Kim Out, Kim Out, Whoever You Are

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

In a perfect world, only one Kim would run for President of South Korea. But perfection is rarely encountered in politics, and last week the one-Kim ideal exploded into a troika of Kims united only by their common surname and their desire to become the country's chief executive in the December election.

Colliding ambitions sent Kim Dae Jung, 63, and Kim Young Sam, 59, the leading lights of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, ricocheting into their own orbits. Despite earlier promises that one would bow out of the race in favor of the other, negotiations between the rival factions collapsed at a 90-minute breakfast meeting at Seoul's Diplomatic Club. Said Kim Dae Jung: "It became evident that we could not reach an agreement on a single candidate." While party mediators scrambled to bring the Kims together again, both men seemed bent on pursuing their own paths. Unless one gives way, they will divide the opposition vote against Roh Tae Woo, head of the ruling Democratic Justice Party and the designated successor of South Korea's autocratic President, Chun Doo Hwan.

The day before the unsuccessful Diplomatic Club meeting, a third Kim had launched his campaign against Roh. To a poster-waving crowd of 3,000 supporters at a hotel in downtown Seoul, former Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil, 61, indicated that he too would seek the presidency, as the nominee of a party he would form later this month. A chief architect of the 1961 coup that brought Park Chung Hee to power, Kim Jong Pil is generally credited with forging economic policies that helped make Park's 18-year regime the crucible of a remarkable burst of development. The ex-Prime Minister said he was running in order to "take the judgment of the electorate" on the Park years. A former brigadier general, Kim Jong Pil is expected to attract a number of dissatisfied conservatives away from Roh.

It was not the first time that this trio of contentious Kims had faced off in the political arena. The three vied for the presidency in 1980, during the flowering of political freedom that followed Park's assassination in 1979. But as that campaign heated up and demonstrations against the army grew more violent, Chun, who had seized military power after Park's death, suspended the civil rights of all three Kims and persuaded the electoral college to name him President instead. Some observers now fear that the emerging confusion of a four-way contest may tempt the military to step in once again to restore political order.

Worries about the military played a major part in last week's aborted negotiations between Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung. Kim Young Sam, who shares the centrist policies of his rival, hinted that elements of the army were wary of the charismatic Kim Dae Jung. Kim Young Sam argued that he was the opposition's best bet to avoid friction with the military and therefore preserve democracy. But Kim Dae Jung spun that argument around. "On a couple of occasions," he said, "Mr. Kim Young Sam said that he would like to give up his candidacy in favor of mine but that he couldn't because some military men oppose me. Because of this very argument, I think I should run and put an end to military rule."

As party president, Kim Young Sam would probably win the nomination if it came to a rank-and-file vote. But Kim Dae Jung could then fracture the movement by running as an independent. As their two Kims selfishly slugged it out, party officials were concerned that popular support for the opposition group would evaporate. At week's end 30,000 opposition supporters gathered at Seoul's Yonsei University to urge the two politicians to unite behind a single candidacy.

Roh clearly took comfort in the evolving Kim Dae Jung-Kim Young Sam split, even though he was anxious about the inroads that Kim Jong Pil's candidacy might make among his own supporters. In the past few weeks Roh has been festooning himself with the banners and slogans of democracy. A former army general, Roh has met with Kim Young Sam, and last month guided his party toward a compromise with the opposition that fixed the rules for the election. Last week he directed his Democratic Justice Party to protest government censorship of two magazines that had carried pieces on the 1973 abduction of Kim Dae Jung by South Korean intelligence agents.

Roh's attempts to distance himself from his unpopular military sponsors seem to have paid off. One poll put Roh in third place, after Stephen Cardinal Kim and Kim Dae Jung, on the list of people most respected by South Koreans. Indeed, Roh's identification with democratization is his chief strength over Kim Jong Pil, who has been criticized for "coming uninvited to a dinner table so painstakingly prepared by others." Still, the ruling party remains cautious. "You never know," said one Democratic Justice official. "We still have some months to go before the election." Given the dramatic political turns that have already taken place this year, that is time enough for new surprises.

With reporting by K.C. Hwang/Seoul