Kim Struck Policeman, Seoul Says : Official Blames Dissident’s Acts for Airport Melee

Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung was accused Saturday by the South Korean government of striking a police officer “in the face with his fist” and attempting to attack the same officer with his cane as he returned Friday from a two-year exile in the United States to be put under limited house arrest. Kim denied the charge.

The 61-year-old opposition leader also denied an accusation that he hit one of his own bodyguards in the face with his fist when the guard suggested that Kim accede to a request to show his passport to an immigration official.

The accusations were made by Choi Tae Soon, director of the Korean Overseas Information Service, in a special news conference for foreign correspondents. The news conference was called only after the State Department in Washington publicly condemned Korean police for manhandling Kim and members of a group of 22 Americans, including two congressmen, who had accompanied Kim here from Washington in hopes of ensuring his safe arrival.

‘No Beating or Punching’

Although Choi admitted that South Korean police “may have used force to separate” Kim from the group of Americans, he insisted that the police engaged in “no beating or punching.”

Offering no apology or expression of regret for the incident, Choi portrayed Kim’s refusal to cooperate with immigration authorities as the cause of the melee.

Despite the elaborate explanation given foreign newsmen, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday night that it still had received no explanation from the South Korean Foreign Ministry about the incident. What an embassy spokesman described as a “stern note” was sent Friday to the Foreign Ministry, asking for details of what happened.

U.S. Envoy Regrets Incident

U.S. Ambassador Richard L. Walker issued a special statement accusing the South Korean government of breaking a promise to allow embassy officers to meet the Americans accompanying Kim at planeside. Walker said he regretted the incident and “deplored the actions by all those responsible”--the latter statement aimed in part at the actions of some of the Americans who accompanied Kim.

In a telephone conversation, Kim acknowledged that he had pushed the police officer whom Choi accused him of striking in the face. But he denied hitting the officer and said that he had pushed the policeman only after he himself had been shoved into an elevator at Kimpo airport and physically separated by force from Reps. Edward F. Feighan (D-Ohio) and Thomas M. Foglietta (D-Pa.) and Robert E. White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.

“I pushed back after I was pushed into the elevator. I used my hands in defending myself. But I never struck anyone,” Kim said. “I am in my 60s. The policemen were all young. How could I possibly have used violence against them?”

Kim also acknowledged that he had pushed his own bodyguard, Choi Chang Hak, when Choi suggested that Kim show his passport to an immigration official, as requested. But he denied striking Choi.

“I was angry after the violence in the elevator. So I pushed him (Choi) and shouted at him for lecturing me,” Kim said.

The political leader, who was the last opposition candidate in a free and open presidential election in South Korea 14 years ago, said that he had refused to show his passport because immigration officials refused to allow him to go through customs the normal way.

Formed ‘Human Fence’

Choi Tae Soon, the Korean Overseas Information Service director, said that an immigration official had boarded the plane that brought Kim and the Americans to Seoul to inform him that he would be “safely escorted” off the aircraft. Kim, however, “refused to listen” and “insisted on leaving the plane with the other passengers,” Choi said.

After Kim and several of the Americans left the loading bridge leading from the airplane and entered the terminal building, 12 Korean plainclothesmen “formed a human fence by locking their arms together to separate Kim and his party” from the bulk of Kim’s American supporters following behind, Choi said. Another “human fence of policemen” kept newsmen away, he added. Kim was asked to use an elevator instead of an escalator that leads to the main baggage and customs room, “but he refused to do it, saying he wanted to go through normal entry procedures with other passengers,” Choi said.

In his telephone conversation, Kim said he feared that if he became separated from his American friends, he might suffer the same fate as did Benigno S. Aquino Jr., the Philippine opposition leader who was shot to death as he disembarked from an airplane at Manila in August, 1983.

