The June Struggle 20 years on, part fifteen: Kim Dae Jung freed
The Guardian reports on the release of Kim Dae Jung from house arrest, while the Times takes its turn to offer a leader on the democracy struggle in South Korea. Compare and contrast with the Guardian’s leader from a few days before.
A couple of observations from the Times’ leader are worth mentioning. First there’s the assertion that, “The president’s opponents are, by and large, university students and sections of the middle classes, not workers and not people in the countryside.” This may have been true to some extent of the June protests (although I think the ‘middle class’ angle is probably exaggerated by both the Guardian and the Times in their reporting), but it certainly wasn’t true of the struggles that were to erupt around South Korea over the next few months. It was the workers that took the lead over the summer and into the autumn in challenging the autocratic government.
The other noteworthy sentence is this, which doesn’t really require much comment from me: “Nor are the Americans likely to replace their client [!] quite as summarily as they did in the Philippines.”
Chun frees opponent from house arrest
From Jasper Becker
The Guardian, June 25, 1987
The South Korean government lifted the house arrest of its most feared opponent, Kim Dae Jung late last night, after an unprecedented meeting between President Chun Doo Wan and Mr Kim Young Sam, the leader of the main opposition.
Six hundred police surrounding Mr Kim’s house since mid-April withdrew at midnight, and over 500 of his supporters rushed in to celebrate the victory.
Mr Kim Dae Jung, a former presidential candidate and a charismatic figure, was immediately placed under house arrest when the present crisis began.
In 1980, he was sentenced to death for inciting students to rise against the government. This was commuted to a 20-year suspended sentence, which has allowed the government to impose house arrest over 50 times since he returned from the United States in 1985.
Earlier in the evening, Mr Gaston Sigur, a top US official on a trouble-shooting mission from President Reagan, visited Mr Kim Dae Jung after holding talks with President Chun. No details of either meeting have been released, but Mr Sigur, who is under-secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is urging both sides to make compromises.
President Chun did not, however, agree to restore Mr Kim Dae Jung’s civil rights during his meeting with Mr Kim Young Sam.
Although President Chun appears to have made some concessions in response to US pressure and international fears about the safety of the next Olympic Games scheduled in South Korea for September, 1988, he failed to satisfy all the opposition demands or resolve the political crisis.
Fresh demonstrations broke out in Seoul last night, when hundreds clashed with police, causing chaos around one of the capital’s main railway stations. Opposition groups are still resolved to hold a major demonstration on Friday.
The Government and the opposition produced conflicting reports of the meeting at lunch at the Blue House, the presidential residence, which lasted three hours and beyond the time scheduled.
A presidential spokesman said that the two leaders agreed to resume the interparty talks on constitutional reform immediately.
President Chun has, in effect, retracted his April 13 decision unilaterally suspending the talks, other government officials claim.
This has been a key opposition demand, and the postponement of the talks and constitutional amendments until after the Olympics has fuelled the violent street protests of the past fortnight.
President Chun said he would ‘positively’ consider an opposition demand for amnesty for the 300 arrested
At a press conference afterwards, an angry Mr Kim Young Sam painted a different picture of the discussion, which he termed unsatisfactory. The president had refused to release the 3,000 political prisoners and restore their political rights, he said.
‘If the President had agreed to free all political prisoners, grant an amnesty and the restoration of civil rights to Mr Kim Dee Jung and other people and allowed a national referendum today, I, for one, would have appealed for the people to wait and see,’ he said.
‘With this kind of result, I cannot now ask our people not to stage anti-government demonstrations. ‘
President Chun is due to step down next February, and unless the present constitution is changed an electoral college is certain to elect his close associate Mr Roh Tae Woo as his successor.
