead, it branded the casualties lawless rebels, and Kwangju became a rallying cry for opponents of the Chun regime.

Now Chun has promised to step down as president, and his comrade, party president Roh, is seeking to succeed him in South Korea’s first free election in 16 years. Roh met with relatives of the Kwangju victims today and promised to erect a monument in their honor and pay financial compensation if he is elected.

His appeal won support from some, but many others remained hostile. Several mothers of youths killed in the Kwangju uprising pelted him with eggs and shouted, “Murderer go home,” as he entered a gymnasium for an indoor rally this morning.

Roh was spattered but unharmed, and he later shrugged off the incident as a “spicy byproduct on our road to democratization.”

After his speech in the Kwangju gymnasium, Roh was to deliver another speech in an eastern suburb of the city. But an unidentified assailant threw a tear-gas grenade near Roh moments before he was to give the outdoor speech. It did not hit Roh, but exploded near the speaker’s lectern, spreading tear gas around the area.

Roh was quickly hustled away by security guards without giving his speech. Before leaving, he reportedly said to the crowd, “I will not retreat from the task of realizing the nation’s democratic development.”

But Roh seemed to generate little support, even among those who turned out to greet him. A 25-year-old teacher trainee said she had come only out of curiosity and that most of the other dozens of onlookers were party or government officials.

“If he tried to hold a mass rally here like Kim Dae Jung, stones would pour down on him,” she said.

An outdoor rally in Kwangju that planners had said would draw 22,000 well-wishers attracted only a fraction of that number. As Roh motored through in an open truck, nobody clapped or cheered.

But more than 20,000 party members attended Roh’s indoor rally and cheered his call for reconciliation.

Document 371

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
October 9, 1987, Friday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 7; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 620 words
HEADLINE: S. KOREA WANTS CONTROL OF ARMY, ROH SAYS
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Roh Tae Woo, the ruling Democratic Justice Party’s candidate for president, said Thursday that in the 1990s, South Korea will try to regain control of its armed forces, which are now commanded by an American general.

Last month in Washington, Roh had mentioned the command issue as a “problem for the future,” but his remark Thursday was his first reference to it in connection with his campaign. Growing nationalistic sentiment among younger Koreans, including military officers and students, has added the issue to the list of grievances that South Koreans have against the United States.

U.S. command of South Korean troops dates back to the Korean War, in 1950-53, when the United States headed a United Nations command that included South Korean and other non-American troops fighting an invading force from North Korea, and later Chinese forces. It continued when South Korea refused to sign an armistice, leaving the United States as the only guarantor of the peace.

Roh said nothing about what South Korea would do to maintain the armistice in the event that Washington gives up control of South Korea’s forces.

When Strong Enough

“It is quite natural for the nation to be given back the right to control its military forces when it is equipped with sufficient military power to defend itself,” he said.

That time will come, he said, in the 1990s, when South Korea’s military capability reaches a level of about 80% of the north’s. He estimated that the south’s capability now is 62% of the north’s.

According to U.S. officials, there have already been informal talks about relinquishing control of South Korean troops, but they have refrained from publicly stating a clear policy on the question.

Roh, calling for a presidential election campaign based on policy debates rather than “slander, as in the past,” said he will work to bring about the reinstatement of civil servants who were purged in 1980 by President Chun Doo Hwan.

“I believe they should be given an opportunity to work for the nation,” he said.

About 8,000 government officials were forced to resign after Chun seized power in 1980. Roh, who retired as a four-star general in 1981, was a leading member of Chun’s ruling junta.

Mentions Kwangju Issue

Roh also took up the sensitive issue of Kwangju, the southwestern city where demonstrations against Chun’s takeover turned into a 10-day uprising in May, 1980. By official count, 194 people were killed as troops suppressed the rebellion.

Roh said the Kwangju city government will be given administrative control over two neighboring towns next Jan. 1, a move he said will strengthen the city’s power to attract investment. He said the ruling and opposition parties should make a joint effort to “heal the scars of the Kwangju incident.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Kim Dae Jung, who comes from the Kwangju region, said that Kim will address a rally Sunday and make his “most specific remarks to date” on whether he will run for president.

The spokesman, Han Kwang Ok, said Kim can be expected to announce his decision on the candidacy immediately after the National Assembly approves a new constitution. The assembly action is expected Monday.

Denounces Suggestion

Kim Young Sam, president of the Reunification Democratic Party, denounced suggestions that he said some opposition figures had made that he and Kim Dae Jung abandon their effort to agree on which of them should be the opposition candidate and both join the race against Roh.

“That,” he told reporters, “would only play into the hands of the Democratic Justice Party’s campaign strategy (of splitting the opposition) and betray the people’s hopes for democracy and an end to military rule.”

Document 372

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
September 20, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 4; Page 27, Column 2; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 596 words
HEADLINE: Reagan Alienates Koreans Needlessly
BYLINE: By CARTER J. ECKERT AND EDWARD J. BAKER; Carter J. Eckert is assistant professor of Korean history at Harvard University, and Edward J. Baker is assistant director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
BODY:

President Reagan’s meeting at the White House with Roh Tae Woo, chairman of South Korea’s ruling Democratic Justice Party and a presidential candidate, is yet another example of the United States shooting itself in the foot in South Korea.

It is hardly news any longer that anti-Americanism is rising in that country, and the meeting between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Roh is certain to fuel such sentiment. Despite the White House’s denial that the meeting implied any kind of endorsement of Mr. Roh, South Koreans will generally regard the meeting as exactly that and it will be widely resented.

For the more radical elements in South Korea who comprise the vanguard of the anti-American movement, the meeting will be further evidence of American neo-colonialism in action. It will be seen as a renewal, in the wake of a successful antigovernment democratic movement, of a long-standing dark bond between American imperialism and the South Korean military dictatorship that saw its most infamous hour in the Kwangju incident of May 1980, in which hundreds of protesters were killed.

While one may debate the historical validity of such a perspective, one can hardly deny that this view has steadily been gaining ground among the younger intellectual elite and university students. For that reason alone it should be taken into account in any official American statements, actions or policies toward South Korea. To ignore it is to ignore one of the most articulate and influential segments of the country’s post-Korean War generation.

Even for moderate South Koreans, President Reagan greeting Mr. Roh at the White House suggests that the United States is interfering in South Korean domestic politics, which is resented all the more because of Korea’s bitter history of interference by outside powers.

That the White House has extended its hand to Mr. Roh, a former general and a key figure in Chun Doo Hwan’s bloody seizure of power in 1979 and 1980, while ignoring the two main opposition candidates, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, would suggest to moderate South Koreans that the Reagan Administration regards the ongoing process of democratization in South Korea with some trepidation and that it is not as averse to continued military involvement in Korean politics as it officially purports to be.

Whereas Mr. Roh seems to be able to obtain an appointment with President Reagan virtually on the spur of the moment, Kim Dae Jung’s requests for a such a meeting during his two years in exile in the United States were denied. Even the Secretary of State, George P. Shultz, has refused to meet with either of the two Kims on his recent trips to Seoul.

It is difficult to understand the Administration’s reasoning. There was no need for the President to meet with Mr. Roh. He is not a head of state. He is not even a South Korean Government official. The President should have stated that he did not feel it was appropriate to meet with just one of the candidates at this time and politely but firmly decline. If that was unpalatable, he could have easily ended the matter by pleading the demands of a busy schedule.

Are we to conclude that the Reagan Administration is simply uninformed about the volatile state of anti-Americanism in South Korea and the link that South Koreans increasingly make between American influence and their military dictatorship? Or are we to conclude, more ominously, that the Administration is willing to risk a new wave of anti-Americanism in South Korea in order to express its support for the candidate it feels most comfortable with?

Document 373

Copyright 1987 The Christian Science Publishing Society The Christian Science Monitor
September 9, 1987, Wednesday

SECTION: International; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 527 words
HEADLINE: Kim Dae Jung’s long journey home
BYLINE: Takashi Oka, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: Kwangju, South Korea
BODY:

Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung came to this city, a symbol of resistance to military dictatorship, to appeal for an end to hatred and to the walls of division within the South Korean body politic.

On Tuesday, the first day of his sentimental journey, Mr. Kim was rapturously received by thousands of cheering citizens in his home province. Motorcading through packed streets, a smiling, garlanded Kim was cheered, waved at, and applauded repeatedly.

His last visit here was 16 years ago. Since then he has experienced exile, kidnapping, prison, a death sentence that was later commuted to further exile, and repeated periods of house arrest. As he said in a speech at the national cemetery in the green hills outside the city, as much as he wanted to come, he simply was unable to do so until now.

Kim Dae Jung’s name is magic here, but this very magic is a two-edged sword. Regionalism is one of the most potent and divisive forces on the Korean Peninsula. The more enthusiastically the people of his own Cholla region receive him, the more jealousy is aroused in Cholla’s perennial rival, the neighboring region of Kyongsang.

‘‘Why do you like Kim Dae Jung?’’ this reporter asked groups of citizens at random - housewives, office workers, merchants, construction people. The common denominator in all the answers was ‘‘because he is from Cholla.’’

One middle-aged citizen who refused to give his name said he also liked Kim Young Sam, who is from the Kyongsang region and is Kim Dae Jung’s rival to be the standard-bearer for the opposition in the coming presidential elections.

‘‘It’s just that Kim Dae Jung has suffered a lot more than the other Kim,’’ he continued. ‘‘Anyway, I am against this regionalism which splits province from province.’’

Would he vote for Kim Young Sam if the latter became the opposition candidate? ‘‘Oh yes, I would,’’ he answered.

But the others were much more regional in their assertions. One man said flatly that if Kim Young Sam were the opposition candidate, he would vote for Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party candidate.

Kim Dae Jung is only too conscious of this regionalism, and he carefully brought with him an opposition party leader who comes from Kyongsang and who belongs to Kim Young Sam’s faction.

He also separated the Kwangju spirit from thetaint of Cholla-centered regionalism. It was in Kwangju, in May 1980, that citizens rose in rebellion, demanding an end to martial law and the freeing of Kim Dae Jung. The rebellion was suppressed with much bloodshed, an episode that permanently marred the rule of President Chun Doo Hwan and his fellow generals.

With mothers of the victims of the Kwangju uprising clad in funeral white before him, Kim appealed for a spirit of forgiveness. ‘‘I am confident that people who are oppressed, who have spent their days in suffering and in tears, will pardon their oppressors. If one can do this, hatred can disappear and the walls of division can be demolished.’’

Kim said he was calling for a grand national campaign to oppose regionalism and other divisive forces, and expressed hope that ‘‘citizens of Kwangju will become the guardians of this campaign.’’

GRAPHIC: Map, South Korea, pinpointing Kwangju, JOAN FORBES - STAFF

Document 374

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
September 9, 1987, Wednesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 1; Column 4; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1008 words
HEADLINE: KIM DAE JUNG HAILED AS HERO AT UPRISING SITE
BYLINE: By DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, after a 16-year absence forced by imprisonment, exile and house arrest, was given a hero’s welcome Tuesday on his return to the city of Kwangju, scene of a 1980 uprising that was put down with the loss of many lives.

About 300,000 people poured into the city’s main street to welcome Kim in a triumphant procession lasting three hours. He and his entourage, riding on an open truck, inched their way through the crowd.

“Kim Dae Jung! Kim Dae Jung!” The rhythmic chant rang out from people in the streets and on rooftops, perched on windowsills and fire escapes along the three-mile route.

Thanks Those Who Died

“Thanks to the people who fought and died here in Kwangju, and to the world’s attention, and to the grace of God, I am able to stand here with you today,” an emotional Kim told the crowd when he reached Provincial Plaza, scene of the bloodiest fighting of the May, 1980, uprising.

“To the fallen souls of Kwangju,” Kim said. “Thanks to their contribution, there is now hope for democracy.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Kim visited Mangwol cemetery on the outskirts of Kwangju to pay homage to those who died in the revolt, provoked by the imposition of martial law and the arrest of Kim and other leading opposition figures. The official death toll was 194, but many people in Kwangju believe that at least 1,000 died, possibly 2,000.

Kwangju is the capital of Kim’s home province, a southwestern region that with its neighbor province to the north traditionally has felt neglected and alienated from the rest of the country. The people of Kwangju and Chollanam province were incensed when the government cracked down on widespread demonstrations in May, 1980, by arresting the opposition leaders including Kim. The Kwangju uprising erupted the next day.

In speeches upon his arrival at the Kwangju train station, at the cemetery, at the central plaza and at a hotel dinner, Kim repeatedly emphasized the martyrdom of those who died in the uprising. At the cemetery, Kim wept over the graves of the protester victims.

“Kwangju will be the Mecca of democracy,” Kim told a crowd of several thousand at the wooded hillside graveyard. “This humble cemetery will become a sacred place for the people of today and future generations.”

Massive demonstrations in June, which forced the government to agree to direct presidential elections and other democratic reforms, represented a revival of the spirit of those who fell in 1980, Kim told the crowd.

Among those Kim greeted at the cemetery was Paik Ok Gi, 61, who said his only son was killed in fighting at the provincial office building on the main downtown plaza when the army retook the city.

“I did not know anything much about politics at the time,” Paik said. “Now I know he was right.”

Kim limited his speeches at the railroad station and downtown plaza to only a few minutes, and he included calls to avoid any violence that might provide a pretext for those who “are seeking excuses to act against the will of the people.”

Kim, 63, who nearly won the presidency in 1971 in the last free presidential election, traveled to Kwangju from Seoul by train. Crowds of supporters appeared on the platforms at half a dozen stops along the way.

With presidential elections scheduled for mid-December, Kim is locked in competition with Kim Young Sam, president of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, over which of the two longtime leaders should be the party’s nominee. The two Kims have agreed that only one of them should run, but they have not settled the question of who it will be.

Roh Tae Woo, president of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, is his party’s nominee. President Chun Doo Hwan, who consolidated his power by crushing the Kwangju uprising, has promised to step down in February.

Speaking with reporters on the train, Kim acknowledged that the three-day provincial tour he began Tuesday might affect his presidential prospects, but he declined to comment on what he expects the effect to be.

Kim also told reporters on the train that he fears the government may not want to honor its promises of democracy.

“The government has started to crack down on dissidents, especially moderate leaders, including students,” Kim said. “They want to see a radical reaction to get a good excuse to crack down on democratization. So I want to be careful not to create any disturbances, not to give any excuse to this government.”

The vast crowds Tuesday dispersed without violence, happy simply to have honored their hero.

“I could not see him or hear him speak, because there were so many people I could not get near,” said So Chang Sik, a shopkeeper from the town of Kwangyang, two hours by bus from Kwangju, who was in the crowd of about 50,000 to 100,000 at the train station. “Still, I was pleased. I saw his car pass by. That was enough.”

Tuesday afternoon, as Kim headed back downtown from the cemetery, several hundred riot police lined one side of the central plaza as about 6,000 students and twice that many onlookers listened to anti-government speeches under a banner bearing the message: “There cannot be democratic government without execution of the murderers of the Kwangju massacre.”

The riot police were nowhere in sight by the time the crowd grew into the hundreds of thousands.

While students across the country share the sentiments displayed on the banner, Kim has pledged that there will be no political revenge if the opposition comes to power.

Many South Koreans question whether reconciliation is possible. But Kim insists that it is.

“The main purpose of the Kwangju people when they opposed the military junta was to achieve democracy,” Kim said in an interview on the train. “If we can achieve democracy, that fully meets the Kwangju people’s aspirations. To punish people is not necessary. Rather, that would be harmful to political stability and to the realization of reconciliation.” Kim will visit his birthplace on the island of Haui today and return to Seoul on Thursday.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Kim Dae Jung weeping at cemetery in Kwangju. HYUNGWON KANG; Photo, Below, some of the hundreds of thousands who welcomed him home. Associated Press

Document 375

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
September 9, 1987, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section A; Page 3, Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 932 words
HEADLINE: Cheers for Korean Opposition Leader
BYLINE: By CLYDE HABERMAN, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea, Sept. 8
BODY:

Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the avenues of this politically charged city today in a thunderous welcome for their long-absent native son, Kim Dae Jung.

