Doctor Says Envoy to Korea Periled Group With Dissident

Fearing for his own safety, a Calabasas doctor who accompanied exiled opposition leader Kim Dae Jung to South Korea cut short his stay in Seoul on Monday and returned home.

Dr. John Kim charged that accusations made Sunday by the U.S. ambassador to South Korea about an airport scuffle jeopardized the safety of Americans who traveled with the dissident.

Kim, 56, who is a chest surgeon at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, said he was walking with a group of Americans that accompanied Kim Dae Jung to South Korea on Friday when police seized the opposition leader. In the ensuing moments, several Americans in the group were reportedly roughed up.

As police hustled Kim Dae Jung off to house arrest, Kim said he stayed behind to treat several companions who were knocked to the airport floor.

‘Take Care of the Injured’

“I could see the pushing and shoving so I stopped to take care of the injured,” Kim said in an interview at Los Angeles International Airport.

“They just surrounded us and manhandled us,” said Kim, referring to Korean plainclothes police who seized Kim Dae Jung. “The Korean government had said repeatedly that things would go smoothly, but they did not.”

After the confrontation, Kim said he and others in the 22-member American delegation were kept under constant surveillance by other plainclothes officers who “jotted down” everything they said.

He said he decided to cut short what had been planned as a weeklong stay in Seoul after the U.S. ambassador to South Korean charged that Americans in the delegation triggered the confrontation as “a media event.”

On Sunday, Ambassador Richard L. Walker told an interviewer that the delegation decided to “renege” on an agreement that would have averted the airport scuffle. The ambassador speculated that the group intended to force a confrontation.

Kim, who usually speaks with an accented but soft-spoken voice and appeared weary after the 14-hour flight home, angrily denied that was the case.

“That emphatically did not happen,” he said. “Ambassador Walker is a liar when he says that.”

Walker’s accusation put the delegation members in peril, Kim said.

“Our own government has implied that we were the cause of the disturbance,” he said. “The majority of our delegation decided to come back early because, under those circumstances, being in Korea would not be healthy for us.

“Our own government was accusing us as being the cause of the battle. The American ambassador was saying that. How safe could it be there for us?”

Kim said the Americans who volunteered to accompany the exiled leader to ensure his safe return were not told in advance about airport procedures. They had been led to believe that South Koreans would outline their plans for dealing with Kim Dae Jung before the group left the plane, he said.

“But we were never told what the Korean security men were going to do. They just started to act without saying a word. We did not renege on anything,” he said.

Kim said he paid $1,500 of his expenses for the abbreviated trip and received $300 in donations from several Presbyterian church groups supporting human rights in South Korea.

Born in South Korea, Kim came the United States in 1949. Although he is now a U.S. citizen, he said he has retained an interest in human rights in his homeland and is a member of the Washington-based Center for Development Policy, which assembled the delegation accompanying Kim Dae Jung on his return last week.

Kim’s wife, Shin, said she was worried for his safety after learning of the airport scuffle and the opposition leader’s house arrest.

“But I would have to say I’m more concerned about the welfare of Mr. Kim and the thousands of nameless dissidents who are continuously struggling for the return of democracy in Korea,” she said.

Debby Tucker, 25, one of the couple’s four children, said she was also jarred by news of the airport incident.

“All of us in the family were calling each other, trying to find out if my father was among those beaten,” said Tucker, who lives in Seattle and flew to Los Angeles for Monday’s reunion.

“I’m proud of my father. He’s tried to do what he thought was right all his life.”