Leading Article: Democracy in Waiting
The Times, June 25 1987, Thursday
Yesterday’s three-hour meeting between the South Korean leader, President Chun Doo Hwan, and his adversary, Mr Kim Young Sam, head of the opposition Reunification Democratic Party, may not have achieved anything, but it clarified much. It established the political battlelines in South Korea and demonstrated that without further concessions by one side or the other, the prospects for peace on the streets of Seoul in the long run-up to the Olympics are not good.
That the meeting took place at all was the result of a concession made - under pressure - by President Chun. After two weeks of uninterrupted civil unrest in Seoul and other cities, he agreed to talk directly to Mr Kim. He also agreed to opposition demands for the release from house arrest of the country’s most prominent dissident, Mr Kim Dae Jung. During the meeting, he offered to reopen parliamentary discussion on constitutional reform, a discussion he halted on April 13, and to hold further talks with the opposition.
For Kim Young Sam this was nowhere near enough. He dismissed the President’s offer to reopen discussion on constitutional reform as a non-concession. In his view, it simply returned the situation to where it had been before the discussion was halted on April 13. He stood by the original demands of the opposition: for a referendum to change the constitution so that the next president should be elected directly rather than by an electoral college. He also stood by the opposition’s time-table. With President Chun’s constitutional term of office expiring in February, the new electoral rules have to apply to the next elections if they are to be worth anything.
Kim Young Sam emerged from his meeting with the President angry, and with the opposition’s demands intact. His mood was not improved by the day in releasing Kim Dae Jung from house arrest. The opposition was confirmed in its suspicion of the President’s motives; demonstrators were back on the streets, and constitutional reform was still the fundamental issue.
After the abortive encounter it is easy to suggest formulae that might provide a way out of the impasse. The opposition might extend the timetable for reform beyond the coming presidential elections. The President might call an immediate referendum on electoral reform but commit himself or his successor to introduce the new rules only after the next presidential elections. The opposition might nominate a new leader less identified with all-out opposition than either Kim Young Sam or Kim Dae Jung. But each side has reasons why it will resist further concessions.
The opposition believes that it has President Chun on the run. It has gained the release of Kim Dae Jung who was once sentenced to death for sedition. It has forced the President into talks. The United States has been concerned enough to send its senior official with responsibility for policy in North-east Asia to see the situation for himself and talk to all the parties involved. And then there are the Olympics: what more might President Chun concede if he believed the games were jeopardized by continuing civil unrest?
President Chun Doo Hwan’s position is not, however, as weak as his opponents would wish. Comparisons with ex-President Marcos of the Philippines are tempting, but also misleading. President Chun is presiding over a country which is economically successful - and increasingly so. It has accumulated a large foreign debt, but its current balance of trade account is now in surplus.
The President’s opponents are, by and large, university students and sections of the middle classes, not workers and not people in the countryside. The base of the opposition has broadened somewhat in recent weeks, but still has little in common with the popular revolt that brought Mrs Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines.
Nor are the Americans likely to replace their client quite as summarily as they did in the Philippines. The strategic importance of South Korea, which is a bulwark against the communist North and the Soviet Union, is in quite a different league. The platform of the present opposition, which includes a demand for unification with the North, would be unacceptable to the Americans under current circumstances. US influence in South Korea may be vociferously resented by crowds on the streets; behind the scenes, it is appreciated as essential to the country’s security.
The interests of the United States lie in keeping South Korea economically and militarily strong, while at the same time edging it towards democracy. The interests of President Chun and his party lie in halting the present eruption of civil unrest, ensuring a peaceful and constitutional transfer to power next February and creating a climate in which the 1988 Olympics can be held without controversy in Seoul. He has the threat of martial law still available to him.
At present, the interests of the opposition seem to lie in fomenting unrest: but this is a tactic, not the objective. The objective is to make South Korea a more democratic and stable country, and that is an objective all those involved in South Korea purport to share. This cannot be achieved at a stroke. The opposition must not overplay its hand. It should keep its real ends in view and resume parliamentary discussion on electoral reform at once. This may be only a first step, but it is at least that.