It was one of the largest street rallies ever held in South Korea, but although emotions often ran high there was no violence. For Mr. Kim, the day was an unqualified triumph, and it should bolster his chances should he run for president in elections to be held in three months.

Repeatedly, senior officials in South Korea’s military-installed Government have tried to portray him as both a political has-been and a man who incites violence. One of their favorite comments has been that, at the age of 63, he is ‘‘a superannuated politician of a bygone era.’’

But the enormous yet peaceful turnout today demonstrated that Mr. Kim could maintain order, and that despite years of political bans he has retained a powerful following, especially here in a city that, like him, is synonymous with antigovernment resistance.

Looking Like a Candidate

He has not yet said whether he will in fact run, and, in any event, the opposition camp is undecided whether its candidate should be him or another major figure, Kim Young Sam.

But Kim Dae Jung looked and sounded like a candidate on this, his first visit since 1972 to his native South Cholla Province in the southwest and the provincial capital, Kwangju. The trip had followed an unsuccessful race for president the previous year - the last time South Koreans were allowed to choose a leader directly.

Huge crowds followed him from the moment he stepped off the train from Seoul this afternoon. Tonight, his motorcade had to knife slowly through a surging throng that covered every inch of Kwangju’s main square and connecting avenues for many blocks.

Across one avenue, a banner read, ‘‘Welcome Kim Dae Jung, the Leader of Our Nation.’’ People chanted his name in chorus as he waved from the back of an open-air truck.

‘The Spirit of Kwangju’

‘‘True courage is the spirit of Kwangju,’’ he said over a loudspeaker. ‘‘I promise that I will never betray or disappoint you.’’

Seven years ago, on the very spot where he spoke, soldiers gunned down Kwangju students and other residents who had taken to the streets to protest a military coup that consolidated the power of Chun Doo Hwan, then a general and now the President.

According to official count, nearly 200 people were killed. But Kwangju residents and opposition leaders say the true figure has been covered up and is closer to 2,000.

The Kwangju uprising of May 1980 began after Mr. Kim was arrested on sedition charges that later led to a death sentence. The charges are generally accepted as having been trumped up, and the death penalty was later withdrawn under pressure from the United States.

Nevertheless, the episode led to years of imprisonment, exile abroad and frequent periods of house arrest after his return to South Korea in early 1985. It was only two months ago that his political rights were fully restored.

Address in a Cemetery

The specter of the 1980 massacre still haunts Kwangju and the entire country, and Mr. Kim evoked painful memories today. At the same time, he re-estabilshed his reputation as an orator of considerable skill and power.

With thousands of people running, walking and riding alongside his car, he went to Mangwol Cemetery, four miles from the city center, where dozens of the Kwangju victims are buried.

Standing among the tombstones, with families of slain students sitting directly in front of him, he spoke in a voice that shifted from near-ferocity to lump-throated emotion.

‘‘I feel like I’m standing in front of judges,’’ Mr. Kim said. ‘‘I feel limitless shame. I feel guilt, and I don’t know what to do.’’

He added: ‘‘Who can console the parents who lost their children in a time of sadness? It is the responsibility of the living to avoid giving shame to the dead. We have to fulfill their dreams. We have to try to make it possible for the entire nation to sing the song of freedom, for they cannot.’’

‘No Political Revenge’

In a potentially significant overture to the Government and military, both of which despise him, Mr. Kim urged that there be ‘‘no political revenge’’ and no retributions for the Kwangju killings. ‘‘Dictatorship cannot be forgiven, but the dictator can be,’’ he said.

Although he and his aides insist that no decision has been made about a presidential race, the journey here was clearly a test of his political strength.

Political analysts and Mr. Kim’s rivals in the opposition point out that his appeal is concentrated heavily here in the southwest. It is a relatively poor area, and has always resented the people of the Kyongsang region, which lies to the east and has produced most of the nation’s leaders.

While attention is often focused on questions of democracy versus dictatorship, regional rivalries play a very important part in South Korean politics. And South Cholla Province, with 4.5 million people, is a much smaller base than Kyongsang, the home of Kim Young Sam, and of the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Roh Tae Woo.

Kim Dae Jung must deal with other handicaps as well. One of them is an assault on his character that has been made in a best-selling book written recently by a former bodyguard, who accuses him of autocratic behavior.

Mr. Kim charges that the book is sponsored by the Government and has been made required reading for officials and soldiers. But he also acknowledges that it has damaged his reputation as he begins his search for a possible candidacy.

GRAPHIC: Photo of Kim Dae Jung, a South Korean opposition leader, greeting well-wishers as he arrived yesterday in Kwangju (Reuters)

Document 376

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
September 8, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 720 words
HEADLINE: S. KOREAN PARTY CHIEF ROH MAY VISIT U.S.
BYLINE: By DAVID HOLLEY, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Roh Tae Woo, head of South Korea’s ruling party and its presidential nominee in the election planned for December, will visit Washington next week, party sources said Monday.

Roh’s trip will be at the invitation of the National Press Club, but Roh also expects to see President Reagan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other Administration and congressional leaders, according to members of the ruling Democratic Justice Party.

Roh is expected to leave Seoul on Sunday and spend the early part of the week in Washington.

According to an article in today’s issue of the Korea Times, “Democratic Justice Party officials believe that Roh’s meetings with U.S. leaders will help elevate his political stature in the eyes of the electorate at home.”

Trying to Bolster Bid

Roh has sought to strengthen his bid for the presidency ever since he made a dramatic announcement June 29 accepting opposition demands for direct election of the next president.

President Chun Doo Hwan, who came to power through a military coup, is scheduled to step down in February after completing a seven-year term.

Hyun Hong Choo, a member of the National Assembly, was quoted in the Korea Times as saying that the National Press Club first invited Roh last year, then renewed its invitation after his June 29 announcement of support for democratic reforms.

Roh is expected to address the press club on political matters, including the presidential election. In his talks with American government leaders, he is likely to bring up bilateral trade relations and other matters, according to anonymous aides quoted by the Korea Times.

No U.S. Confirmation

William Maurer, press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, said he knew of the Korean press reports but was not able to confirm‎ that Roh will see Reagan or other U.S. officials. Confirmation of any such meetings would have to come from Washington, he said.

Either Kim Young Sam, president of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, or Kim Dae Jung, the other leading opposition figure, is expected to be the opposition party’s presidential nominee. Both have pledged that only one of them will seek the presidency, but both are maneuvering for position.

As part of the process, Kim Dae Jung, whose political rights were restored only two months ago, is to leave Seoul today to visit the southwestern cities of Kwangju and Mokpo and his birthplace on the island of Haui. It will be his first visit to the region since he was the opposition candidate in South Korea’s last free presidential election, in 1971. He spent most of the ensuing years in prison, in exile, or under house arrest.

Will Visit Cemetery

Kim will visit a cemetery on the outskirts of Kwangju “to pay homage to the dead from the May 18 Kwangju uprising of 1980 and to console the wounded and bereaved families,” according to an itinerary made public Monday.

The 1980 pro-democracy uprising in Kwangju was suppressed by Chun’s government at a cost of 194 lives, by official count. Opposition figures put the figure at several times that number. The incident accounts for much of the bitterness and fear that permeates South Korean politics.

Kim’s tour is widely viewed as a test of the waters for a bid to win the Reunification Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. He has scheduled appearances at dinners, a church service and at the Kwangju railroad station but has not planned any massive rallies.

Talks on Selection Process

On Monday, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung both appointed representatives to take part in discussions on the selection of a candidate. Kim Young Sam is pressing for a quick selection, with the posts of party nominee and party president held by the same individual, while Kim Dae Jung favors a delay in selection of the nominee, with whoever is not chosen as the nominee serving in the post of party president.

Meanwhile, the wave of labor unrest that has swept the country in recent weeks showed signs of easing after a government crackdown. There were few reported incidents of new violence.

However, thousands of workers continued their protest at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard at Ulsan. The strikers were demanding the release of union leaders arrested Friday. On Saturday, the company suspended operations indefinitely.

Document 377

Copyright 1987 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
September 8, 1987, Tuesday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A14
LENGTH: 339 words
HEADLINE: Weeping opposition leader promises democracy will return to South Korea
BYLINE: AP
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

KWANGJU, South Korea (AP) - Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung wept today at the graves of people killed in a 1980 uprising and told thousands of supporters South Korea will soon be a democracy.

Kim, shaking with grief, denounced the government of President Chun Doo Hwan and said Koreans would honor the sacrifices of those killed in the Kwangju rebellion.

“Kwangju has not died. Kwangju is alive and will continue to fight for democracy in this land,” Kim said during a memorial ceremony at a cemetery outside Kwangju.

Kim broke down and sobbed several times as he thanked the hundreds of victims in the Kwangju uprising who he said “gave the regime of Chun Doo Hwan no choice” but to yield to demands for change.

Cheering throng

About 300,000 cheering people turned out to greet Kim as he arrived in Kwangju by train at the start of a two-day tour.

It was Kim’s first visit to his native south Cholla province in 16 years. He was in exile or imprisoned during much of that time.

Kim’s 20-car motorcade inched along main boulevards filled with cheering crowds shouting “Kim Dae-jung” and waving national flags and banners reading “Leader of the nation.”

Kim smiled and waved to the crowds as he drove to the cemetery and later into the city centre. Thousands of riot police were posted around but no clashes or disturbances were reported.

Thousands of students chanting anti-government slogans later gathered in the centre of town as hundreds of riot police in green combat uniforms and black visored helmets faced them.

“Down with the military dictatorship,” the students shouted.

Mistreated in prison

At the cemetery, Kim recounted how he had been imprisoned and mistreated during the uprising. He said he did not learn of the rebellion until weeks after it was put down by the military.

The government says about 200 people were killed. Opposition groups claim the death toll was closer to 2,000.

Kim charged the government was trying to renege on its promise to introduce full democracy.

Document 378

Copyright 1987 The Washington Post The Washington Post
August 13, 1987, Thursday, Final Edition

SECTION: FIRST SECTION; PAGE A29
LENGTH: 895 words
HEADLINE: Opposition Seeks Unity In S. Korea; Two Kims Agree To Share Cabinet
BYLINE: Fred Hiatt, Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: SEOUL, Aug. 12, 1987
BODY:

South Korea’s rival opposition leaders have agreed to share power, including equal stakes in a future Cabinet, no matter which one of them becomes their party’s presidential candidate this fall, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam said in separate interviews over the past two days.

The competition of the two Kims, a subject of major importance in Korea’s drive toward direct presidential elections, was described by both contenders as under control due to a regular series of meetings they have held in the past six weeks.

Both Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam said their agreement to share ministerial posts between their separate factions dates back to last December, well before the tumultuous events of June ended in government acceptance of their demand for direct elections. In such a contest, which would be the first popular balloting for president since Kim Dae Jung narrowly lost in 1971, the opposition Reunification Democratic Party has a serious chance of winning, according to Seoul newspapers and political observers.

But Kim Dae Jung, in an interview yesterday, said there are reports that some military leaders, and perhaps President Chun Doo Hwan, are not reconciled to the drive toward direct elections, which Chun steadfastly opposed before conceding to opposition pressure June 29.

“The one thing that is unclear is Chun’s attitude,” said Kim Dae Jung. “We are watching his attitude with concern.”

A senior aide to Chun said in a separate interview today that the president supports the June 29 reforms announced by Roh Tae Woo, presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Justice Party. But the aide acknowledged there had been “no prior discussion” about the measures between Chun and Roh, who is one of the president’s closest associates.

The aide said one reason Roh did not take his ideas to the president before making them public was that Roh believed “there were some elements in the ruling party and government” that opposed his two most controversial proposals, direct election of the president and restoration

of political rights to Kim Dae Jung following years of imprisonment and house arrest.

The aide, who asked that he not be quoted by name, seemed to signal a campaign that will include some harsh charges against the opposition. He criticized Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam for statements advocating the release of political prisoners, including some accused of being communists, and charged that the opposition includes “radical students, leftist leaders and even extremist religious leaders” as well as mainstream politicians.

The two Kims reiterated in separate interviews that only one of them will be a candidate in the fall. Many opponents of the government fear that if both opposition leaders run, or if one candidate emerges only after a nasty fight, voters will turn to Roh.

“Not only will we maintain our united front to fight for democracy, but we will continue our united front after achieving our goal,” Kim Young Sam said today. “Once before our party was split into two, and we should learn from such a disaster.”

Despite their common front at the moment, both men have long aimed for the presidency and neither shows any sign of conceding to the other. In addition, they disagree on significant questions of timing and strategy.

Kim Young Sam said today that the chief priority should be to decide on an opposition candidate quickly.

“The public’s daily focus is to see the nomination of one candidate as soon as possible,” he said. “The longer we are waiting, the more the public has doubts.”

But Kim Dae Jung espoused a contrary view, saying the two should wait as long as possible before designating a candidate. He said a single candidate would give the government a target on which to focus its attacks.

Already the attack on Kim Dae Jung, the more militant and controversial of the two opposition leaders, has become intense. A book attacking him by a former bodyguard has become a bestseller. Independent journalists said there are reports that the book has become required reading in some Army units, with soldiers required to submit reports on what was learned from the volume, which Kim charged was the product of the Korean CIA.

Kim Dae Jung, who has not campaigned extensively through the country since 1971, has postponed to early September a tour of the countryside that is expected to test his popularity.

Perhaps the most important and symbolic stop is the city of Kwangju in Kim Dae Jung’s home province, where between 200 and 800 persons were killed in 1980 when military forces loyal to Chun suppressed a revolt against his rule.

It is widely expected that Kim would draw a massive crowd, and anything less might be a political embarrassment. Kim also faces difficult decisions about how militant or how conciliatory he should be in this appearance.

The Kwangju massacre, as the violent suppression is known, has been blamed in part on the United States because of the belief among many Koreans that Washington facilitated it by releasing Korean troops from front-line duty to go to Kwangju.

Washington, while maintaining that there is no truth to the allegations of culpability, has said little for fear of offending the Chun government. U.S. Ambassador James Lilley plans a visit to Kwangju this weekend where he is likely to be questioned about the U.S. role.

Document 379

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
July 31, 1987, Friday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 704 words
HEADLINE: History Lessons For S Korean Students
BYLINE: Maggie Ford

HIGHLIGHT: Outside intervention is blamed for many of the country’s problems, Maggie Ford reports
BODY:

“Hunt the revolutionary student” has been played in South Korea for years. Ever conscious of the need to root out spies from the North and “impure elements” in the South, police and intelligence agents have arrested, jailed and sometimes tortured thousands of students over the years.

So it was not surprising that the first meeting between student leaders and foreign journalists since last month’s demonstrations was a cloak and dagger affair, arranged in secret, with no names mentioned.

Careful in their language, though not apparently afraid, the student leaders spoke of their hopes for the country. Although imbued with the idealism and perhaps naivete of youth, their views did not appear revolutionary.

They focused strongly on an issue that could provoke disagreement during the constitution revision talks between South Korea’s major political parties which started this week. For along with matters such as the voting age of electors, the term the new President to be elected later this year should serve and whether or not he should have a running mate, the talks will also range over the country’s contested past.

The students’ concern is with how far the governments and political movements of the past genuinely represented the people’s will, and how far they were imposed from within or without. This is of more than historical interest: it will set the tone for the future, in the preamble to the democratic constitution.

The students see the demonstrations last month as the latest event in a process reaching back to an independence movement early this century, taking in an uprising in 1919, the overthrow of South Korea’s first President Synghman Rhee in 1960, and the suppression of the 1980 Kwangju rebellion against the present regime.

