Trials and Errors

As practiced by President Park Chung Hee, "modern democracy" has become an Orwellian synonym for despotic one-man rule. Since January alone, Park has proclaimed four restrictive "emergency decrees," one of which bans any attempt to amend or criticize his custom-tailored constitution, which gives him virtually unlimited powers.

The latest, known as the "death decree," threatens political demonstrators with trial by courts-martial and execution by a firing squad.

Park's current efforts to crack down on what is left of his political opposition center on two trials now taking place in Seoul. The first involves Kim Dae Jung, Park's rival in the 1971 presidential election. Kidnaped from a Tokyo hotel last year by South Korean security agents, Kim, who was later released, is in court to face old charges that he violated provisions of his country's election laws in the 1967 and 1971 campaigns. The trial has infuriated the Japanese--still smarting from the kidnaping--who had been promised that Kim would be free to leave South Korea to become a research fellow at Harvard. Park's Foreign Minister, Kim Dong Jo, has coolly informed the Japanese that the trial is entirely "an internal affair" and the proceedings may take as long as three months.

The trial, however, may prove to be more of an embarrassment to Park than a political boost. On his second day in Seoul's district criminal court, the former presidential candidate was greeted by a crowd of about 100 people, who burst into spontaneous applause. Kim smiled broadly and waved back. Inside, the courtroom was crowded with nearly 400 spectators, including 50 journalists and several opposition politicians.

Kim firmly defended his 1971 charge that Park had cheated him of election victory and was seeking to impose Taiwan's "generalissimo system" on South Korea. Said Kim: "I made the statement in the hope that the government would drop the idea. But now all these things have become reality." As he left the court after the second session, Kim received another round of applause from onlookers.

Acute Sensitivity. Kim's trial is a patently political attempt to muffle dissent. So is a second trial that began at week's end. This one involves 54 of the 253 people still under arrest since last April, when more than 2,000 university students attempted to stage a demonstration against the Park regime. Among the accused is 33-year-old Kim Chi Ha, South Korea's best-known poet, whose The Cry of the People--a 2,600-word broadside against repression, corruption and abuse of power--has deeply offended the government. Also on trial, on charges of plotting against the regime, are two Japanese citizens. Their imprisonment would further antagonize the Japanese, who last year supplied 93% of South Korea's foreign investment.

The two trials indicate Park's acute sensitivity to all criticism, to which he responds quickly and personally. Recently, the Christian Science Monitor disclosed that in 1948 Park had been sentenced to death for his role in a pro-Communist rebellion. His brother was executed, and Park escaped death only through the intervention of a U.S. intelligence officer and because of his willingness to turn state's evidence against other conspirators. Park responded to the story by revoking the visa of the Monitor's Tokyo correspondent on the grounds that the story suggested a continuing link between himself and the Communists.

Park's concern for his personal safety borders on the obsessive. Two weeks ago, gunners from his elite presidential protective force shot down a U.S. Huey helicopter that had inadvertently strayed into the security zone around the Blue House, his official residence. Luckily, the pilot was able to bring his disabled ship down in a riverbed, thus averting civilian casualties. Even so, two crewmen were hospitalized. In Seoul's luxurious Chosun Hotel, guests are warned that all windows must remain closed during presidential motorcades.

Strained Relations. Park's excessive nervousness is quite apparent to foreign visitors and officials who have attended conferences with the President. He constantly crosses and uncrosses his arms and legs, cracks his knuckles, and drums ominously on the table whenever he gets into a bad mood, which is often. Sadly, the emergence of his personal dictatorship has blurred the distinction between the two Koreas, once Seoul's greatest asset, and seriously strained South Korea's relations with its most important allies, Japan and the U.S. Officially, Park seems unmoved by the unhappiness in Tokyo and Washington. Last week Foreign Minister Kim Dong Jo told TIME'S Tokyo Bureau Chief Herman Nickel that "Kim Dae Jung and the case of the two Japanese are trifling matters," and that he does not take U.S. congressional criticism of South Korea "very seriously."

Kim Dong Jo may have to change his mind. If Park pursues his present course, more and more people will conclude that he is gambling not only with his country's external relations but its internal stability as well.

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