Copyright 1980 The New York Times Company The New York Times
June 6, 1980, Friday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section A; Page 26, Column 1; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 514 words
HEADLINE: Korea’s Brass, and Blood
BODY:
The news from South Korea is appalling, and its ugly essence is caught in a photograph of a soldier’s boot smashing the face of a young dissident in the rebellious city of Kwangju. Having snuffed out the Kwangju uprising, Korea’s generals are now engaged in a frontal assault on what remains of the democratic opposition. With speed and stealth, a shadow military regime has taken power, and it will draft a new constitution presumably tailored to the wishes of Gen. Chon Too Hwan, the emerging claimant to the throne of brass filled by the late President Park.
Handwringing aside, can Washington do anything to halt Korea’s slide back to military dictatorship? The junta that governs in Seoul evidently calculates Americans are too preoccupied with their own elections to trouble at the extinction of Korea’s democratic hopes. Their cold-eyed assumption appears to be that the United States is too anxious about regional security to risk a cutback in military aid, including some of the 39,000 American troops stationed there. And they no doubt think Americans are too protective of their investments in a booming Korean economy to apply economic sanctions, especially through the Export-Import Bank.
By chance, the chairman of the bank visited Seoul this week in the wake of Kwangju, the jailings of opposition leaders and the reimposition of full martial law. South Korea is the Ex-Im Bank’s leading customer, having borrowed some $3.l billion, and is now seeking
$630 million more for 14 projects, including a nuclear power plant. These loans, to be sure, benefit American companies; Washington is understandably reluctant to employ a blunt sword that is also doubleedged.
But the United States, too, ought to be cool-headed in its calculations. Martial law and a renewed military dictatorship provide no guarantee of stability in a country that has been economically transformed by an American-aided boom. That fact should be evident to other senior officers, if not to General Chon. South Korea’s opposition would be every bit as pro-American as the military regime, and its demands for reform are hardly radical. That could change if promises of constitutional reform are further dishonored and key opposition leaders, like Kim Dae Jung, are packed off to prison. The risks of an anti-American backlash are the greater because South Korea’s censored press has deliberately encouraged the belief that Washington condones repression and is worried chiefly about a nonexistent military buildup in Communist North Korea.
If South Korea’s generals are determined to reinstitute a dictatorship, they may not be dissuaded by economic pressures alone. But surely it would be wrong for the United States now to appear to reward their coup with development loans. A decent respect for the democratic faith that unites Americans with the majority of Koreans argues for putting a hold on those loan applications.