South Korea Talk And Fight

By William R. Doerner

Once again, last Friday, the heart of Seoul was turned into a combat zone. Tens of thousands of demonstrators roamed through the capital's streets and squares, unfurling banners and shouting slogans protesting the rule of President Chun Doo Hwan. Once again they were pursued relentlessly by squads of police wearing their familiar Darth Vader helmets and brandishing chest- high shields. Once again the stench of pepper gas, fired in prodigious quantities by the police, wafted into the early summer night, an acrid testament to the scenes of defiance.

The sudden burst of mass protest was not the largest or most violent in South Korea's increasingly bitter cycle of protest, but it was dramatic enough to indicate that the crisis was not abating. The demonstrations climaxed a week that had up to then been dominated by a potentially hopeful outbreak of meetings and discussions. For the first time the U.S. entered the fray in a major way. Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur was dispatched on a hastily arranged three-day visit to Seoul with instructions to assess the situation and warn the government against a military crackdown. Chun, for his part, offered a major concession to his opponents. But opposition leaders rejected the President's peace offering and returned defiantly to the streets.

Chun's concession was to rescind his April 13 order postponing debate on democratic reform of the constitution until after next year's Summer Olympics in Seoul. But the President wanted to restrict such debate to the National Assembly, which had already considered the matter for nearly a year without taking action on it. The opposition, which has set as its primary goal direct presidential elections, insists that the issue be submitted to a national referendum.

Though the government and the opposition missed an opportunity to settle the country's most serious crisis in seven years, the week produced no lack of movement. For the first time in his presidency, Chun met face to face with Kim Young Sam, one of the country's two principal opposition leaders. At Kim's urging, the President then freed the other leader, Kim Dae Jung, from eleven weeks of house arrest. The stopover by Sigur, who is Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was prompted by growing alarm in Washington at the nightly clashes between demonstrators and riot police in the cities of a major ally. Sigur urged Chun and other officials not to overreact to the demonstrations, especially by calling out the military, as they have done in the past. Said Sigur: "Any use of the armed forces in this situation is unwarranted."

Chun's decision to back down from his April 13 order was prompted in part by a caucus of 141 National Assembly members belonging to the ruling Democratic Justice Party. Normally an occasion used to hand down party policy from on high, last week's session turned into a lively and surprisingly diversified exchange of views on how to deal with the constitutional dispute. Several members recommended holding a referendum, as the opposition has demanded. At least one legislator favored simply abolishing the existing system of choosing a chief executive by means of an electoral college, which critics charge gives an unfair advantage to the ruling party, and introducing direct presidential elections instead. In the end, the consensus of the group was that the electoral question should be resubmitted to the National Assembly. Said Member Kim Yung Chung: "Everybody felt it was high time to do that, before it was too late."

After hearing the results of the caucus discussion the following day from Roh Tae Woo, who has been designated by the ruling party as its presidential candidate in next winter's national election, Chun agreed to meet with the opposition's Kim Young Sam. That in itself was a notable concession, since Chun has not only shunned Kim in the past but two months ago placed him under investigation after he had criticized Chun in a speech for making political use of the Olympics. The long record of enmity between the two men was clear from the moment Kim arrived at Blue House, the presidential residence, and was unceremoniously asked to pin on a visitor's pass. He refused to wear the tag, explaining "Everyone in Korea knows who I am."

Chun opened the talks by telling Kim he had "been wishing to see ((him)) all along" and had not previously met with him only because of "difficult circumstances." He then proceeded to compare the campaign to reform South Korea's constitution by referendum to go, a popular Oriental board game in which two opponents seek to outflank each other and expand territory with scores of strategically deployed small stones. Said Chun: "Political development will become difficult if we behave like a go player who angrily sweeps the go board clean in the middle of a game because he is doing poorly." The responsible approach to the electoral issue, he continued, would be "reaching a consensus on a constitutional revision in the National Assembly."