Many of them see Korea’s troubles as largely caused by foreigners - be they of the Chinese, Japanese or American variety. Since the US has 40,000 troops in the country, it is viewed as a major foreign player and bears the brunt of the students’ frustrated nationalism.

Anti-Americanism has grown strongly over the past few years, leading to student occupations of US consulates, and the burning of US flags at demonstrations. The US is accused of interfering in domestic Korean politics and supporting non-democratic regimes in its own strategic interest, and of not interfering when it should, such as at the time of the 1980 Kwangju uprising when troops killed hundreds of civilians.

Radical students have been a particular bete noir of the Chun regime, with its emphasis on security and the threat from the North. But while analysts believe that in the past a number of marxist groups had grown up, they say that those with revolutionary aims are now a small minority.

Independence from foreign powers topped the list of the students’ goals at the meeting, along with unification and genuine democracy. The US troops would have to go, they said.

That unanimous assertion, based on the view that North and South Koreans would not fight another war against each other but would unite across the fortified border to expel dictators, foreign powers and anyone else standing in the way of national unity, seems rather removed from reality. It is not shared by the majority, Western diplomats and Korean analysts believe.

But the students’ feeling that the alleged threat of invasion from the North may be a paper tiger is more broadly accepted. The sense that governments have manipulated people’s fears for their own purposes is echoed among some educated South Koreans, albeit very cautiously.

The students’ views also reflected the suspicion of the majority that the Government may not carry through its promises to introduce democracy. All of the nations’ political leaders - Mr Roh Tae Woo and the two opposition leaders Mr Kim Young Sam and Mr Kim Dae Jung - were part of the “old government structure” the students said.

But in the absence of new leaders, the old ones would have to be guided by the people in the right direction, they added. As the politicians begin the difficult process of change, watchfulness will continue to be the order of the day. The day of the riot policeman armed with tear gas may not be over.

GRAPHIC: Picture Students, days of violent opposition may return

Document 380

Copyright 1987 Guardian Newspapers Limited The Guardian (London)
July 25, 1987
LENGTH: 582 words
HEADLINE: Kim Dae Jung wrestles with the dilemma of a lifetime
BYLINE: From JASPER BECKER
DATELINE: SEOUL
BODY:

As he ponders his options, Mr Kim Dae Jung, the South Korean opposition leader, sombrely receives troops of his supporters who file daily into his cosy living room in a suburb of Seoul.

The hundreds of police which once surrounded it have disappeared, and his wife no longer has her shopping bag inspected by plain clothes police. But Mr Kim’s lined face betrays a different strain.

He has yet to decide whether he will break last year’s promise and run for presidency, or abandon his lifelong goal. At 63, this is his last chance and the pressures on him to make an early decision are intense. It is a choice that, either way will colour the campaigning in the first open presidential elections in decades.

If he goes ahead and Mr Kim Young Sam does not back down, there will be two opposition candidates, and they could both lose to Mr Roh Tae Woo, the ruling Democratic Justice Party candidate.

Last week his supporters in the National Assembly made clear their wishes, and next week Mr Kim will tour the city of Kwangju to seek a mandate in his home province of Cholla.

‘I need to hear people’s opinions about what I should do,’ he said in an interview yesterday. His aides are expecting a massive turnout for the visit.

He claims that his decision should be delayed as long as possible to prevent the Government from designing regulations to handicap the opposition candidate.

‘President Aquino of the Philippines only decided one hour before the deadline to be the candidate,’ he pointed out. But he said there would be only one opposition candidate, as had been the case in five previous presidential elections.

Many of the dissident groups in the National Coalition for a Democratic Constitution, which organised the June demonstrations, are now trying to persuade him not to run.

The demonstrations forced the Government to capitulate to demands for direct presidential elections, and the council now wields considerable influence. Earlier this week the National Council of Churches of South Korea met with the two Kims in a Seoul restaurant and urged them to avoid open rivalry.

Mr Kim is evasive on what he might do if he does not run for the presidency. If he resists the temptation, some observers feel he will be too proud to accept the position of Vice President.

The Opposition will urge that the new constitution should create such a post when the parties sit down to negotiations next week. ‘Kim Dae Jung will never accept to be number two,’ one member of the coalition said.

Despite his powerful appeal as a symbol of opposition to past authoritarian governments, even some of his admirers argue that he is the wrong man to lead the country into what is hoped will be a new age.

In interviews, Mr Kim is reluctant to talk about his hopes for the future but constantly harps back to the past, often with a trace of bitterness.

He narrowly escaped execution by the invading Communists during the Korean war. President Park Chung Hee kidnapped and imprisoned him after he came close to winning the 1971 elections, while President Chun Doo Hwan put him on trial and sentenced him to death for sedition.

The sentence was commuted but he was later sent to exile, and on his return repeatedly put under house arrest.

Mr Kim insisted yesterday there must be a full investigation and compensation for the victims of the 1980 Kwangju incident, in which President Chun ordered the brutal suppression of a popular uprising.

Document 381

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
July 21, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 1; Column 5; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 2423 words
HEADLINE: HORRORS OF DEATH NOT FORGOTTEN; SOUTH KOREA’S OPPOSITION RUNS AS DEEP AS THE SCARS
BYLINE: By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

The occasion was a memorial service for students, laborers, farmers and dissidents who either committed suicide on principle or allegedly were killed for their political beliefs under the authoritarian regime of President Chun Doo Hwan.

On the surface, it appeared to be nothing more than a normal church service. But, as several hundred men and women filed into Seoul’s Yongdong Presbyterian church recently, they paused outside to examine or buy booklets on sale that recounted stories of excruciating police torture, death in dingy prison cells and political zealots so overcome with frustration that they set themselves on fire and died.

And for the next three hours, they listened in silence to descriptions of the horrors of death and dying under the man who is still president of South Korea.

The church meeting was an example of how, more than three weeks after Chun’s government electrified the nation by announcing an eight-point package of major democratic reforms to try to quell massive unrest, the popular dissent that forced Chun’s move remains strong despite continuing government attempts to suppress it.

Standing at the pulpit in the Yongdong Church, Kim Soon Jeong hardly looked like a revolutionary.

Her age and her manner were distinctly middle-aged and middle-class. She wore a conservative pink blouse and designer-frame glasses that barely hid eyes filled with tears and anguish.

But for 20 minutes, the soft-spoken housewife used the pulpit to justify her 21-year-old son’s horrible death. In April, 1986, Kim Se Jin doused himself with kerosene, set himself on fire and jumped from the roof of a three-story office building in a futile attempt to prevent Seoul’s riot police from breaking up a student demonstration.

“Even now, when I am alone, I wonder, ‘Should he have killed himself? Could he have done more if he had lived?’ “ Kim Soon Jeong told the several hundred worshipers and students who had gathered in the church on a recent night.

“But I answer in my mind that my son will live forever in the hearts of all peace-loving people of our country. Even now, I can meet my son in the streets among the students shouting for the end of this dictatorship. I can see among them my son’s image.”

Kim Soon Jeong could not have made her emotional comments on the streets of Seoul; not in a high-school gymnasium; not in the national press; not in a public meeting. She most certainly would have been arrested under laws that still ban public assembly for political purposes. And, like several dissidents who have been sentenced to jail since Chun agreed to a series of reforms, she also could have been imprisoned under the National Security Law.

Instead, Kim used the immunity and haven of the church to tell her story. And even then, three busloads of riot police were stationed less than a block away from the church, and undercover police stood near the entrance to the church’s driveway.

Little Has Changed

“The government’s control structure is all in place, as it always has been,” noted one longtime American resident of Seoul in discussing how little has changed in recent weeks in what has long been considered an authoritarian state.

To be sure, Chun’s government has tried to take a number of steps to try to show its good faith in what it calls “the long process of democratization.”

The government has released 534 political prisoners and restored the civil rights of 2,335 others who had previously been in jail. It has pledged to restore the jobs of teachers who were fired for participating in anti-government rallies. It has promised to rewrite Chun’s restrictive constitution and revise or abolish the country’s restrictive press law. And it has urged the South Korean people to be patient.

But, after so many years of oppression under the rule of Chun and previous authoritarian rulers, few Koreans are willing to wait.

In the eyes of many Korean citizens, the announced reforms seem to be more rhetoric than substance. Hundreds of political prisoners remain in jail. The government has not even begun the process of abolishing or rewriting the press-censorship law. Every evening, newspaper editors still receive a set of government guidelines on how to play each of the day’s important stories and pictures. And many citizens are begining to wonder whether last month’s startling announcement was merely a clever ruse by a government trying to buy time.

In the absence of free speech, free press and free assembly, the legions of Korean dissidents, such as Kim Soon Jeong, have found methods both old and new to speak out against the government -- sometimes using the very same institutions the government has used to stifle their criticism.

Government courtrooms, for example, recently have become virtual battlegrounds.

On July 4, a Seoul district court judge sentenced five policemen, who had been convicted of torturing a university student to death, to jail terms of 5 to 15 years. When the verdicts were read, the student’s relatives and the mothers of other political prisoners who had packed the courtroom gallery shouted vicious insults at the judge. Some threw chairs. Others smashed microphones.

Among those spectators was the mother of Song Kwang Yong, a 27-year-old student at Kyung Won University who, screaming, “Death to the dictatorship,” had burned himself to death in 1985. Song’s mother, who is frequently seen at anti-government demonstrations hitting riot police with her handbag, joined the other dissidents at the July 4 sentencing in surrounding the five convicted policemen and shouting, “Execute the murderers, execute the murderers!”

Chun’s government is now trying new strategies in an effort to block such attempts by its opponents to use government institutions for their own causes.

During a similar hearing this month, in which two former college students were sentenced to 12-to-15-year jail terms for advocating the formation of an independent National Assembly to draft a new constitution, the government allowed only six relatives of the accused to sit in the gallery. Although there was a long line outside of people hoping to attend, the government filled every other seat in the courtroom with uniformed and plainclothes policemen.

Defense attorneys filed a complaint with the judiciary over the tactic, but a panel of judges flatly rejected the appeal.

The dissidents’ search for a legal forum has not been confined to government institutions. Earlier this month, about 100 former detainees and the mothers of still-jailed political prisoners stormed the headquarters of Kim Young Sam’s opposition Reunification Democratic Party at the beginning of Kim’s well-attended press conference for domestic and foreign media.

As the cameras of all three major American networks and the country’s state-run Korea Broadcasting System rolled, the dissidents marched into the room shouting “Death to the dictatorship,” “Free all prisoners of conscience” and “We demand a joint press conference.”

The group’s leader, Kim Pyung Kon, then began shouting the group’s demands through a megaphone, and the dozens of recently freed prisoners sat cross-legged on the floor singing a protest song, apparently aimed at Kim Young Sam and his party colleagues. The dissidents fear that Kim Young Sam and his aides may be more interested in compromising with Chun for their own personal ambitions than in negotiating justice for the South Korean people.

When it comes to the “people’s suffering,” one protester said, “the politicians are still sleeping.”

Still, the most common forum used by Korean protesters remains the nation’s tens of thousands of Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, some of which have become hotbeds of political activism.

The most conspicuous example has been the Anglican Church, whose Old English cathedral in the heart of downtown Seoul has stood out, not only for its architecture.

Beginning July 11, the cathedral’s public address system blared anti-government speeches and wailing testimonials of state torture and murder across City Hall Square as the church’s two dozen priests staged a hunger strike inside protesting a recent riot police raid on the cathedral grounds.

The “memorial service for fallen patriots” at Seoul’s Yongdong Presbyterian church was similar in tone. For several hours before Kim Soon Jeong took her place at the church pulpit to recount her son’s fiery death, human rights workers outside were selling copies of the booklet called “A Reference Book for Patriots -- Their Deaths Are Not Memories.”

Published by the Protestant church, the booklet tells the brief stories of 59 students, farmers, urban workers, slum dwellers and military dissidents who the church contends have died as a direct result of their political beliefs since 1980.

The material was published after Chun approved the package of reforms advocated by his party’s chairman and candidate for president, Rho Tae Woo. The booklet, which cannot be sold legally in bookstores under the present censorship laws, was selling fast July 13, the first day it appeared in Seoul.

Among the case histories listed was that of Chung Sung Hee, a 19-year-old student at Yonsei University who was forcibly detained by police during an on-campus demonstration on Nov. 25, 1981.

Within five days, Chung was drafted directly from police custody into the army. Eight months later he was dead.

According to the church account, the army told Chung’s parents that the young soldier had committed suicide on July 23, 1982, by shooting himself four times with an M-16 rifle. There was no suicide note -- just a piece of paper on which he had written, “Oh, how I long to walk again on the university’s Paek Yang Road,” the main campus road where demonstrations are held. And there were no witnesses to Chung’s death.

Military authorities never permitted an autopsy on the young soldier, the church account stated, adding, “his parents and relatives said he had no cause to kill himself. In his last letter on June 23, Chung was encouraging his juniors, and there was nothing suspicious in the letter. So, the family believes he was killed by the military because of his career as a college demonstrator.”

Another account was about Shin Ho Soo, a laborer at the Inchon Coastal Gas Co., located 45 minutes by car from Seoul. Shin was arrested by three officers from the police Anti-Communist Investigation Bureau on June 11, 1986, because officers suspected that he was involved in a May, 1986, demonstration in which many laborers and police were badly injured.

Eight days later, Shin was found dead in a cave in the town of Yochun, 200 miles south of Inchon, according to the church account. Police investigators claimed Shin had committed suicide, but his father, Shin Jung Hak, who personally investigated his son’s death, announced at a church meeting last February that he believed the police tortured his son to death.

Such accounts of human rights abuse, however, took on human dimensions inside the Presbyterian church last week.

Joining Kim Soon Jeong at the pulpit was a victim of the so-called Kwangju massacre, in which 194 people, by official count, were killed by South Korean troops in May, 1980, after virtually the entire city rose up in insurrection against Chun’s government. Accounts by eyewitnesses put the death toll higher.

Moderate political opposition leaders such as Kim Young Sam have demanded a public inquiry into the Kwangju massacre, which has never been explained or openly investigated by the government. Chun, whom many Koreans blame personally for the massacre along with Roh, has rejected requests for an investigation but offered to construct a monument to Kwangju’s dead and to compensate the families of victims.

“If they (the government) have an open and honest investigation, build a monument and offer a direct and humble apology, then maybe things will calm down,” said one foreign resident in Kwangju last week. “But if they don’t do all three of these things, the government will fail in what it is trying to do. This is a culture that must respect, honor and avenge its dead.”

Leaning on crutches at the pulpit, Lee Se Yung, who heads an association of Kwangju victims, told the audience how he was crippled for life when soldiers shot him in the back and leg.

He said he was a 21-year-old shopkeeper in Kwangju at the time, loyal to the government and even supportive of Chun’s declaration of full martial law the night before the insurrection began.

But, when the army moved into Kwangju seven years ago, Lee said, “all night long there were cries in my village of ‘help me, help me,’ and the dreadful sounds of people being beaten to death with clubs and bayoneted by the soldiers.

“When I looked out in the morning, there were clothes soaked with blood and dead bodies everywhere. It was then that I concluded this was not the army of the people. So I went downtown and joined the demonstrators in the tear gas.”

Turning then to the current political situation, Lee recited the names of the five generals -- among them Chun, present ruling party chairman Roh and Chung Ho Yong -- whom most Koreans believe were directly responsible for putting down the Kwangju rebellion.

At the very time Lee spoke in church, Chun was announcing a revamped Cabinet in which the third general that Lee named, Chung Ho Yong, was appointed defense minister.

‘Can Scars Be Erased?’

“It has already been seven years and two months since that massacre, and yet these military dictators who were responsible for it are still in power,” Lee declared.

“What are they doing now, these murderers of Kwangju? They made up this deceitful, so-called eight-point proposal for democracy and pretend as if it’s a present to the people. And what has changed since they made this proposal? They freed some prisoners and restored some politicians’ civil rights, but those who were most courageous in fighting them were not released. Can the scars of Kwangju ever be erased?

