South Korea's Year of Confrontations

...They took to the surrounding hills and fled into the heart of Ulsan, sometimes known as "Hyundai City" because of the presence of a dozen different corporate enterprises ranging from shipbuilding to furniture manufacture...

...Some of these will be unexceptional...

...He was considered a hero throughout the period of his house arrest for opposing the Park regime and challenging the nation's dictatorial Constitution...

...The nation desperately needs a wide range of southern-manufactured products, some of which have been delivered on a limited basis...

...This situation will not change until a Joint Nuclear Control Commission, consisting of military experts from the North and South, is fully functioning and able to certify that the Korean Peninsula is nuclear-free...

...Whatmakes 1992 different, however, and accounts for the foreboding, is that the government and political system are particularly unstable...

...They had seized the entire compound after the company suspended operations during a protracted dispute over its decision to cut back annual bonuses...

...Educated at MIT and Johns Hopkins, he not only represents Ulsan in the National Assembly but also serves as chairman of the policy planning group of his father's party...

...The union officials scattered farther afield...

...Kim Jong Il is believed to have formidable foes within the country's military leadership, and the state of the economy certainly is not helping his political problems...

...After spending years in jails and prison hospitals during the Park and Chun regimes , Kim went into exile in the United States...

...As the Executive Chairman of the governing amalgam called the Democratic Liberal Party (DLP), he needs to show that he can muster enough support for his party to win a majority of the 299 National Assembly seats up for grabs on March 24...

...The true test of the system will be whether Seoul's politicians and generals can manage to sort out the power struggle without anyone resorting to the kind of force that has been dominant throughout South Korea's history...

...Should Roh fail to come off as the shining apostle of a new era in Korean relations, he will have almost nothing to show for himself, or his record in office, at least not since he spoke out for true democracy in June 1987...

...His adamant policy against any agricultural imports that would compete with domestic products has made him especially popular among farmers, yet their bloc of votes alone could not propel him to an upset victory...

...By this time next year, President Roh Tae Woo, the former Army general who helped boost his ally and predecessor, General Chun Doo Hwan, into power in 1980, should be out of office...

...Still, conventional wisdom holds that " Junior Kim" will not remain at the top long after the elder despot expires...

...No doubt he intends to offer a business-minded alternative to practices he and his father believe are driving the country to economic ruin...

...In these circumstances, he cannot afford to cave in on a nuclear weapons project that might one day give the North a potent club to hold over Seoul, albeit one that in all likelihood wouldneverbe used...

...At the moment, neither he nor the military establishment appears to be looking forward to such a turn of events...

...But one issue seemed to be tipping the scales in favor of Roh and the Democratic Liberals: the negotiations initiated with President Kim Il Sung of North Korea, one of the world's toughest remaining bastions of Communism...

...Finally, just as the authorities were ready to advance, the workers staged a tactical retreat: They deserted the gates, climbed over the fences, and disappeared into the alleyways of near-by apartment blocks also owned by Hyundai...

...and workers are demanding an increasingly large piece of the pie-so large, in fact, that the country is losing its reputation as a cheap labor market...

...For participating in the three-party merger, Kim Young Sam was virtually assured of fulfilling his Presidential ambitions, since he would have Roh's sponsorship...

...Roh in effect bought him off, along with Kim Jong Pil-another opposition Presidential candidate and former head of South Korea's Central Intelligence Agency-to shore up his own Democratic Justice Party after it failed to win a majority in the National Assembly...

...IRONICALLY, while the Hyundai Motors employees were seizing the plant in Ulsan, the founder of the Hyundai industrial group, Chung Ju Young, was forming his own National Unification Party and positioning it to capitalize on the Roh regime's economic troubles...

...The government has been unable to slow inflation...

...Koreans tend to see him as a man of the Southwest, a region historically at odds withthemainstream...

...the usually sound economy is beginning to founder on unruly deficits, both in foreign trade and the national budget...

...Pyongyang's motivation for endorsing the pact is wholly economic...

...Should it be severe, the Democratic Liberal apparatus might then turn elsewhere for a Presidential candidate despite the risk of alienating Kim, who has repeatedly threatened to bolt the party if he is not named as its standard-bearer...

...Burdened by an outsized military establishment and the cost of constructing a nuclear weapons facility, the North's economy has fallen far behind its southern neighbor's...

...exports have fallen substantially behind imports...

...Yet how they will feel at election time in December remains in doubt, not the least reason being that the man deemed most likely to succeed Roh is Kim Young Sam...

...At this writing Kim Young Sam, who has dyed his silver hair black to enhance his appeal, is facing an important test (though probably less important than the one ahead in April and May, when the students will take to the streets...

...Observers here find it inconceivable that Pyongyang would actually dismantle its nuclear facilities, even if it eventually accepts United Nations inspections in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it signed six years ago and is expected to finally ratify next month...

...Yet gnawing away at this power base are reform-minded voters disillusioned with Kim Young Sam...

...Its lackluster performance of late promises to be the biggest threat to the DLP, and could precipitate an era of political madness in South Korea...

...it could sabotage the nonmilitary aspects of the North-South agreement and demonstrate the President's inability to outstrip anyone else in making the ultimate dream of Korean reunification a reality...

...But many see the whole episode as the harbinger of a year of confrontations on the Korean Peninsula...

