Olympian Hurdle in Korea

...This enabled him not only to act swiftly to neutralize attempts by dissidents to assert themselves, but also to move against the Armed Forces commander in a mini-coup six weeks later...

...The only reason for Chun to make the promised election genuinely free and democratic—aside from U. S. pressure—is his desire to assure tranquillity prior to and during the Olympics...

...imperialism...

...Next, Chun rammed through a new constitution and got himself "elected" to a seven-year term by the same electoral college he had hoped to use to install Roh as his successor...

...The 54-year-old Roh, leader of Chun's ruling Democratic Justice Party, must have seen the chance to overcome his image as an indecisive man, and to win over millions of voters in a popular election, by a grand gesture on thesideof the reformists...

...Thanks to strong pressure from Washington, Kim was eventually released by the Chun regime—with the proviso that he leave for the United States...

...Army general, as titular "United Nations commander," retains supreme authority over all forces in South Korea, American as well as Korean...

...He himself had the temerity to run in Korea's last direct presidential election in 1971, challenging then-President Park...

...Kim Dae Jung, in his years of suffering, earned a reputation as a rather difficult character, and some observers believe he views Kim Young Sam as the handsome front man for his own designs...

...With all the attention given to Korea's dazzling industrial growth, some Americans may have forgotten that the "economic miracle" has taken place against a background of continuous political oppression...

...The present scenario, as written by the government, is for Roh to win an open and orderly election by a comfortable margin and get himself inaugurated on schedule in February, as the populace eagerly awaits the excitement and spectacle of the Olympics...

...The U.S.' gut fear is that anti-American elements might seize power in a climactic putsch...

...Korean mobs are already beginning to mingle their denunciations of Chun with cries of "Down with U.S...

...The winner in that period of domestic strife was a rising young officer named Park Chung Hee, who ruled with increasing ferocity for nearly 20 years before he was cut down by his intelligence director, Kim Jae Kyu, in October 1979...

...The immediate cause of the sometimes violent protests was Chun's refusal to budge —until the last minute—on his decision to anoint military crony Roh Tae Woo as his successor by means of a rubberstamp "electoral college...

...Washington's refusal to back Chun against the demonstrators, and its delicate maneuvering to ease him in the direction of political reform, were calculated to keep the United States on the good side of the rising Korean opposition...

...Chun knows the history first-hand...

...Nevertheless, he has his own following and may not wish to subordinate his political future to Kim Dae Jung'sambitions...

...officials no doubt breathed a collective sigh of relief over Chun's acceptance of demands for a direct election, but Washington could soon face some critical decisions, especially should Chun and company revert to type...

...The uproar in June, which saw hundreds of thousands of Korean students and dissidents take to the streets for twoand-a-half weeks in a show of anger at the regime of President Chun Doo Hwan, may have heightened awareness...

...officials now take to be a majority of Koreans opposed to perpetuation of his style of rule...

...Donald Kirk, a longtime contributor to The New Leader who has reported extensively from Korea, is currently a visiting fellow in the Southeast Asian Program at Cornell University...

...AndifKim Young Sam or Kim Dae Jung is in office—a very remote possibility as long as Chun and Roh control the Armed Forces— there would be little hope of maintaining order among military officers intensely loyal to the current regime...

...Whether it moved quickly enough or forcefully enough remains to be seen...

...The North is not satisfied with the International Olympics Committee's decision that its capital, Pyongyang, could be the site for several competitions, and has been demanding a greater role...

...Yet by then, if Roh is elected, the government may simply have no to way to pacifyits fiercest critics...

...The average Korean still earns only $2,000 or so a year, and the government reacts harshly to any attempt at organizing labor or farmers' groups capable of bringing aboutreform...

...His one option in the case of the balloting may be to hold it under tight police and Army surveillance—a procedure that would render the whole show invalid in the eyes of much of the world...

...It was one thing for Korea to explode into the headlines in the spring of 1987, but that cannot happen in 1988—not if the Olympics are to be held there...

...The revolt gave the government a pretext to try Kim Dae Jung, its worst political foe (and under house arrest at the time), on charges of treason and actually sentence him to death...

...liberals, marked the real beginning of the current political struggle...

...He does not want the embarrassment of a mass boycott...

...His acquiescence to Roh's "demands" for a direct popular election, the freeing of political prisoners and the observance of human rights could not have been more than a ruse to buy time and perpetuate his legacy...

...It's not that the record of dictatorship and arrests hasn't been publicized—journalists visiting Seoul have interviewed victims of the regime and their families almost to distraction—but the stories have tended to get little notice amid earth-shaking events elsewhere...

...The first was the stand of the United States, which publicly decried the use of troops against civilians and objected to the imposition of martial law...

...Abetting Chun in that move was General Roh Tae Woo, who—incredibly— turned his troops loose from their responsibility to defend a strategic patch of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War...

...The near defeat left Park with no illusions about his ability to maintain power through democratic means...

...As his official biography records, he played a "significant role in the initial phase of the coup" that catapulted Park to power in 1961: "Only General Park and a handful of coup leaders knew and appreciated what [Chun] had done,' the sketch goes on, crediting him with having led 800 Korean Military Academy cadets into central Seoul...

...By the spring of 1980 Chun had persuaded Park's immediate successor, the civilian Prime Minister who had automatically taken over the presidential title if not power, of the practical advantages of stepping aside...

...While Chun might in the final crunch call in troops anyway, at the moment he still feels constrained by the strange military arrangement dating from the Korean War whereby a U.S...