“The slogan we shouted on May 18, 1980, was ‘Down with the military dictators; execute Chun Doo Hwan and his fellow murderers!’ Our slogan now remains unchanged. Execute Chun Doo Hwan and the murderers!”

Despite such fiery rhetoric, not once during the two-hour church service did the police enter the cathedral. But a few hundred yards away, the riot police waited in full street-combat gear, their shields, clubs and tear-gas grenades at hand, just in case the dissidents decided to leave the church en masse.

Document 382

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July 14, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1479 words
HEADLINE: S. KOREA OPPOSITION LEADER DEMANDS RELEASE OF ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS
BYLINE: By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Opposition leader Kim Young Sam on Monday demanded that all political prisoners in South Korea, including those accused of being Communist organizers, be released from prison by Friday.

He declared that unless this is done, President Chun Doo Hwan’s recent announcement of sweeping democratic reforms would amount to nothing more than “a fraud and a handout.”

Nevertheless, Kim indicated that his opposition Democratic Reunification Party will begin negotiating a new constitution with Chun’s government even if its demands for the prisoners’ release are not met.

Later in the day, without referring to Kim’s demands, Justice Minister Chung Hae Chang issued an uncompromising set of orders to the nation’s prosecutors. He told them to deal harshly with “impure elements” and “radical leftists” trying to take advantage of what he called the lame-duck period before Chun is scheduled to step down in February, 1988.

Interrupted by Chants

Outbursts of complaints are occurring, the minister said, because of the “liberalization wave,” encouraging “pro-Communist forces and anti-state elements” to try to infiltrate society at large.

Kim made his lengthy statement during a morning press conference that was loudly interrupted by the shouts and chants of more than 100 recently released political prisoners and mothers of those still in government jails.

The protesters, wearing headbands demanding “Free all prisoners of conscience,” forced their way into the fifth-floor room where Kim was reading his statement to reporters. The demonstrators began chanting “Free them all, free them all,” and staged a sit-in that continued throughout the day.

Kim’s bodyguards and aides formed a human barricade in the doorway to block the group, which called itself the Freed Laborers and Citizens Committee, but the angry demonstrators, many of them students and workers, pushed through.

“Our door is always open to receive you and to hear you,” Kim told the group after they sat down on the floor. “You do not need to barge in like this.”

Nonetheless, many observers saw the confrontation as a sign of the split between the moderate and more radical factions of South Korea’s political opposition as it prepares to challenge Chun’s Democratic Justice Party in the direct presidential elections that the president and ruling party Chairman Roh Tae Woo have promised will be held before Chun steps down.

One opposition party organizer, Paek Nam Chi, commented in the hallway of the party headquarters: “It is true, this split. But they want everything overnight. How can that be possible? We are saying, ‘Please wait. Let’s sit and talk first.’ “

Once the freed prisoners had presented their demands, they did listen patiently in the sweltering room to Kim’s eight-page statement. At several points, they applauded him enthusiastically.

Addressing himself to the speeches of Roh and Chun two weeks ago announcing direct presidential elections and reforms that included press freedom and political amnesty, Kim declared in his prepared statement that “any so-called democratization can be no more than a fraud and a handout if there are still any political prisoners in our jail.”

Condemns Government

Despite the government’s release of 534 political prisoners and declaration of amnesty and restoration of civil rights for 2,335 others who had served jail terms previously, Kim condemned Chun’s government for failing to implement any concrete reforms.

“Even though a full two weeks has passed since the June 29 announcement (by Roh) and the July 1 presidential confirmation (by Chun), not a single sign of self-determination or democratization can be seen in any part of society, any level of society or any functional area of society,” Kim stated.

Kim also called for a “a careful inquiry into the realities of the Kwangju incident,” the 1980 massacre of students, workers and middle-class residents of the southern city that many Koreans blame on Chun, Roh and three other former generals. The crowd of former prisoners responded by shouting “Execute the murderers!”

Kim also condemned the indiscriminate use of tear gas last Thursday by riot police breaking up a peaceful protest and funeral march for a student killed by a tear-gas canister during last month’s violent anti-government demonstrations in Seoul. The funeral drew as many as 1 million people into the streets, and Kim said the police response “further inflamed the people’s anger and indignation.”

“The police of this nation must terminate their role of supporting a dictatorial way of life and be reborn as the security arm of the people,” Kim declared. “The death of (student) Lee Han Yol must become the occasion for removing tear-gas canisters from the hands of the police once and for all.”

Although Kim set Friday, which is Constitution Day and a national holiday, as the deadline for the government to release all prisoners -- including, by name, several student leaders that the government alleges are Communist ideologues sympathetic to Communist North Korea -- he made no specific threat to break off negotiations if Chun fails to comply.

“If, however, this reasonable proposal . . . does not come about, then the government must offer its apology before the people and seriously reconsider its course of action,” he said.

Within days of the government’s announcement of reforms, both Kim and fellow opposition leader Kim Dae Jung vowed to break off negotiations with the government on a new constitution that would embrace a new age of democracy. But they have since backed off.

That softening of the political opposition’s stance was among the reasons that the freed prisoners stormed into Kim’s party headquarters Monday, several members of the group said.

Asked her opinion of Kim Young Sam, one mother of a political prisoner said: “I myself consider him a fighter for democracy, and we are all depending on him to defend the rights of the people.

“But there are many fears he may not be as strong as we would like him to be. . . . What he must realize is that the government is not afraid of this (political) party. It is afraid of the people.”

The group listed five demands: From the government, it wants all political prisoners freed, and the abolition of all laws banning freedom of assembly and political demonstrations, including the national security law. From opposition leaders, it demands that negotiations be broken off with “the murderous regime”; that ruling party Chairman Roh not be listened to, and that the U.S. presence in South Korea and American political interference in internal affairs be removed.

When he finished his statement, Kim quickly left the packed conference room and retreated to his private office two floors below, where he met with some foreign journalists.

Chanting and Stomping

There, he took pains to stress that there was no difference between his party’s moderate stand and that of the so-called radicals, who continued their chanting and foot-stomping two floors above. And he said he agreed with all the group’s demands and said its leaders apologized to him for having interrupted his press conference.

“If there was any difference between myself and the student group, why would they give such applause to my statement?” Kim asked rhetorically.

“After 26 years of dictatorship, it is natural to see some kinds of demands such as these by the people,” he added. “We understand their state of mind. They are frustrated and helpless. Their sons and daughters are in the jails on fabricated charges that they are Communists.”

Kim stressed that even the so-called radical Communists, whom Chun’s government has said it will not release from prison, should be freed along with other political prisoners.

“I believe we should release all of these people from prison -- all of them -- and then see if they will become Communist activists again,” he told the reporters.

Kim said that he agrees even with the demand by the group of students and mothers on removing U.S. interference in South Korean affairs.

“What they are trying to say is the U.S. government has been supporting the Chun Doo Hwan government and it is still supporting it,” Kim said. “Therefore, they are trying to state that the U.S. government should stop supporting the Chun government, and we agree.”

On the subject of opposition unity, Kim reiterated that fellow opposition leader Kim Dae Jung does plan to join his party next week, following a tour of his home region of Cholla, and that there will be a unified opposition front during the upcoming presidential election.

“We will never compete by vote,” Kim said of himself and the man who did oppose him twice in the past. “And we will have one single candidate, period. We are sure we can work this out.”

Kim added that he will decide before Aug. 15 whether to run for president.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Aides of Kim Young Sam try to halt intruders who interrupted press conference in Seoul. Associated Press

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July 14, 1987, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 9; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1053 words
HEADLINE: CHUN SHAKES UP CABINET TO ENSURE ‘FAIRNESS’
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

President Chun Doo Hwan shuffled his Cabinet on Monday, removing all members of the ruling party and changing his prime minister for the second time in 48 days.

The move was aimed at ensuring what Chun called “fair management” of politics as South Korea prepares to elect a new leader later this year.

The new Cabinet, however, includes two recently retired generals, one of them a member of Chun’s inner circle who was among the plotters who helped him to seize power in a coup seven years ago. Chun also retained a third former army commander who had doffed his uniform only after that 1980 coup.

The new prime minister is Kim Chung Yul, 69, a former three-star general who retired from the air force 20 years ago. Kim, a former ambassador to the United States who also spent three years in business, replaced Lee Han Key, a virtually unknown former law professor named to the post only last May 26.

Effort at Fairness

“The shake-up is based on the president’s wish to administer the scheduled political events in a strictly fair manner and push important national tasks, such as promotion of freedom and welfare for the people, in an atmosphere of unity and trust,” a presidential spokesman said.

In a statement, Kim said: “Fairness will be the prime goal. What is important is stability -- to achieve the scheduled political transition based on stability and to successfully stage the 1988 Seoul Olympics.”

It was the second move made by Chun to respond, in part, to calls from the opposition Reunification Democratic Party for a “caretaker” Cabinet to oversee the transfer of power when Chun steps down Feb. 25, 1988. Last Friday, Chun, a former army general, gave up his post as president of the ruling Democratic Justice Party.

The opposition party criticized the nature of the shake-up when it was made public Monday.

“No fresh and new people are included in the shake-up. All are worn-out people,” a party statement said. “We suspect that these people would not carry out democratic reforms without any hitch. It is seriously doubtful that the new Cabinet would manage elections in a fair and just manner.”

Earlier Monday, Kim Young Sam, president of the opposition party, reiterated his call for Chun to appoint a “neutral” Cabinet and separate himself from politics by giving up his membership in the Democratic Justice Party.

In the shuffle, one minister was shifted to a new portfolio while seven new ministers were appointed. All key economic ministers were retained, including Deputy Prime Minister Chung In Yong; Finance Minister Sakong Il, head of the Economic Planning Agency, and Trade and Industry Minister Rha Woong Bae. Rha resigned his membership in the ruling party as part of the “neutrality” move.

Also retained was Foreign Minister Choi Kwang Soo.

Special Forces Commander

The key appointment of the shuffle was Chun’s choice of Chung Ho Yong as defense minister. One of an inner group of eight former generals who have exercised influence throughout Chun’s seven years of power, Chung -- who retired from the army as a four-star general -- was commander of the Special Forces when one of its units was sent into Kwangju in May, 1980, to put down popular demonstrations against the coup. The brutality of the suppression incited protesters to raid armories in Kwangju, a southwestern provincial capital, and take up weapons in a rebellion that cost the lives of 194 people, by official count.

Chung, who was brought into the Cabinet as home affairs minister after a student’s death due to police torture was exposed in January, was fired May 26, accused of taking part in efforts to cover up the extent of police complicity in the death. A Western diplomat, who asked not to be identified, said that Chung has gained a reputation among insiders for backing the list of sweeping democratic reforms that the chairman of the ruling party, Roh Tae Woo, and President Chun promised after 18 days of street protests in June.

Chung has a reputation for dynamic decision-making, but the appointment to the defense portfolio of a former general linked to the Kwangju uprising surprised political analysts.

At a moment when the opposition is calling for apologies for the 1980 Kwangju tragedy and when public suspicions about Korea’s politically sensitive military establishment are intense, Chun had been expected to “civilianize” both his Cabinet and the leadership of the ruling party to dampen the criticism of “military rule” that boiled over in last month’s protests.

A reshuffling of the Democratic Justice Party leadership is expected, probably this week.

The 30-year military career of party Chairman Roh, the Democratic Justice candidate for president, is seen as the biggest handicap that this close friend of Chun’s will have to cope with in direct presidential elections now planned after expected changes are made in the constitution.

At about the same time as Chun’s announcement of the Cabinet shake-up -- including Chung as defense minister -- was being made, Chung was being denounced at a memorial service for the victims of oppression under Chun’s regime. He was listed as one of five former generals who should be punished for complicity in the suppression of the Kwangju uprising. The memorial service was held Monday night at Seoul’s Yongdong Presbyterian Church.

The two other recently retired generals in the new Cabinet are Cha Kyu Hun, who was retained as transportation minister, and Chang Ki Oh, newly appointed as minister of government administration.

Kim Chung Yul, the new prime minister -- who, under Chun’s authoritarian constitution of 1980, will have little power -- served in a series of important posts after retiring from the air force. But he has been out of the limelight in recent years, when his only official positions have been as a member of the largely cosmetic Advisory Council on Peaceful Unification Policy and of the Advisory Council on State Affairs.

Earlier, he had served as defense minister and chairman of the late President Park Chung Hee’s Democratic Republican Party, which Chun abolished.

Although Chun, since taking office, has made it a point to sweep out of government all Japanese-educated leaders, Kim graduated from Japan’s military academy in 1943 when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule.

Document 384

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
July 12, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Opinion; Part 5; Page 2; Column 5; Opinion Desk
LENGTH: 1442 words
HEADLINE: A WOUND UNHEALED IN KOREA
BYLINE: By Sanford Ungar, Sanford J. Ungar, dean of the School of Communication at American University, has been in Korea under the auspices of the International Human Rights Law Group.
DATELINE: KWANGJU, SOUTH KOREA
BODY:

Lee Han Yol, the latest martyr in Korea’s struggle for democracy, was brought home to this provincial capital for burial the other day, and his fellow townspeople by the hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to pay their respects.

They also reminded the government of their bitter grievances growing out of the Kwangju uprising seven years ago. Unless dealt with soon, this could blow apart South Korea’s current, much-touted efforts at reconciliation and affect the long-standing alliance between South Korea and the United States.

This was no routine political demonstration by radical students and fringe elements the Seoul government often warns about. On the contrary, it was as if an entire city -- almost half of one, actually -- turned out on a torrid summer evening to send the world a message.

The square in front of South Cholla provincial headquarters and nearby streets were packed with farmers, bank tellers, office workers, children, Buddhist monks and Catholic priests, the blind, the old, even wealthy men and women wearing the latest Korean fashions.

They carried portraits and banners and heard tributes to Lee, an economics student at Seoul’s Yonsei University, who suffered fatal injuries when an exploding tear gas grenade pierced his skull during a demonstration on June 9. They shouted “down with the military dictatorship” of President Chun Doo Hwan.

But mostly, as they waited for Lee’s funeral cortege to make the 200-mile journey here from Seoul, the people of Kwangju used the occasion to proclaim that they had not forgotten -- and could not even begin to forgive -- what happened here in May, 1980.

That is when, in reaction to the declaration of martial law by Chun (who was consolidating power after the assassination of longtime strongman Park Chung Hee), Kwangju was the site of protests culminating in a popular insurrection.

Kwangju, and the Cholla region generally, have always been considered different from the rest of Korea. This is symbolized by the fact that even today, when an airplane flies into the Kwangju airport, passengers must pull down their window shades -- supposedly to avoid any compromise of the U. S. air base nearby.

Cholla people, ethnically the same but with a distinctive accent, are said to have a more spontaneous disposition and hotter temper than other Koreans. And they are therefore often the focus of prejudice -- outsiders in a closed political and social system. Kwangju itself, with a population just under a million, has benefited less than other cities from South Korea’s “economic miracle.” In 1980, the people of Kwangju stood apart for their severe reaction to martial law by a government they did not support. For several days, a “people’s government,” relying on weapons eagerly turned over by the local police, ran the city. In the process of regaining control, the military killed -- depending whom you believe -- somewhere between 200 and 2,000 people.

The “Kwangju Massacre” is remembered by most people here as the worst event in Korea since the Korean War of the 1950s. It is said that the government forces sent by Chun, first to put down student demonstrations and later to retake the city, behaved far worse than the North Koreans did in the Korean War or the Japanese did during their long colonization of Korea or in World War II.

According to one journalist who covered the events for a Pusan newspaper, the paratroopers deployed -- trained to operate in North Korea and to take no prisoners -- clubbed and bayonetted many students to death in the streets of Kwangju in broad daylight.

Others claim that entire busloads of people attempting to enter or leave the city may have been killed.

But the problem is that no one knows exactly what happened in Kwangju. There is no official government version, because Chun, his Cabinet and military leaders have refused to regard the incident as anything but a routine exercise in upholding law and order.