...Perhaps the paradox of contemporary Korean politics is that staunch conservative Chung Ju Young and hotheaded radical Kim Dae Jung-both pursuing reform, though naturally from different directions-pose the gravest danger to political stability and democratic rule, or at the minimum to Democratic Liberal rule...

...He may be able to maneuver onto the December ballot, but his chances of besting the Democratic Liberals at the Blue House level are slight...

...The multibillionaire former peasant, who owes much of his business success to the relationship he had with his crony Park Chung Hee, hopes to take 20 or so Assembly seats in the elections-enough to give him a lever to pry open the portal to greater power...

...If the top office turns out to be beyond Chun's reach, he will settle for promoting the interests of one or another of his six sons, all of whom have headed a company factory...

...DONALD KIRK, a longtime contributor, is a veteran observer of Asian affairs...

...Such intransigence could prove more than a mere setback for Roh Tae Woo...

...AS ROH TAE WOO PREPARES TO DEPART South Korea's Year of Confrontations DONALD KIRK SEOUL THE WORKERS occupying the Hyundai Motors plant in the industrial city of Ulsan last January were in a revolutionary mood when I interviewed them...

...A power struggle in the capital could account for the recalcitrance...

...An outspoken opposition candidate in the '87 election, Kim Young Sam suddenly came over to the ruling camp two years ago...

...Of the six, the best known politically is Chung Mong Joon, former chairman of Hyundai Heavy Industries, the shipbuilding entity...

...He is actually scheduled to vacate the Blue House in January '93, under the laws of anew democratic system he himself helped to institute in June 1987, after some of the worst "spring riots" in Korean history...

...Every spring, for example, student radicals stage demonstrations...

...Chung would like nothing better than to round off his illustrious career with a five-year term as President...

...And he continued to be viewed as South Korea's best chance for democracy until he concluded that achieving his goals required accepting Roh's deal...

...IN NEARLY every area of politics here, the forces trying to preserve the country's present structure and those seeking to change it appear balanced...

...Roh won unreserved popular approval for concluding a rather vague Agreement on Reconciliation and Nonaggression last December that could open the way for broad North-South trade, and permit the exchange of mail as well as visits between family members separated since the Korean War...

...Nonetheless, as a constant critic of the central government Kim is capable of inspiring the sort of radical dissent that frightens the nation's rulers...

...They throw Molotov cocktails at the police, soon find themselves beneath clouds of tear gas, get beaten and jailed, and otherwise keep up a by now longstandingtradition...

...His followers could easily turn violent upon confronting what in their judgment is a continuation of the power-broker politics dominating Seoul from the day Park came to the fore 32 years ago...

...There is simply too much prestige, both individual and national, at stake...

...Union leaders were determined to hold the premises while carrying on fitful negotiations with management's representatives...

...He may also hope to be named Prime Minister, a post he held under Park...

...The DLP now holds two thirds of the Legislature, counting all the proteges of Kim Young Sam, Kim Jong Pil and Roh Tae Woo...

...The takeover failed to gain much for the disgruntled employees, who began their action several weeks earlier with a slowdown that had some assembly lines producing as little as one or two cars a day...

...The very threat of a revolt against the establishment, the radicals contend, could provide a pretext for Korea's military elite to step into the breach-as happened in December 1979, when former Army Security Commander Chun Doo Hwan assumed control...

...He can hardly boast about the economy...

...and a new Chief Executive is slated to be chosen...

...Pointing out that Roh's troops rolled in quickly to back up Chun, they further insist that the democratization of this society, always inclined toward autocracy and ingrained with the paternalistic virtues of Confucius, is not really serious...

...But so far the trade has been more significant as a diplomatic bellwether than an economic or technological bailout...

...In addition, he would like to win a measure of revenge against the Roh government for demanding huge taxes that he somehow avoided when he was divvying up the Hyundai holdings among his relatives...

...The protesters were in control for several days, blocking all the gates, destroying cars and computers, singing radical songs on the front lawn, and appearing oblivious to the growing force of thousands of policemen preparing to storm the place...

...Local observers wonder whether the military, accustomed to exercising control through one of its own ever since Park Chung Hee overthrew the Syngman Rhee regime in 1960, can countenance a civilian leading the country...

...Pyongyang has raised obstacles to inspection of its atomic plants and continues to produce conventional arms for export, notably Scud missiles...

...He already heads the Ministry of Defense, and he may assume several more titles by the time his father celebrates his 80th birthday on April 15...

...Kim II Sung's 50-year-old son, Kim Jong II, is rapidly taking control...

...If the student rioting is especially violent, though, or strikes crippie a wide range of industries, the President could invoke martial law and cling to his office...

...The cynicism of his decision could cost him the loyalty of the political idealists and lead to embarrassment at the polls on March 24...

...He returned in 1985 to see whether he could realize his ambitions in the relative calm of the new democracy...

...Elected the following December in the first direct Presidential balloting ever held here, Roh can serve only a single five-year term...

...That he has managed to stay out of jail since he ran in the 1987 Presidential election is an achievement in itself...

...Kim Jong Pil, by becoming a prominent member of the governing group, gained greater stature than he had enjoyed as leader of the fourth-ranked New Democratic Republican Party...

...South Korea's economic duress could also benefit the nation's other opposition formations, including the dissidents led by longtime firebrand Kim Dae Jung...