That was unacceptable to Kim for several reasons. The Assembly, he said, had previously dithered over the presidential election issue without resolving it. Resubmitting it to the legislature, he argued, would only lead to further delays. No matter where the question was being debated, Kim said, it would in the end be settled by the President. "You are responsible for state affairs," he said. "I think that the discussions should be held with the responsible person."

Stalemated on that most crucial of issues, the two men moved on to other subjects. Pressed by Kim as to whether he was fully aware of the gravity of the situation, Chun assured his visitor he had received complete and voluminous reporting on the demonstrations and other developments. Said the President, who was seated next to a table holding a glass ashtray: "In fact, I have been smoking heavily because of the pressure of reading so many reports." Chun pointedly refused to rule out a military crackdown, claiming that "hard-core leftists" were partly responsible for the current disorders. "It is best, if at all possible, not to use emergency measures," he said. "But I must exercise all the powers and responsibilities vested in me as President if national discipline becomes lax and social unrest is fomented."

While agreeing to end the house arrest of Kim Dae Jung, Chun refused to restore his political rights, which were stripped after Kim was convicted by a military court of sedition in 1980. The President said his decision was influenced by the "attitude of the person concerned." Translation: Kim, who once ran for President and won 46% of the vote, is still too large a threat to the ruling party to risk restoring him to full political activity. Finally, Chun promised to order the release of nearly all the 300 demonstrators arrested during the current round of protests but indicated that the fate of some 3,000 other political prisoners could not be so easily resolved.

Following a lunch of samkyetang, a soup containing a small chicken stuffed with rice and ginseng root, the two men parted company with vague promises to meet again. While much of the South Korean press chose to emphasize Chun's concession rather than his failure to agree to a referendum, neither of the Kims tried to place an optimistic gloss on the meeting. Said Kim Young Sam: "Frankly speaking, I don't have the right to stop the demonstrations on the basis of the two points the President agreed to." Declared Kim Dae Jung, shortly after police barricades were withdrawn from his house for the first time in 78 days: "The outcome of the meeting by far failed to meet my expectations."

Sigur, meanwhile, was making the rounds on both government and opposition sides with carefully balanced advice. While it is doubtful he offered an opinion on anything so specific as the referendum issue, he did say the U.S. goal for South Korea is a "democratic and stable society and a freely elected government which enjoys the support of its people and respects its rights." That was at least an endorsement for constitutional reform, if not necessarily on the opposition's terms. On the matter of martial law, which the government has hinted it might invoke, Sigur was unequivocal. "Our position on that is crystal clear," he said. "We oppose martial law, and would hate to see anything like that happen." Back in Washington, Sigur briefed President Reagan on his findings Friday afternoon and, at a later press conference, declared that the U.S. felt "this is no time for intransigence" on the part of the Seoul government.

Friday's demonstrations were all the more impressive for the efforts of the government to stifle them. Both Kims were placed under brief detention to prevent them from participating, and police issued stern declarations that violence would not be tolerated. In Seoul, at least, those warnings were partly heeded. With several exceptions, occurrences of fire bombing and rock < throwing were noticeably fewer than in previous demonstrations. Instead, the protesters took to outmaneuvering police by sheer numbers and dazzling mobility. Groups surged onto major avenues to unfurl antigovernment banners, chant slogans and stop traffic, then melted away into side streets as police approached, firing canisters of acrid pepper gas. In the huge square in front of Seoul's Victorian-style railroad station, one particularly large and violent crowd was dispersed by the approach of a police van, nicknamed the Black Elephant, that fires volleys of gas canisters.

Though the crowds were overwhelmingly of student age, there were signs that others approved of their defiance. At many of the demonstrations, in Seoul and other major South Korean cities, the drivers of halted vehicles honked their horns in support of the protesters. For the increasingly isolated Chun, as well as for the rest of his embattled country, those horns could be trumpeting the start of a long and difficult summer.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand and K.C. Hwang/Seoul