Roh Tae Woo, Chun’s military-school classmate and handpicked successor, never even mentioned the Kwangju issue during his recent dramatic announcement of an eight-point plan to move South Korea toward democracy by writing a new constitution and holding direct presidential elections -- long demanded by the opposition.

Yet, for political, emotional, cultural and religious reasons, the longer the questions about May, 1980, go unanswered, the more serious they become. The Kwangju Massacre is now the subject of lilting protest songs and extraordinary rumors, some contributing to the growth of anti-Americanism in Korea.

Chun Kie Ryang, who lost his oldest child, a son, in the uprising, is president of the Bereaved Families Assn. of Kwangju. He says an exact count of the dead -- the obvious first step toward any resolution of the matter -- has been impossible, because of lack of cooperation and intimidation from the authorities.

Many people, he says, were warned that if they officially reported the death of a son or daughter in the Kwangju uprising, they would lose their jobs or have a hard time obtaining the many permits necessary for daily life in South Korea.

Near tears, Chun Kie Ryang related the story of one man who was told he would be fired from the public prosecutor’s office here if he insisted on registering the death of his two sons. When he finally summoned the courage to report the deaths last year, six years after the fact, he was told he would have to prove they were no longer alive before they could be taken off the city’s official family register.

If and when an accurate count is established, the question will be what to do about it. Some of the people of Kwangju have demanded government compensation for their children’s deaths or, at the very least, a monument to their memory.

But Hong Nam Sum, an elderly Kwangju lawyer who has represented the families and who himself spent 20 months in detention after the uprising, says the most important thing is to restore the victims’ human dignity -- to have a government apology for their deaths and their official recognition as “patriots fighting for the good of their country.”

At the other extreme are Korean dissidents who demand that their country, like Argentina, formally charge those responsible for past atrocities -- specifically the Kwangju Massacre and cases of torture -- and put them on trial.

This is especially touchy now, since no one doubts that the man who made the decisions about Kwangju in 1980 was Chun Doo Hwan -- and, although he has agreed to step down early next year, he is still president. Some speculate that Chun may refuse to leave office unless he has an explicit promise on this matter.

For their part, both leading possible opposition candidates for president, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, have said that while they favor a full inquiry into the Kwangju Massacre, they too reject reprisals. (That is a controversial position for Kim Dae Jung because he comes from South Cholla province and was sentenced to death by the Chun regime in 1980 for allegedly inciting the people of Kwangju to violence. He was only pardoned last week.)

Then there is the U. S. link to the Kwangju affair. It has been widely alleged in Korea that the troops responsible for so many deaths entered this city under the auspices of the Combined Forces Command that dates back to the Korean War, with the explicit permission of Gen. John A. Wickham Jr., then U. S. commander in Korea.

According to a recent statement in Seoul by William H. Gleysteen, U. S. ambassador to South Korea in 1980, this was not so. Gleysteen said that the United States was consulted by the Koreans only in the final phase and then endorsed a decision to send an experienced Korean army division into Kwangju to re-establish order.

But the continued absence of any official U. S. government statement denying responsibility for the Kwangju Massacre -- or any expressions of sympathy for its victims -- has fueled rumors that the real orders came from Washington.

When Chun Doo Hwan was the first head-of-state to be received at the White House by Ronald Reagan after his election as President, it reinforced the impression among Koreans that the United States approved of how the crisis was handled. Indeed, many trace the resurgence of anti-Americanism in Korea to that visit.

In a Confucian society like Korea, respect for the dead is crucial. Ignoring the dead is sacrilege. That seemed part of the message during the demonstration here on the occasion of Lee’s funeral.

As they sang about the events of May, 1980, the people of Kwangju warned: “The dead still have not closed their eyes.”

Document 385

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July 12, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 6; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1036 words
HEADLINE: KIM DAE JUNG TO VISIT KWANGJU CEMETERY; OPPOSITION CHIEF TO HONOR 1980 VICTIMS
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

Kim Dae Jung, one of South Korea’s two leading opposition figures, said Saturday that he will visit Kwangju soon to pay respects to the memory of that provincial capital’s citizens who died in a 1980 rebellion protesting his arrest and the coup that brought President Chun Doo Hwan, then an army general, to power.

Kim made the announcement after a breakfast meeting with his political ally and potential rival, Kim Young Sam, president of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, which the two Kims formed last
May 1.

Kim Dae Jung’s visit to the hotbed of anti-government sentiment, part of the Cholla region of South Korea from which he hails, would be the opposition leader’s first trip outside of Seoul as a free man since 1972. It also was expected to precipitate yet another public outpouring of resentment against Chun’s government.

Chun, meanwhile, was reported preparing to take three more steps to carry out promises he made earlier this month to implement full democracy here and to seek national reconciliation. They include reinstatement of suspended teachers and students, the halting of trials in progress against political protesters and the reshuffling of his Cabinet.

Abducted in Tokyo

When the late President Park Chung Hee assumed authoritarian powers in 1972, Kim Dae Jung was on a trip to Japan, and he remained there until South Korean agents abducted him in Tokyo and brought him forcibly back to South Korea in 1973. After that, Kim was subjected to years of oppression, jail terms, house arrests and, finally, a conviction on charges of masterminding the Kwangju rebellion that began the day after he was jailed.

By official count, 194 people in Kwangju were killed in demonstrations that became an open rebellion against the regime.

Chun commuted Kim’s death sentence to life imprisonment in exchange for an invitation from President Reagan to be the first foreign guest to visit the White House after Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. Later, the former general reduced Kim’s sentence to a 20-year term.

Only last Thursday did Kim regain his civil rights, when Chun gave him an amnesty.

Cemetery for Victims

Kim said that he planned to visit both Kwangju, capital of North Cholla province, and his hometown of Mokpo, in South Cholla, within the next two weeks. He said he wants to visit a cemetery where more than 100 people killed in the Kwangju uprising are buried.

“As a man who drew a death sentence for involvement in the incident, I want to pay a visit to the tombs before I join the party,” he said. “It is what the Kwangju people advise.”

Kim told reporters after his meeting with Kim Young Sam that he had agreed “in principle” to join the Reunification Democratic Party as an adviser after making his trip.

Kim Dae Jung’s plans stirred widespread speculation that the former presidential candidate, who lost to Park in 1971 in South Korea’s last direct presidential election, would use the trip to start preparations for a campaign for the presidency in direct popular elections that the government has pledged to hold by the end of this year.

Officials of the National Council of Churches, which represents more than a third of South Korea’s 10 million Christians, urged both Kims at the breakfast meeting to avoid running against each other for president and concentrate on achieving democratic reforms.

A race by both Kims as opposition candidates would boost the odds for victory by Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party’s chairman who already has been nominated as its candidate.

‘Maintaining Cooperation’

“We were never divided in the past, we are maintaining firm cooperation now, and we will never change in the future,” the two Kims told the church leaders.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong Pil, the No. 2 figure in the late President Park’s 18-year regime, declared in a speech that he might run in the presidential election, a move that could draw votes away from Roh.

“I am ready to receive the people’s judgment, a chance which was suspended in 1980, if a direct presidential election system is introduced,” Kim Jong Pil told a meeting in Sosan city.

Chun arrested Kim Jong Pil as well as both of the opposition Kims as part of his 1980 coup and banned all three from participating in politics. The bans against Kim Young Sam and Kim Jong Pil were lifted in 1985.

Following up on Chun’s release last week of 534 political prisoners and his restoration of civil rights to 2,335 people, the Education Ministry and the Seoul Board of Education said Saturday that 104 teachers in primary and secondary schools who have been dismissed for political activities since 1980 will be reinstated. Other teachers who were disciplined by being transferred to schools in remote areas and offshore islands will be allowed to return to schools where they taught previously, Korean newspapers reported.

Reinstatement of Students

The ministry also said that college students expelled for political activities will be reinstated when the fall semester begins.

District court judges met Saturday to complete plans to halt trials of about 350 of the estimated 400 people arrested during recent anti-government protests.

Chun also was reported planning another reshuffle of his Cabinet this week, the second in less than two months, to remove six ministers who are members of the Democratic Justice Party or to have some of them resign from the party. The move was planned to ensure impartiality of government.

On Friday, Chun resigned as president of the ruling party to supervise what he described as a peaceful transfer of power from a “supra-partisan viewpoint” when he steps down next Feb. 25.

A week ago, the two Kims had called for Chun to appoint a caretaker cabinet, including opposition members, to serve through the remaining seven months of his term.

Kin Dae Jung described Chun’s resignation from the No. 1 post in the ruling party as “a positive development.” But he added that Chun should turn down a post as “honorary president” that the party plans to offer him and resign from the party altogether.

Kim complained that Chun’s amnesty measures failed to cover “many non-Communists remaining in jail, who must be freed and pardoned, too.”

GRAPHIC: Photo, Kim Dai Jung, left, and Kim young Sam at meeting in Seoul. Reuters

Document 386

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
July 12, 1987, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1208 words
HEADLINE: CITY OF 1 MILLION WAS FOCUS OF TURBULENCE OF 1980; KWANGJU -- MANY MARTYRS TO CAUSE OF KOREA FREEDOM
BYLINE: By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

Almost no one in the crowd noticed Lee Chun Kyun the other day as he paid his respects to the memory of his 21-year-old son at Kwangju Public Cemetery.

The attention of thousands all around him on a cemetery knoll popularly called the Hill of Democracy was focused on the coffin of a new martyr, Lee Han Yol, a student who was fatally injured a month ago in an anti-government demonstration in Seoul.

While Lee Chun Kyun gazed silently at his own son’s weathered gravestone, photographers and cameramen jostled nearby to record Lee Han Yol’s burial after an 18-hour funeral procession that drew hundreds of thousands into the streets of Seoul and Kwangju in an unprecedented demonstration of protest against President Chun Doo Hwan and his military-backed regime. Later, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his simple home, Lee Chun Kyun explained the parallels between the two young men.

His son and Lee Han Yol were 21 years old. Both were business administration majors in college. Both grew up in this southwestern city of 1 million, which has long been an anti-government stronghold. And both died as martyrs.

Killed 7 Years Ago

Lee Chun Kyun’s eldest son died seven years ago, shot in the head by a soldier during an insurrection that many political analysts believe marked the beginning of this nation’s current political strife.

Seven years ago, in May, 1980, as anti-government protests swept Seoul, Taegu, Chonju and other cities, the people of Kwangju rebelled against a government they believed had neglected their region and deprived South Koreans of freedom. The demonstrations began as a protest against the increasing hold of the military on government, the tightening of martial law and arrest of political leaders and ended in a full-blown insurrection.

Clerks, teachers, businessmen, parents and grandparents joined students in the uprising. Even some of the city’s police, who were unable to cope with the turmoil, joined the insurgents.

Kwangju’s civilians at first used knives, iron pipes and bottles against the police and their tear gas and guns. Then the demonstrators raided military armories and seized automatic rifles and ammunition. They commandeered jeeps, trucks and buses, and besieged provincial government headquarters. Three days into the uprising, the military estimated that 150,000 civilians were on a rampage.

194 Killed in Uprising

The military and Chun, the military strongman, reacted strongly. Heavily armed paratroopers streamed into Kwangju to crush the rebellion. By official count, 194 people were killed in the weeklong uprising. Unofficial counts put the number slain at several hundred to more than 1,000.

In the May turmoil, the weak regime that had governed in the wake of President Park Chung Hee’s assassination in October, 1979, was shunted aside, and the military took over under emergency measures. Chun, by then firmly in control, was named president that August by an electoral college.

The Kwangju incident has been an embarrassment to the regime ever since, and the scars it left behind here symbolize the degree of healing still left to occur in today’s South Korea.

In interviews with shopkeepers, professionals, office workers, students and foreigners living in Kwangju, it seemed clear that most citizens not only oppose but hate Chun and the former generals who dominate his government. These men, among them Roh Tae Woo, now chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, are blamed for ordering troops into Kwangju.

Nearly everyone describes the emotion with the single word han, which has no simple English translation. Linguists say the word means more than resentment, more than hate and more than anger. They say it describes a hate in the heart that is forcibly suppressed and grows with time into a need for revenge and helps explain why Kwangju’s streets overflowed with anti-government protesters at Lee Han Yol’s funeral, just a few days after the regime accepted all major opposition demands for reform.

‘There Must Be Revenge’

“I think it’s fair to say 100% of Kwangju residents hate President Chun,” a foreign resident said. It is this idea of han. . . . It doesn’t matter what the government says or does now. There must be revenge.”

Everyone interviewed recalled the horrors of 1980.

A 33-year-old cafe owner said he watched the army march into Kwangju from Seoul, 170 miles to the north.

“I was hit in the head with shrapnel from a grenade the soldiers threw into the street,” he said. “ . . . I saw the soldiers shoot people in the streets in cold blood. Military trucks would come by later . . . and take them (the bodies) away.”

Another shopkeeper said: “My wife and I decided to leave the city for our village to save ourselves. As we drove out of town, I saw a van riddled with so many bullets it looked like a bee hive. God knows how many died in that van. And God knows what ever happened to their bodies.”

Siege in Provincial Capital

Lee Chun Kyun remembers each moment of the last time he saw his son alive seven years ago, the day before the young man, Lee Chung Yon, joined thousands of other students in the siege of Kwangju’s provincial capitol building.

“I told him, ‘I have been through the Korean War, and I saw so many people being killed worthlessly,’ “ Lee said. “I told my son, ‘Don’t be killed worthlessly by this government. Stay alive, and you will do more important and meaningful work against the government later.’

“But my son replied, ‘Why is life so precious? At this moment, democracy will only be achieved by spilling more blood.’ “

When his son’s body was found in a makeshift military morgue several days later, Lee said he felt only sorrow and loss. It was a long time, he said, before he realized the importance of political martyrdom.

Asked if he thought more blood would have to be spilled before democracy comes to South Korea, Lee quickly said: “Yes, of course. Democracy is not a gift. It is something that must be fought for. And in that fight, blood will flow, no doubt. It is only after spilling much blood that democracy shall come to this country.”

Important Turning Point

Lee, a 56-year-old cookie maker, said that last week’s funeral for Lee Han Yol, the latest student martyr, was an important turning point.

“Until now, people have been terrified of the dictator here,” he said. “They cannot say the words which they think. They have had to shrink within themselves and hold this hatred close to their heart.

“But now, these people will join the great democratic movement. And we will achieve justice for what the dictator has done. The flame will burn on until democracy is ours.”

Lee opened a tattered notebook containing Korean poetry that he and his son had written during the latter’s lifetime. The last poem in the notebook, he said, was written to him by his son before he left to join the student rebels.

Entitled, “The Weed,” the poem reads in part:

“A weed that is left by the dictator is also ignored by society.

“Father, you leave the weed alone because you are afraid.

“So who will pull out this weed?

“Life is not worthless at this moment, for each additional drop of blood will help bring democracy.”

Document 387

Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company The New York Times
July 12, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

SECTION: Section 4; Page 3, Column 4; Week in Review Desk
LENGTH: 887 words
HEADLINE: Anti-Americanism Grows in South Korea
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

A ROAR of approval reverberated among the hundreds of thousands of protesters on Thursday as a handful of young men dashed into the Seoul Plaza Hotel and pulled down an American flag. ‘‘Down With America,’’ the crowd chanted a few minutes later as the flag was burned in the city’s central square during what may have been the largest demonstration in South Korean history.

The ferocity of the anti-Americanism was striking, partly because American officials are still congratulating themselves for helping South Korea on the road to democracy. But if the United States sees itself as a warrior for freedom in Korea, that is not how it is seen here, at least by many of the young people who have led the push for democratic change. A number of them regard the United States as a longtime supporter of authoritarian rule and, with its large military presence, as an occupying power that tries to control the country’s political and economic life.