...The record shows that Kim won 46 per cent of the votes, but there is little doubt he would have won many more had Park not rigged the balloting...

...He did away with popular elections and began the long persecution of Kim Dae Jung, who has spent a total of about nine years in prison, under house arrest or under guard in hospitals he was sent to against his will...

...Kim Young Sam can hardly claim the revolutionary appeal of Kim Dae Jung, despite his having been placed under house arrest from time to time...

...On Chun's orders, Korean Army troops —again backed up by forces moved from strategic defensive positions south of the DMZ—ended the uprising: They advanced on the Kwangju City Hall and killed at least 200 dissidents, according to the minimal count of government sources (the true death toll was probably several times greater...

...But he will not be able to go back on his guarantee of an election without risking complete chaos...

...His return to Seoul in 1985, accompanied by a vanguard of U.S...

...He talks from harsh experience...

...Later that same month a revolt in the southwestern city of Kwangju turned into the single bloodiest episode in the country's postwar history...

...But the two Kims could play into the hands of the government if they are not able to reconcile their power aims...

...Neither he nor Kim Young Sam, the leader of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, will accept anything short of victory...

...He stills clings to that dream, as a matter of fact...

...It was a beautiful act of political theater that gave the regime some breathing space and temporarily defused the riots...

...He might have gone on deluding himself had it not been for two factors...

...In the end, Chun may have to resign himself to the defection of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, but he would be totally humiliated by the refusal of non-Communist countries to attend, or worse, outright cancellation of the Games...

...The President is apparently so wary of the dangers posed by the rebels that he hopes to keep some of them in prison for as long as possible...

...TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY Olympian Hurdle in Korea BY DONALD KIRK The fever over the approaching 1988 Olympic Games in Korea coincides with some of the most Olympian political turmoil in that country's scarred postwar history ("postwar" in this context meaning post-Korean War, not World War II...

...If it is a free election,' says Kim Dae Jung, "there will be no doubt" of its outcome...

...Regardless of who the opposition candidate turns out to be, Kim Dae Jung deems electoral corruption and military manipulation as inevitable...

...Chun's reward for this act of derring-do was his appointment as Park's personal secretary and then, several months later, his elevation to the rank of section chief in Central Intelligence...

...Seoul Olympic officials believe they can entice the entire East bloc to attend the Games, even though North Korea is insisting on hosting many of the events...

...That storybook finish is unlikely to happen, though...

...For the United States, the "Korean question" is sure to become increasingly worrisome...

...Roh and Chun undoubtedly agreed on the so-called demands before Roh made a show of submitting them to Chun, but Roh appears to have initiated the move...

...Chun was well-positioned at the time of Park's assassination: By now a major general, he had the critical post of commander of the military unit responsible for security around Seoul...

...The dissidents claim there are at least 3.000 political prisoners, for example, and Korean officials limit the designation to little more than 1,000...

...Neither of the two Kims wants to spoil the fun of theOlympics...

...approval for the movement of troops in 1980, but Washington did not want to repeat that mistake forfear of alienatingwhatU.S...

...Chun's firm expectation was that he could safely retire around the end of next February, gaze benevolently on the inauguration of Roh, and then go on to attend the Olympics in the fall as a kindly smiling elder statesman accepting the homage of leaders and athletes from around the world...

...Either way, Korea faces a time of testing that may be far more severe than what has been up to this point a relatively bloodless struggle...

...Until the eleventh hour, Chun clearly believed he could manage to suppress the riots...

...The debate over release of the disputed 2,000 is likely to provide fresh fodder for rioters, and could give Chun an excuse for reneging on some of the reforms that he has promised...

...The promise of a free election—and the possibility of victory for a civilian politician—means, says Kim Dae Jung, "much brighter prospects for a successful Olympics...

...The General also attempted to have Kim wiped out in an auto accident that left him seriously injured...

...A former Military Academy classmate of Chun's, Roh had no compunctions about forgetting the theoretical threat posed by several hundred thousand North Korean troops for as long as it took to insure Chun's success in getting rid of his adversaries in the Armed Forces...

...Although he pledged last fall that he would not seek the Presidency, he has recently suggested that he might be a candidate after all...

...The downside of the economic boom is not so much the repression of campus dissidents as it is the intimidation of ordinary workers who often have no channel through which to express their grating discontent, if not misery...

...they realize they could thereby lose the support of a significant portion of the middle class, the educated businessmen, and bureaucrats whose backing is pivotal to their cause...

...Chun's immediate problem, however, could turn out to be the political prisoners he has begun to free: They may want to express their outrage in revolutionary ways and, unlike the Kims, not be at all squeamish about disrupting the Games...

...At the same time, the opposition makes no secret of its low regard for the Olympic Games' significance in comparison with Korea's severe political and social problems...

...On his way to the Presidency Chun proved to be almost as ruthless as Park Chung Hee had been, provoking riots in Seoul in May 1980 comparable to those of the past few weeks...

...He foresaw the likelihood of a full-scale, bloody revolution that would have driven him from power, much as postwar President Syngman Rhee was forced to flee to Hawaii in 1960 by equally virulent student riots and military machinations...

...Chun had easily won U.S...

...The second factor that convinced Chun of the need to compromise—at least tactically, if not strategically— was the stunning realism of Roh Tae Woo...

...Where Chun boasts of his country's economic achievements, Kim Dae Jung calls attention to the fact that wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a relatively small clique of enormously rich tycoons closely tied to the ruling military establishment...