Spokesman Choi said that a police officer from the local police station covering the Seoul district where Kim lives asked Kim to get into the elevator “for his own safety” and told the Americans with Kim that they would be escorted to a VIP room. When neither Kim nor the Americans with him agreed, “the police separated the Kims (his wife, Lee Hee Ho, was with him) and his two associates (the bodyguards) from the Americans” by “wedging” their way into the group.

Choi did not mention it, but it was at this point that White said he was “thrown to the ground” and that Foglietta was “thrown back by four plainclothesmen, one on each arm and leg.”

“When he was separated from the foreigners, Mr. Kim used abusive language and hit the security section chief of the metropolitan police in the face with his fist,” Choi charged. “When he was pushed into the elevator, he tried to strike the police officer with his cane but was stopped by another officer.”

Later, when an immigration officer asked Kim to produce his passport, “he again used abusive language and refused to comply, saying he had no reason to do so because officials were not conducting their business in a normal fashion,” Choi said.

That was when Kim’s bodyguard suggested that Kim comply with the request, only to have Kim turn on him, “hit (the bodyguard) in the face and say to him, ‘How dare you order me around?’ ” Choi said.

Kim was then allowed to go through customs without presenting his passport and was taken, with his wife and the two bodyguards, to his home, where he later met three of the Americans who had accompanied him from Washington as well as foreign newsmen, Choi said.

Choi insisted that the sole intent of the police at the airport was to separate Kim and his immediate party from the others to ensure Kim’s personal safety, and he denied that “violent force” had been used at any time during what he described as “the melee.”

“It took 10 minutes to separate Kim and his companions. If the police had used violent force, I don’t think it would have taken 10 minutes,” Choi said.

“We tried to make Mr. Kim’s homecoming smooth but found that Mr. Kim was not cooperative,” he added.

Choi said that he did not know when the Foreign Ministry would provide the U.S. Embassy with details of the incident and said that he could not comment on Ambassador Walker’s charge that Korean officials had broken an agreement to allow U.S. Embassy officials to meet the American delegation traveling with Kim at planeside.

Walker said that three embassy officials sent to the airport “could have ameliorated or possibly prevented” the incident if they had been permitted to go to the exit ramp.

Replying to charges by several members of the American delegation accompanying Kim that the embassy had mishandled the incident, Walker denied that the embassy shared any blame for it. “We did all we could do,” the ambassador said.

Walker also criticized the Americans accompanying Kim by noting that they were “escorting a citizen of the Republic of Korea on Korean territory, a fact which raises issues of sovereignty.” He said that a representative of the American delegation had been in Seoul for two days before Kim’s arrival and had been informed of the procedures that would be taken at the airport.

David Fitzgerald, embassy press officer, said he had no idea of when the Foreign Ministry would provide an explanation of the incident, an action that is necessary, he said, before the embassy decides whether to file a formal diplomatic protest with the South Korean government.

With a National Assembly election scheduled here Tuesday and President Chun Doo Hwan scheduled to visit Washington in April, the incident occurred at a particularly sensitive time.

The Reagan Administration had sought--and thought it had received--assurances that Kim would not be jailed upon his return and that his arrival, as White House Spokesman Larry Speakes put it, would be “uneventful and unimpeded.” Although neither the United States nor the South Korean government acknowledged it, the assurances were given as a quid pro quo for the invitation to Chun to visit Washington.

Kim was released by Chun from a 20-year prison sentence he was serving on sedition charges to allow him to travel to the United States in December, 1982, ostensibly for medical treatment.

Chun, however, only suspended Kim’s sentence, nearly 18 years of which remains to be served, and South Korean officials had threatened to put him back in jail. Last Monday, three days after Chun’s trip to Washington was announced, however, the government here said that Kim would not be jailed when he returned.

No assurances were given for the future. Kim’s house arrest is “limited” in the sense that he will be permitted to receive visits by relatives and foreign correspondents. Kim, however, said he was told that he would not be permitted to leave his home.