Recent events have not changed that perception. If anything, the United States is criticized even more today than it was two weeks ago, when President Chun Doo Hwan, under a certain amount of American pressure, agreed to most opposition demands. Those included the promise of direct elections to choose the next President.

‘‘We hate America,’’ C. H. Yoon, a young businessman, said at last week’s rally, which began as a march to mourn the death of a student who died last Sunday after being hit in the head by a tear-gas canister last month. Y. I. Hwan, a bank clerk, searched his English vocabulary for a better word. ‘‘We abhor America,’’ he said. Nearby were signs reading ‘‘Expel the U.S.A,’’ and a student was telling the crowd that only American spies would ever want to learn English. The bitterness has sometimes turned violent. Demonstrators knocked down a photographer for The Associated Press, because they assumed he was an American. It turned out that the man, who was wearing a gas mask, was Japanese.

Anti-Americanism is far from universal. Kim Dae Jung, the prominent opposition leader, lived in the United States during his exile and defends America. Many members of the middle class elite attended graduate school in the United States. But at Thursday’s rally, it was not only leftist students but also housewives who chanted, ‘‘Down With America.’’

Almost no one here is thanking the United States for pushing the Government away from martial law and toward acceptance of the remarkable eight-point ‘‘democratization’’ package unveiled two weeks ago. The Government’s supporters seem to resent the American pressure for conciliation, while its foes find their nationalism inflamed by American interference -even if they agree with the cause.

‘‘The U.S. should not interfere with the current Government, whether for or against democracy,’’ said Kim Sung Nam, the 21-year-old student body president of Chonnam National University in the southern city of Kwangju.

The roots of the anti-Americanism are partly explained by demographic changes. This is a country in which 63 percent of the people are 30 or younger. Their view of the United States is shaped not by the memory of American help during the Korean War, but by Washington’s long association with what many of the young people regard as the main enemy: their own Government.

In some student circles, a mythology has evolved in which the United States is the architect of all things sinister in South Korea. Some young people blame Americans for the continued separation of North and South Korea. A Catholic activist in Kwangju, who said he was involved in an arson attack on an American cultural center a couple of years ago, described his participation as an act of nationalism. Like many young people, he sees the 41,500 American troops here not as protectors but as occupiers. The Government has said that the students are Communists, although it has offered little evidence.

Memories of Kwangju

Anti-Americanism has grown enormously since 1980, when the United States was widely accused of complicity in a massacre of hundreds of opponents of the Government. While American officials conceded that they granted permission for Korean troops under nominal United States control to put down an insurrection in Kwangju, they said they pleaded for restraint. But there was no restraint and the ‘‘Kwangju incident’’ has shaded Korean politics and attitudes toward the United States ever since.

Economic squabbles have also played a role in fostering ill will. Washington’s pressure on the country to lift trade barriers to American goods and services - especially on agricultural products, which would hurt Korean farmers - is seen as confirmation of the argument that the United States treats South Korea like a colony. When Government officials grudgingly open up the Korean marketplace, it is seen as proof that they are pawns of American interests.

As South Korea’s trade surplus grows, conflicts with the United States are likely to worsen, exacerbating the tensions. And the customary respect given in a Confucian society to education means that many people listen to young intellectuals, firebrands like D. Z. Ji, a theology student. ‘‘We are demonstrating for democracy,’’ Mr. Ji said. ‘‘And we are trying to free the Korean peninsula from American imperialist influence.’’

Document 388

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
July 10, 1987, Friday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 397 words
HEADLINE: South Korean Police Keep Out Of Sight For Peaceful Funeral
BYLINE: Maggie Ford, Seoul
BODY:

Police in two South Korean cities yesterday allowed hundreds of thousands of people to hold a peaceful funeral march in memory of a student killed after he was hit by a tear gas canister fired during a demonstration.

In Seoul more than 100,000 people including Mr Kim Dae Jung and Mr Kim Young Sam, the two opposition leaders followed the funeral cortege from the dead student’s university campus to the centre of the city.

With riot police out of sight, students waving banners filled the main square, singing the national anthem. The authorities allowed the national flag to be lowered to half mast in the student’s memory.

The student’s body was then taken by family and friends to his home city of Kwangju, where hundreds were killed in an uprising against President Chun Doo Hwan’s regime in 1980.

The day of mourning was marred by some violence when a crowd of around 50,000 decided to march towards the presidential mansion. Police stopped the marchers and eventually dispersed them with tear gas. A few dozen students fought riot police outside the city’s Anglican cathedral.

Earlier the Government had announced the amnesty and restoration of civil rights for 2,335 people, including Mr Kim Dae Jung, who has been banned from politics under a suspended jail sentence for sedition. Mr Kim was charged with fomenting the Kwangju uprising, although he was in jail at the time.

Yesterday he said he planned to visit the city, and his hometown 50 miles away, along with other provincial cities to consult people’s opinion about his future. Mr Kim said last year, in an effort to persuade President Chun to move towards democracy that he would not stand for President if elections were called. He has since said that large numbers of people have urged him to change his mind.

Many Koreans believe that one contributing factor to the 1979 military coup was the disunity between the two Kims, who campaigned against each other. Mr Kim Young Sam has not yet said whether he plans to stand for the presidency.

Mr Kim Dae Jung called again yesterday for a neutral national interim cabinet to be set up to administer the elections and solve the problem of the Kwanju uprising. Observers are concerned that the military’s fear of revenge because of the rebellion is so great that a democratically elected opposition president might not be allowed to take power.

Document 389

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
July 10, 1987, Friday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 1; Column 2; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1312 words
HEADLINE: PROTESTERS BURY HIM WITH ‘80 VICTIMS; KOREAN MOTHER AGAIN ‘LOSES’ SON TO A CAUSE
BYLINE: By MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea
BODY:

One month ago Thursday, Bae Eun Shim lost her eldest son in the South Korean public’s battle for democracy when he was gravely injured by a police tear-gas grenade that struck him in the head. He died 27 days later on a hospital life-support machine without regaining consciousness.

Bae “lost” her son’s body to the same cause Thursday night when student leaders insisted that the site selected for his burial be changed and that he be laid to rest alongside the graves of 194 Kwangju residents who were killed in an uprising here seven years ago against the military takeover led by Chun Doo Hwan, now South Korea’s president.

“He is no longer only your son,” one student leader told Bae. “Your son belongs to the people now.”

Bae’s son, Lee Han Yol, 21, a sophomore at Yonsei University in Seoul, was finally buried after a marathon, 18-hour funeral that began with a three-mile march that drew an estimated 1 million people in the streets of Seoul, then traveled 170 miles south to this traditional anti-government stronghold.

Police Reclaim Downtown

Here in Lee’s hometown, seemingly all of Kwangju’s 1 million citizens poured into the streets in mourning and protest, and authorities finally deployed riot police early today to reclaim the downtown area that had been taken over by mourners for nearly six hours.

Wearing riot helmets and gas masks and banging their riot shields, police charged into the streets here just after 1 a.m. to break up what had become a festival of defiance.

Some of Lee’s classmates and middle-class supporters were detained. Cab drivers who had been sounding their horns and backfiring their engines in protest were stopped and ticketed. “What are they, machines?” a businessman crouching at the corner of a building early this morning grumbled as riot police marched by in step. “They are not even human.”

It was the kind of defiant anger shown here in May, 1980, when troops were sent into Kwangju to put down an insurrection that had begun simply as demonstrations protesting the military takeover in which Chun came to power.

Since Lee’s death last Sunday from the head injuries he suffered June 9 during a student demonstration at Yonsei University, leaders of moderate as well as radical student factions had been insisting that he be venerated as a national hero.

But his parents had resisted the idea of a public funeral. Friends and family said that in life, Lee was, at best, a reluctant radical.

Lee was a student of business administration, and fellow students noted that the June 9 protest was the first he had attended. Also, he was struck in the back of the head while running away from a police tear-gas barrage, they said, adding that radical students and protest regulars defiantly face toward such barrages, dodging the tear-gas canisters as they fall.

Moreover, several members of Lee’s family work for government institutions. They reportedly were under intense pressure from government officials to bury Lee quietly after a simple ceremony rather than yield to the students’ demands.

Some See Exploitation

For some, among them several of Lee’s high school classmates who gathered Thursday evening at their Kwangju alma mater for a solemn ceremony honoring Lee’s memory, there was a suspicion that the young man’s body was being exploited by opposition politicians running out of causes to help them rally their forces against the government.

“The politicians and the radicals from Seoul are taking advantage of this,” said Seung Tae Koh, a Korean-American who attended Jin Heung High School here but who now lives in Oregon. Seung was among more than 1,000 students and alumni who gathered in the school’s baseball field for the ceremony, and he said that he and his contemporaries were upset about the attention Lee was getting.

“If somebody dies, he dies. We are deeply sorry. It pains us. But they (student leaders and politicians) are just making a big political deal out of it. I resent that, and all my friends are talking about it, too,” Seung said.

Exploitation or not, Lee’s death and his image on thousands of posters stirred millions in this nation Thursday.

Applauded Along Route

After the huge funeral procession in Seoul -- a cortege that some say matched the one for slain President Park Chung Hee in 1979 -- other multitudes turned out to watch and applaud the procession along its route into Kwangju.

Thousands of mourners traveled to remote expressway overpasses, waiting patiently for hours in a hot afternoon sun for the 200-vehicle motorcade to pass at 70 m.p.h. As it passed, complete with a truck bearing a 10-foot-high oil painting of Lee and 90 buses rented by student organizations in Seoul, the mourners waved handkerchiefs and thrust out clenched fists.

Farmers stood beside businessmen in suits and elderly country women, shouting, “Destroy the Dictatorship!” and “Destroy Chun and Roh!” Roh Tae Woo is chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party and its candidate to succeed Chun when he steps down next February.

Lee’s photograph was plastered everywhere along the route, in the windows of every bus and on most of the walls here in Kwangju.

As Lee’s body was taken slowly from his old high school to the plaza in front of the provincial government building in downtown Kwangju, it passed another of his photographs above the words, “We Do Not Negotiate With Murderers. Smash the Chun Dictatorship.”

Praying, Singing in Street

Half an hour before the procession arrived at the capitol’s steps, police fired dozens of rounds of tear gas into a crowd of about 100,000 that had formed there. No one moved. Instead, they prayed, sitting cross-legged in the street and singing a traditional Korean folk song about a townsman who leaves his friends and family for an uncertain future.

Finally, just after nightfall, the procession reached the remote Kwangju Public Cemetery in the pine-forested hills 10 miles outside of town

Student leaders and Kwangju’s largely middle-class organizers of Lee’s funeral service had selected a grave site on a hillside that has become sacred as the resting place for the Kwangju citizens killed in the 1980 uprising.

But as Lee’s body was about to be taken to that “martyr’s graveyard,” family pallbearers shocked the organizers by carrying the coffin toward another site chosen by the cemetery supervisors.

‘The Spirits of 5-18’

“No, no!” the students shouted. “We want Han Yol back here. He must rest beside the spirits of 5-18 (May 18, 1980, date of the events that touched off the nine-day Kwangju uprising).”

But the pallbearers continued their solemn march to the other grave site.

“Five-eighteen, five-eighteen, five-eighteen!” the students chanted, raising clenched fists and twice forcibly stopping the progress of the pallbearers.

Finally, Lee’s mother was called down from the other grave site in tears, as she had been during most of Thursday’s many ceremonies and prayer stops.

Accompanied by Lee’s sister and brother, the family made its last stand.

Mother Begs for Son

“Give me back my son,” Bae wailed several times, at one point pounding on her son’s flag-draped coffin.

But the student leaders persisted and, minutes later, prevailed.

In triumph, one student climbed atop Lee’s coffin, shook his fist, rang a small bell and led the student’s chant: “Five-eighteen, destroy the dictatorship! Five-eighteen, destroy the dictatorship!”

A Presbyterian minister said a final prayer as Lee’s coffin was placed in its final resting place beside the 1980 martyrs of Kwang-ju.

“Let us thank God for having reaped the rewards for having spilled our blood and torn our flesh,” the minister said through a crude public-address system. “And let us pray that the sufferings of the people are not in vain.”

But Lee’s mother did not hear the prayer. She had left the cemetery.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Bae Eun Shim, the mother of Lee Han Yol, breaks down as funeral procession reaches high school. ; Photo, South Korean students lower coffin of Lee Han Yol into grave at the Kwanju cemetery where victims of 1980 uprising are buried. HYUNGWON KANG

Document 390

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
July 10, 1987, Friday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 1449 words
HEADLINE: ANALYSIS; HUGE SEOUL CROWD’S MESSAGE: MILITARY-DOMINATED GOVERNMENT MUST GO
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

More than 1 million people in this capital -- a tenth of the population -- delivered the message to President Chun Doo Hwan on Thursday that democratic reform is not enough.

Military-dominated government also must end, they said with their feet, their cheers and their applause as a funeral procession for a slain student turned into the most massive anti-government rally that Chun has seen since he seized power in a coup in May, 1980.

And there was another message for both Chun and the nation’s long-suffering advocates of democracy: For South Korea’s small but growing bands of radical students, nothing is enough. Their actions Thursday in both Seoul and Kwangju seemed to demonstrate that violence, not merely free expression‎, remains their goal.

The newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported that 1 million people turned out in the capital for the funeral, its procession and what became an anti-government, anti-American rally in City Hall Plaza, a broad square where boisterous welcomes for visiting American presidents have taken place in the past.

Recalling those occasions, a man in his 40s said: “Those crowds were mobilized by the government. This one is spontaneous.”

Thursday’s multitude also was many times larger than any of those during 18 days of street demonstrations in June that led the authoritarian Chun to promise on July 1 that South Korea would be changed into a fully democratic nation.

Chun’s pledge came two days after his handpicked successor, Roh Tae Woo, chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, startled the nation by proposing to accept everything the opposition had demanded, a move many regarded as a ploy to transform Roh into a viable candidate in direct, popular presidential elections to be held by the end of the year. Chun approved Roh’s proposals.

Until then, Roh was to have run in an indirect election that could be rigged to guarantee his victory.

On Thursday, the response from the masses who joined the funeral procession for a slain Yonsei University student was skepticism. Also shown was a public conviction that Roh, a former army general who helped put Chun in power, is part of a military government that itself no longer merits trust.

Chun’s government, in an attempt to gain credibility, took account of the skepticism earlier in the day when it announced an amnesty and restoration of civil rights for 2,335 people. The amnesty, Information Minister Lee Woong Hee said, was aimed at dispelling “all antagonism, confrontation, disbelief and conflict which have persisted in our society.”

It clearly fell short of that goal.

Radical students in the vanguard of Thursday’s funeral march from Yonsei University to City Hall -- the first non-government street procession that Chun has ever permitted -- made up no more than a tenth of the masses assembled in the City Hall Plaza. Average citizens, shoppers, office workers, businessmen and laborers filled the square and lined the roofs of adjoining buildings.

And while the radicals confined themselves to demanding that flags at City Hall and nearby hotels be lowered to half-staff in tribute to the slain student, ordinary citizens cheered and applauded. They also cheered when students pulled down American flags from three hotels and burned one of them.

Although individual Americans, including U.S. Embassy officials, in the square were treated in friendly fashion, they received an earful of complaints about U.S. policy in South Korea.

Comments were varied; the theme was universal. The United States, they said, has supported military rule in the belief that anything else would lead to instability and an increased threat from Communist North Korea, against which about 40,000 U.S. troops are stationed here.
June’s proliferation of declarations from Washington in support of reform here, coming against a background of seven years of the Reagan Administration’s “quiet diplomacy,” won no more credence from the citizens in City Hall Plaza on Thursday than had Chun’s born-again commitment to democracy.

“When so many people want something, why doesn’t the government give it to them?” asked an employee of one of the nation’s largest conglomerates.

‘We Have to Watch’

When a reporter commented that Chun had promised to give full democracy to the people, the business employee replied, “We have to watch these (government) people closely.”

Radical leaders of the demonstration clearly had come prepared for more than just sending the casket of Lee Han Yol off to Kwangju, where the 21-year-old student was later buried.

After the funeral procession left the square, the radicals set up a platform in front of the locked doors of City Hall and began a series of harangues through a public address system they had brought along.

An Olympic Games flag atop City Hall was taken down, as students smashed open the doors, broke about 50 windows and forced their way to the roof to lower the South Korean flag to half-staff in honor of their fallen comrade.

Radical students assert that the 1988 Summer Olympics, which Seoul is scheduled to host, should be co-hosted by Communist North Korea -- the same demand the Pyongyang government is making.

Students expressed their thoughts in graffiti along the entire procession route, spray-painting walls, storefronts, sidewalks, electric poles and streets.

On a City Hall wall, they wrote: “Gen. Chun, why don’t you fly to Hawaii and play chess with Marcos?” -- a reference to exiled former President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines.

As the flag atop City Hall was lowered to half-staff, the multitude joined the students in a moving rendition of the national anthem. Many in the crowd wept.

The radicals had had their moment in the sun, yet it was not enough.

In the sure knowledge that police would call an end to nearly eight hours of non-interference and restraint, they urged the crowd to march toward the Blue House, the presidential residence. The multitude did not move, but a band of about 1,000 demonstrators did.

Their march was halted, and the anticipated clash of police tear gas vs. students’ stones and firebombs began. Riot police chased some of the radicals into an Anglican Church, dragged them out and beat them before shoving them into police vans. Thus began another round of arrests, just a day after the government had freed hundreds of political prisoners.

In Kwangju, too, the radicals demonstrated that no concession is enough. There, they overwhelmed Lee’s parents and family, snatching the coffin away from them for burial in a section of a cemetery alongside the 194 victims of the 1980 Kwangju uprising -- a revolt against a military coup led by Chun.

The parents, who earlier had bowed to student demands for a funeral of national scope, had wanted to bury their son in a plot on the other side of the cemetery.

Radicals, many of whom had traveled from Seoul, also taunted Kwangju police until the pepper gas attacks finally began.

Thursday’s drama also shattered theories that had gained some credence among both Korean political analysts and U.S. diplomats, who have questioned the support popularly thought to be enjoyed by the nation’s two old-time opposition leaders.

Kim Dae Jung, 63, the opposition candidate 16 years ago in this country’s last free, direct presidenitial election, walked through the streets with the funeral procession as crowds on the sidewalks shouted his name.

When Kim Young Sam, 58, president of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, entered his car near City Hall and drove through the packed plaza to his office, his name was shouted, too, as the masses parted to make way. No other car passed through the crowd.

By contrast, the last time a South Korean president appeared before an unorganized crowd, much less mingled with one, was during that 1971 presidential campaign.

So security-conscious has Chun become that he conducts inspection visits at such hours as 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. and has many of his speeches read on his behalf.

By giving permission for the funeral procession to march to City Hall and keeping his police in the background, Chun was testing his nation’s ability to express opinion peacefully. And until the radicals demanded their extra pound of flesh, the democratic experiment succeeded.

But as if to prove that the government still is not ready to embrace democracy, all of the morning newspapers today were forced, once again, to obey what the government euphemistically calls “guidelines.”

The march of 1 million people did make the front pages. But it was the government’s amnesty and statements that it is seeking “national reconciliation and unity” that captured the top headlines.

Document 391

Copyright 1987 The San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego Union-Tribune
July 9, 1987, Thursday

SECTION: NEWS; Ed. 1,2,3; Pg. A-1
LENGTH: 836 words
HEADLINE: S. Korean dissidents get amnesty; Kim Dae Jung among 2,335 to win back righ

SOURCE: From News Services
BODY:

The government yesterday announced an amnesty for 2,335 people convicted of anti-government acts. The measure includes restoration of civil rights for Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s best-known dissident.

Earlier, thousands of people, many weeping and praying, went to a “democratic people’s funeral” on a Seoul university campus for a student who died Sunday of injuries received in a clash with riot police a month ago.

Government spokesman Lee Woong Hee, announcing the amnesty, said it was a move to promote national reconciliation and will be effective Friday.

The Justice Ministry said all 2,335 people covered by the amnesty are out of prison on parole or suspension of sentences. They had been convicted in connection with various anti-government activities dating back to the 1970s.

A day earlier, the government released 357 political prisoners who had been awaiting trial. Many marched through prison gates shouting “Down with the military dictatorship!” and demanded freedom for all their comrades.

More than 500 such prisoners have been freed, including 177 released Monday. Most of them were picked up in violent anti-government demonstrations over the past month. Before the releases, the government said it held 1,100 political prisoners, but the opposition contends there are hundreds more.

The release of prisoners and restoration of rights follow President Chun Doo Hwan’s agreement July 1 to accept opposition demands for direct presidential elections and other democratic reforms.

Lee, the government spokesman, said the amnesty includes restoration of civil rights for Kim and 17 others who had been convicted of sedition.

Kim had been under a suspended 20-year prison sentence handed down in 1980 when he was accused of involvement in the bloody Kwangju uprising. He was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to death. The government later commuted the sentence to life and then to 20 years.

The conviction took away Kim’s civil rights and legally barred him from political activity. Despite the ban and despite repeated periods of house arrest, he had continued to take part in an anti-government campaign.

In a statement issued at his Seoul home, Kim said he had received the news of the amnesty with “mixed feelings.”

“This is because the so-called Kwangju rebellion case in 1980 was a total fabrication,” he said. “Thus, I did not commit any crimes for which I should receive amnesty and rehabilitation.

“However, considering that the restoration of my civil rights was a gift resulting from the sacrifice and support of our people, I am fully grateful.”

Radical students were preparing to march through Seoul today with the coffin of slain student Lee Han Yul, following a service for him at Yonsei University. After the march, they said, the body would be taken by motor convoy to Kwangju, his hometown 165 miles to the south.

Authorities said yesterday the students would be allowed only a brief march from Yonsei University and riot police would disperse them with force if they tried to go farther.

Political leaders on both sides have appealed for calm to avert further unrest that might endanger negotiations on democratic reform.

Chun’s acceptance of opposition demands came after weeks of violent protest. Two days before Chun capitulated, the governing party’s chairman and presidential candidate Roh Tae Woo -- an old ally of Chun and fellow former general -- had threatened to resign unless he did so.

Hundreds of mourners visited the Yonsei campus yesterday to honor Lee at a large flower-draped altar. The 20-year-old student was hit June 9 by a tear gas canister fired by a rifle.

Lee and a policemen were the only people killed in the weeks of violence, but hundreds of people were injured and thousands detained for varying lengths of time.

Kwangju, Lee’s hometown, is an anti-government stronghold. Government forces suppressed an uprising there in 1980, killing 200 people by official count and hundreds more according to some witnesses.

About 800 students sat down on one of Kwangju’s main streets last night, blocking traffic. Riot police did not interfere as they chanted “Bring back Lee Han Yul!”

Justice Ministry officials said the prisoners freed yesterday were convicted of violating national security laws and other regulations, and some had spent several years in prison. Prisoners released Monday were detained during the June protests.

The officials, who would not let their names be used, said 86 other prisoners held under national security laws were not freed because they were Communists or had not shown repentance. Opposition leaders have demanded freedom for all political prisoners, but some have agreed that Communists should not be released.

Among those freed were the Rev. Moon Ik Hwan, a dissident leader, and 12 students involved in attacks on U.S. cultural centers in Seoul and Pusan. Students held the Seoul center for four days in 1985 as part of anti-government protests.

Document 392

Copyright 1987 The San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego Union-Tribune
July 9, 1987, Thursday

SECTION: NEWS; Ed. 4,5,6; Pg. A-1
LENGTH: 856 words
HEADLINE: S. Korean marchers, police clash; Kim Dae Jung, other dissidents granted amnesty

SOURCE: From News Services
BODY:

Police in armored cars bombarded tens of thousands of marchers with tear gas today when a huge column tried to march toward the presidential palace during a procession for a slain student protester.

The police action came after the government announced an amnesty for 2,335 people convicted of anti-government acts. The measure includes restoration of civil rights for Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s best-known dissident leader.

In Seoul, some in an estimated throng of 150,000 marchers were trying to push their way past lines of riot police when the black armored cars opened fire with multi-barrel tear-gas launchers. Marchers fled in panic as squads of police hurling tear-gas grenades pursued them.

The clash erupted in the city center during a memorial for a 20-year-old student who died from wounds received last month during a clash with riot police. Marchers shouted “Down with the military dictatorship!” and sang protest songs.

The procession began at Yonsei University, where a funeral was held for Lee Han Yul. Lee’s coffin, draped with a South Korean flag, was placed on the bed of a small truck and the two-mile funeral march began.

Students did little to disguise the fact that they were using the dead youth as a lever against the government. Although President Chun Doo Hwan agreed July 1 to accept all opposition demands and set the country on the road to Western-style democracy, many students remain skeptical. Others still believe that South Korea must be purged by a full-scale revolution if it is to emerge from decades of military-backed rule.

In announcing the amnesty yesterday, government spokesman Lee Woong Hee said it was a move to promote national reconciliation and will be effective tomorrow.

The Justice Ministry said all 2,335 people covered by the amnesty are out of prison on parole or suspension of sentences. They had been convicted in connection with various anti-government activities dating back to the 1970s.

A day earlier, the government released 357 political prisoners who had been awaiting trial. Many marched through prison gates shouting “Down with the military dictatorship!” and demanded freedom for all their comrades.

More than 500 such prisoners have been freed, including 177 released Monday. Most of them were picked up in violent anti-government demonstrations over the past month. Before the releases, the government said it held 1,100 political prisoners, but the opposition contends there are hundreds more.

The release of prisoners and restoration of rights follow Chun’s agreement to accept opposition demands for direct presidential elections and other democratic reforms.

Lee, the government spokesman, said the amnesty includes restoration of civil rights for Kim and 17 others who had been convicted of sedition.

Kim had been under a suspended 20-year prison sentence handed down in 1980 when he was accused of involvement in the bloody Kwangju uprising. He was tried by a military tribunal and condemned to death, a sentence the government later commuted to life and then to 20 years.

The conviction took away Kim’s civil rights and legally barred him from political activity. Despite the ban and despite repeated periods of house arrest, he had continued to take part in anti-government campaigns.

In a statement issued at his Seoul home, Kim said he had received the news of the amnesty with “mixed feelings.”

“This is because the so-called Kwangju rebellion case in 1980 was a total fabrication,” he said. “Thus, I did not commit any crimes for which I should receive amnesty and rehabilitation.

“However, considering that the restoration of my civil rights was a gift resulting from the sacrifice and support of our people, I am fully grateful.”

Political leaders on both sides have appealed for calm to avert further unrest that might endanger negotiations on democratic reform.

The student whose funeral was held today and a policemen were the only people killed in the weeks of violence, but hundreds of people were injured and thousands detained for varying lengths of time.

Kwangju, the dead student’s hometown, is an anti-government stronghold. Government forces suppressed an uprising there in 1980, killing 200 people by official count -- hundreds more than that, according to some witnesses.

Justice Ministry officials said the prisoners freed yesterday were convicted of violating national security laws and other regulations, and some had spent several years in prison. Prisoners released Monday were detained during the June protests.

The officials, who would not let their names be used, said 86 other prisoners held under national security laws were not freed because they were Communists or had not shown repentance. Opposition leaders have demanded freedom for all political prisoners, but some have agreed that Communists should not be released.

Among those freed were the Rev. Moon Ik Hwan, a dissident leader, and 12 students involved in attacks on U.S. cultural centers in Seoul and Pusan. Students held the Seoul center for four days in 1985 as part of anti-government protests.

Document 393

Copyright 1987 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd. The Toronto Star
July 9, 1987, Thursday, ONT

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 547 words
HEADLINE: South Korea gives amnesty to 2,335 rebels
BYLINE: (AP)
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

SEOUL (AP) - South Korea announced a broad amnesty today covering 2,335 people and including restoration of civil rights for Kim Dae Jung, the country’s best-known dissident leader and President Chun Doo Hwan’s most implacable foe.

Earlier, thousands of people, many weeping and praying, attended a “democratic people’s funeral” on a Seoul university campus for a student who died Sunday of injuries received in a clash with riot police a month ago.

Official government spokesman Lee Woong Hee, announcing the wide-ranging amnesty, said it is a move to promote national reconciliation and will be effective tomorrow.

The announcement came a day after the government released 357 political prisoners. Many marched through prison gates shouting: “Down with the military dictatorship!” and demanding freedom for all their comrades.

Bloody uprising

More than 500 prisoners have been freed, including 177 released Monday. Before the releases, the government said it held 1,100 political prisoners, but the opposition contends there are hundreds more.

The amnesty announced yesterday covers people convicted in connection with various anti-government activities going back to the 1970s.

Kim Dae Jung was under a suspended 20-year prison sentence handed down in 1980 when he was accused of involvement in the bloody Kwangju uprising. He was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to death. The government later commuted the sentence to life and then to 20 years.

The conviction took away Kim’s civil rights and legally barred him from political activity.

Despite the ban and despite repeated periods of house arrest, he continued to take part in an anti-government campaign.

The release of prisoners and restoration of rights follow Chun’s agreement July 1 to accept opposition demands for direct presidential elections and other democratic reforms.

Kim Dong Chul of the Justice Ministry told reporters more prisoners will be freed in coming months, but ministry officials said privately scores of Communists and unrepentant prisoners will be kept in jail.

Radical students have said they plan to march through Seoul today with the coffin of slain student Lee Han Yul, then take the body by motor convoy to Kwangju, his hometown 265 kilometres (165 miles) to the south.

Avert unrest

Authorities said yesterday the students would be allowed only a brief march from Yonsei University and riot police would disperse them with force if they tried to go farther.

Political leaders on both sides appealed for calm to avert further unrest that might endanger negotiations on democratic reform.

Chun’s acceptance of opposition demands came after weeks of violent protest.

Two days before Chun capitulated, Roh Tae Woh, the governing party’s chairman and presidential candidate - an old ally and fellow former general - threatened to resign unless Chun yielded to reform demands.

Hundreds of mourners visited the Yonsei campus yesterday to honor Lee at a large flower-draped altar. The 20-year-old student was hit June 9 by a tear-gas canister fired by a rifle.

Kwangju, Lee’s hometown, is an anti-government stronghold. About 800 students sat down on one of the main streets last night, blocking traffic. Riot police did not interfere.

Document 394

Copyright 1987 The Times Mirror Company Los Angeles Times
July 8, 1987, Wednesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part 1; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 906 words
HEADLINE: KOREA OPPOSITION EASES STAND ON REFORM TALKS; SAYS FREEING DETAINEES, RESTORING CIVIL RIGHTS ARE NOT PRECONDITIONS
BYLINE: By SAM JAMESON, Times Staff Writer
DATELINE: SEOUL, South Korea
BODY:

The main opposition party, taking a major step back from confrontation with the government of President Chun Doo Hwan, softened its preconditions Tuesday for negotiations on South Korean constitutional reform, saying that it will not refuse to begin such talks until all detainees are released and the civil rights of all dissidents are restored.

“The release of every political detainee and the restoration of civil rights for every dissident are not our preconditions to start interparty negotiations” on constitutional reform, Kim Tae Ryong, spokesman for the Reunification Democratic Party, said in a statement.

Last Saturday, Kim Young Sam, the party president, and Kim Dae Jung, his political ally, said that there could be no such negotiations until all political prisoners are released.

To Continue Demand

But spokesman Kim said Tuesday that the party will enter into constitutional talks while continuing to demand the release of all political prisoners. He said the party will begin negotiations with the ruling Democratic Justice Party as soon as it completes its own proposals for constitutional reform. This is expected next Tuesday. The ruling party has already announced its readiness to begin negotiations next week.

No explanation was offered for the opposition’s turnabout. But the government, which until Saturday had been talking about releasing some of the 1,100 people it has classified as political prisoners, said Monday that it is considering clemency for many of the approximately 2,400 political prisoners and people whose civil rights have been suspended.

Korean newspapers reported that as many as 2,100 of them will be freed or that their civil rights will be restored. An announcement is expected at almost any time.

The list of 2,400 includes prisoners convicted a decade ago, under President Park Chung Hee, who was assassinated in 1979.

The opposition movement moved ahead Tuesday with plans for a funeral of national dimensions for a student killed in last month’s public disorder.

Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to turn out for the funeral for Lee Han Yol, 21, a Yonsei University sophomore who died Sunday of head injuries inflicted June 9 when he was hit by a tear-gas canister. The services are to take place Thursday on the university campus here and in Kwangju, Lee’s home town, about 165 miles south of Seoul.

Police officials refused to say whether they will permit the students to carry Lee’s body through Seoul and on to Kwangju in a motorcade. By law, all acts of public assembly must be approved in advance, and such approval is rare.

The display of sympathy for the student, who lay in a coma all through the 18 days of public protest that brought promises of reform from the Chun government, could bring on another clash.

Renewal of Tension Feared

There is fear that the burial ceremony in Kwangju, the site of earlier disorder, will renew the tension between the government and the opposition. It was in that city seven years ago that Chun put down, at the cost of at least 194 lives, a violent protest against the military coup that had given him control of the country.

Throughout Tuesday, thousands of mourners paid tribute to the slain student. Altars have been set up at three places in Kwangju. Wreaths from Kim Dae Jung and the Reunification Democratic Party have been placed at an altar in the Kwangju YMCA.

The Kwangju branch of the National Coalition for a Democratic Constitution, which is organizing the rites in Kwangju, said it expects 10,000 students to come to the city from Seoul and that they are expected to join about 50,000 residents of Kwangju in paying respects to Lee.

The coalition, which includes clergymen, politicians and dissident groups, organized the rallies last month that sparked the massive demonstrations against the government.

67 From Party to Attend

In Seoul, the Reunification Democratic Party announced that all 67 of its representatives in the National Assembly will attend Lee’s funeral. It also donated $6,250 to Lee’s parents.

Over the protests of Lee’s parents, students at Yonsei University decided Tuesday to conduct the slain student’s funeral as a “National Democratic Funeral for Lee Han Yol.” The parents, fearing that a massive funeral might precipitate violence, had urged a modest ceremony.

Woo Sang Ho, chairman of the university’s Student Council, told reporters that the broader service had been decided on so as to include all members of society.

Students plan to carry the coffin from the university to City Hall Plaza, the downtown area where important foreign visitors often receive the accolades of tens of thousands of citizens, and then take it by motorcade to Kwangju. Ceremonies there are to continue late into the evening.

Lee will be buried in the cemetery that contains the remains of many of the victims of the 1980 Kwangju uprising.

The National Institute for Scientific Investigation confirmed that metal fragments found in Lee’s head were from a tear-gas canister. National Police Headquarters, which had already acknowledged police responsibility for Lee’s death, on Tuesday dismissed Kim Su Gil, chief of the police district where Yonsei University is located.

On Monday, the police opened an investigation seeking to determine why a gas canister was fired into the crowd rather than into the air over the people’s heads, as regulations specify.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Women pay their respects at shrine for Lee Han Yol in Kwangju. HYUNGWON KANG

Document 395

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

SECTION: Section 1; Page 6, Column 1; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 545 words
HEADLINE: IN KWANGJU, RAGE AND NEW CYNICISM
BYLINE: By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: KWANGJU, South Korea, July 5
BODY:

Seven years have passed since his eldest son was killed by the police, but Chun Kae Ryang is not the type to forgive and forget.

Mr. Chun’s son, a 17-year-old high school student, was one of at least 191 people, and perhaps many times that number, killed as the police quelled an insurrection in this southwestern city in May 1980.

As they died, a new generation of radicals was born, for no incident in the nation’s recent history has so antagonized opponents of the Government as the Kwangju massacre.

With uncharacteristic humility, the Government tried last week to ease that antagonism by proposing some kind of reparations for the killings. Officials said this could include payments to bereaved families or a monument to the dead.

‘A Scheme to Win Popularity’

‘‘They are not sincere,’’ Mr. Chun snorted as he sat cross-legged on the floor of his modest home. ‘‘This is just a scheme to win popularity. I would like to see them put on trial by the next government.’’

A similar anger seethes in many homes in Kwangju. It is a testimony to the level of distrust in South Korean politics that the poison in the air may actually have increased after the peace offering.

More important, the poor reception here to the suggestion of reparations illustrates the pitfalls facing the policy of national reconciliation that the Government began last week, centering on the promise of direct elections for the next president.

Politics here is often described not as the art of compromise but as a blend of obstinacy and self-righteousness, on all sides. This gulf of distrust and bitterness is seldom so vast as in discussions of the Kwangju incident.

Toll Put as High as 2,000

The episode began in May 1980 with growing student demonstrations that lasted a little more than a week, and resulted briefly in armed demonstrators controlling the city. But the police and the armed forces responded with guns blazing, and the insurrection was bloodily crushed.

According to the official account, 191 people died. But dissidents in Kwangju often put the figure at about 2,000, and various foreign investigators from religious and human-rights organizations have put the number at 600 or more.

The incident has been an immense embarrassment to the Government, and perhaps more than anything else it radicalized university students around the country.

One opinion poll at Seoul National University last year asked students to identify the greatest tragedy in Korean history since 1945. The professors who designed the poll expected the answer to be the Korean War, but The students overwhelmingly named the Kwangju incident.

Criticism of Reparations

A statement issued over the weekend by family members of some of those killed in the massacre suggests that agreement with the Government on reparation terms is unlikely. The statement calls for inserting a clause in the Constitution hailing the spirit of the insurrection. It also demands a full and independent investigation into the events of May 1980.

But some say that a proper investigation is possible only under a new government.

‘‘They would be investigating themselves,’’ said Kim Sung Nam, the president of the student body at Chonnam National University in Kwangju . Protest may bite.

Document 396

Copyright 1987 The San Diego Union-Tribune The San Diego Union-Tribune
July 6, 1987, Monday

SECTION: NEWS; Ed. 1,2,3,4,5,6; Pg. A-1
LENGTH: 1717 words
HEADLINE: Suspicion still stalks Korea; Some fear that promised reforms may never mat
BYLINE: Jon Funabiki; Staff Writer
BODY:

Hours after President Chun Doo Hwan announced his endorsement of major democratic reforms for South Korea’s 42.6 million people, Yun Jung Hee sat in her office supply shop and shook her head in disbelief.

“We should believe them 100 percent, but we have our suspicions,” said the 46-year-old woman. “They have lied so many times before, that it’s hard for people like us to believe them.”

Despite the euphoria in South Korea after dissidents won a hard-fought victory in the streets, there are deep suspicions that the constitutional reforms -- including direct presidential elections -- promised last week by Chun may never come to pass.

South Koreans are moving toward their first real democracy in their country’s 38-year, coup-filled history. But to reach it, they face a difficult journey through a mine field of legislative and political obstacles.

Saturday’s threat by the opposition party to delay talks on the constitution until the government first fulfills its promises to release political prisoners and to grant amnesty to dissident leaders shows that many longstanding emotional issues threaten the proceedings.

Campus violence flared again yesterday as students mourned a colleague who died from head injuries sustained when hit by a tear-gas canister during an anti-government demonstration nearly a month ago.

Riot police fired volleys of tear gas at students chanting anti-government slogans at the gates of Seoul’s Yonsei University, where 21-year-old Lee Han-yul died in the campus hospital early yesterday. The students trampled and burned flowers sent in memory of Lee by the ruling party’s candidate for president, Roh Tae Woo.

Police also fired tear gas at students in Kwangju on Saturday in what was the first significant confrontation since the government announced its concessions.

It was the public’s pent-up anger that fueled the massive, violence-prone protests and calls for the overthrow of Chun, who came to power in a 1980 military coup.

The most serious series of recent clashes occurred between June 9 and June 26, when -- by the government’s own count -- riot police rounded up 17,244 protesters and fired off 351,200 tear-gas bombs, or about 20,000 per day.

The tear gas had a galvanizing effect on South Koreans, bringing many of the country’s moderate, middle-class citizens into a sympathetic coalition with the opposition politicians, religious activists and militant university students who had been the driving force behind the battle on the streets.

It was not uncommon for the shopkeepers along the narrow street in front of Myondong Cathedral -- the towering brick church building that served as a staging ground for many of the protests -- to let young demonstrators seek shelter in their shops from the police and clouds of eye-stinging tear gas.

“All of the businessmen and women around here take the side of the protesters,” said a sales clerk in her 30s who works in a tiny wedding boutique near the cathedral. “But even though we all had to breathe the tear gas, it was worth it -- the fruit of the protest was excellent.”

Nor was it uncommon for South Koreans to at least tacitly support the decision to step up the tactics with rocks and Molotov cocktails.

“The people thought this government was so bad that they thought a little bit of violence can be tolerated,” said Moon Young Lee, a Korea University professor and longtime government critic. He said that many citizens found inspiration in the “People Power” revolution that ousted Ferdinand Marcos in favor of Corazon Aquino in the Philippines.

The Seoul government -- faced with the continuing violence, a weary force of 120,000 riot police, warnings from the United States to avoid unleashing the heavy hand of the military, and the prospects of losing Chun’s prized possession, the 1988 Olympics -- was backed into a corner.

But South Koreans were still shocked last Monday when Roh, chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, announced his willingness to surrender to almost every key opposition demand.

Roh, 54, a classmate of Chun in high school and in the Korean Military Academy, had been handpicked by Chun as the party’s presidential nominee.

As such, Roh was a shoo-in to replace the retiring Chun next February under the current electoral college system used to name the president. Since electoral college representatives are not bound to specific candidates, the opposition says they are easily manipulated by the powerful ruling party.

Roh, however, offered to resign the nomination if Chun refused to accept his plan. It may have been an act of grandstanding as Chun’s approval came two days later.

The ruling party’s stunning move now is seen as a bold gamble to win the public’s acceptance, to enable Roh to distance himself from the much-disliked Chun, and to polish Roh’s image as a “national hero” whose flexibility brought peace to a riot-torn nation.

The ruling party, which long had fought direct elections out of fear that it would lose, now has switched strategies in an all-out drive to win those elections.

Western diplomatic sources still give the opposition a 60-40 edge in any “free and fair” face-off against the ruling party, but this assumes that the often-factionalized opposition sends a single candidate to do battle with Roh.

But the opposition has two likely contenders, Kim Young-sam, 59, the president of the party, and Kim Dae Jung, 63, who nearly won the presidency in the nation’s last direct presidential election in 1971.

Although the two Kims share political ideals, they contrast markedly in style.

Kim Young-sam, the more moderate, is a consensus-builder who comes from Kyongdong Province, which has dominated South Korea politically and economically for decades.

Kim Dae Jung is a charismatic firebrand who has spent much of his career in jail, under house arrest or in exile in the United States. Popular with the students -- many of whom had never seen his face in the local newspapers until last month -- Kim Dae Jung comes from Choola Province, where the people often complain of having been victimized by those from Kyongdong.

Together, the two Kims comprise a powerful team, but in the past they hafought bitterly for power within their party. In the wake of the Chun-Roh announcement, the two have argued over Kim Dae Jung’s proposal for a “caretaker government” to take over until Chun retires. Saturday, however, Kim Young-sam reversed himself after meeting with his colleague and said he would recommend that Chun appoint a caretaker government.

Roh, who also comes from Kyongdong, is expected to exploit the political and regional splits, and analysts say this is why he proposed the restoration of civil rights for Kim Dae Jung, making him politically active again.

But for the election to ever occur, the ruling and opposition parties need to negotiate some critical constitutional and legislative issues, probably by September. Given the Korean style of no-compromise, confrontational politics, this will not be easy for two factions that consider each other arch enemies.

Among those issues:

o While Chun’s party wants the presidential election in December, the opposition wants it earlier, in October or November.

o The opposition probably will seek to overhaul the election rules for the National Assembly. The rules currently award a big block of at-large seats to the majority party. This has given Chun’s forces a consistent advantage in the Parliament.

o Redistricting in the National Assembly also will be sought to break up the ruling party’s support in rural areas, which have enjoyed the benefits of government-financed agricultural subsidies and public-works projects.

o The opposition will push to have the legal voting age reduced from 20 to 18, to exploit its popularity among the young.

o There will be moves to dilute the authority of the president.

o The opposition may come under pressure from its own constituency to have the new constitution include mention of the interests of labor, farm, students, women and other special-interest groups.

But these knotty points, which deal directly with the constitution and election laws, also will be accompanied by other highly emotional issues that could send South Korean politics veering in new directions.

Chief among them will be issues pushed by the students and other more militant groups who can play a powerful role in setting the opposition’s agenda, since they represent its shock troops.

At a Yonsei University rally on Friday that attracted more than 15,000 students from throughout Seoul, speaker after speaker said the government concessions had not gone far enough, and many attacked the opposition party for failing to push harder.

In a particularly emotional appeal that spurred the students into loud chanting, Cho Sung-ja, the mother of a 22-year-old student arrested last December, attacked the government for failing to immediately release 1,864 political prisoners. Human-rights leaders say many of those prisoners have been tortured.

Under the Chun-Roh plan, the government has promised to release political prisoners, but the number being considered is 1,132.

When a group of women -- the mothers or wives of political prisoners -- was introduced, the students stood and sang a poignant song, entitled “Mother,” in which a college student apologizes to his mother for taking part in the anti-government demonstration.

Another student issue is the call for a new investigation into the 1980 Kwangju incident, which is one of the causes of anti-American sentiment here.

At that time, the Chun government sent military troops to quell an illegal demonstration, setting off a confrontation that left 170 people dead, according to official reports. But dissidents say thousands of protesters actually were killed, and they also accuse the U.S. government of complicity because of the South Korea-U.S. joint military command.

These and other issues are certain to cause more protracted debates and to dampen the enthusiasm over last week’s government concessions, which some think came too easily to be true.

Others worry about what might happen if restless South Koreans find that their complaints are not immediately resolved.

GRAPHIC: 1 PHOTO A woman swings her bag at South Korean riot police during a rally a

Document 397

Copyright 1987 The Financial Times Limited Financial Times (London)
July 3, 1987, Friday

SECTION: SECTION I; Overseas News; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 271 words
HEADLINE: Seoul Opens Inquiry Into Kwangju Uprising
BYLINE: Maggie Ford, Seoul
BODY:

The South Korean ruling party acted swiftly to keep up the momentum of change yesterday with two gestures designed to show that its motives were sincere.

Party officials revealed that they were to open an inquiry into the 1980 Kwangju uprising, in which at least 200 people were killed. The bitterness over the uprising must be resolved if South Korea is to achieve full democracy, observers believe.

At the same time, Mr Roh Tae Woo, leader of the Democratic Justice Party, whose far-reaching proposals for democracy were accepted by President Chun Doo Hwan on Wednesday, paid a surprise visit to Mr Kim Young Sam, one of the country’s two opposition leaders.

Moving with unexpected speed, the DJP said yesterday that a committee had been set up to look into ways of “healing the scars” left by the killings carried out by troops who put down the rebellion in the early days of President Chun’s government.

The committee would consider paying compensation to the families of victims of the military action, the restoration of civil rights for those jailed or restricted since then, recognition of the struggle of Kwangju people for freedom, and possibly even a public apology from the Government.

Resentment over the brutal treatment by the military runs deep in Kwangju, a city of 1 m people, the home base of Mr Kim Dae Jung, South Korea’s other leading opposition politician. Mr Kim was jailed just before the uprising, but later charged with sedition for organising it. He was sentenced to death and only escaped execution because of US intervention.

Mr Kim has still not had his civil rights restored.