Critique in Seoul : Kim Hopeful on S. Korean Democracy

Kim Dae Jung, the South Korean dissident leader, has become a non-person in his homeland again, yet he seems optimistic about his future and the future of democracy in South Korea.

Since his return to Seoul last Friday from two years in exile in the United States, Kim has been at center stage, the focal point of an international drama involving the South Korean and U.S. governments, the world press, and a score of Americans who came along to try to protect him.

But by Thursday, the glare of television lights was gone. The living room, filled with people a few days ago, was empty. Only two peacocks in a cage and a dog on a leash stirred in the tiny garden.

Police at Gate

Kim, a former presidential candidate who could be jailed at any time to complete a suspended 20-year sentence on sedition charges, often answers his own phone calls. The plainclothesmen who stand at his gate and cordon off the streets leading to his home will not let even his secretaries or bodyguards into the tiny compound.

He has not been permitted to go anywhere. His wife, Lee Hee Ho, was given special permission to leave the compound to vote in Tuesday’s National Assembly election. However, she chose not to go to the polls--as a protest against the denial of civil rights to her husband and 13 other politicians.

Kim’s elder brother helps take calls and opens the gate for the occasional visitor whom the police allow to enter. Permitted visitors are relatives and foreign--but not Korean--journalists.

Not a word has appeared in the South Korean mass media about U.S. criticism of police handling of Kim and the 22 Americans, including two congressmen, who accompanied him home from Washington when they arrived at Kimpo Airport last Friday.

Even a comment by President Reagan criticizing Kim’s treatment has been censored. And this week’s Asian edition of Newsweek, which featured Kim on the cover, has not appeared on newsstands. Time magazine, with no Kim cover, is on sale on schedule.

Yet Kim, in a two-hour interview Thursday, expressed more optimism than he has at any time since government attempts to suppress him began in 1973 with his kidnaping in Tokyo and abduction to Seoul by members of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

Chun to Visit U.S.

Even after South Korea’s President Chun Doo Hwan visits the United States in April--when many of Kim’s American sympathizers fear he may be put back into jail--Kim sees no problem for himself.

“My expectations are not based on the assumption that the Chun government will act on conscientious, moralistic grounds, but rather that he will face the necessity (to treat me fairly). When he comes back from the United States, he will still have to deal with the dialogue with North Korea and the 1988 Olympics” to be held in Seoul, Kim said.

“The opposition has grown stronger (as a result of Tuesday’s election). Because of that, the students and the workers will get stronger. If he oppresses me, he can’t solve his problems. He will only worsen them,” Kim said.

Seoul will also be the site of this year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and of the 1986 Asian Games. To stage them successfully, Chun needs stability, Kim said, and the only way he will get it will be to deal with the newly reinvigorated opposition.

Not a ‘Demagogue’

Chun, a former general who seized control of South Korea in May, 1980, directs an authoritarian government, and dissidents have been actively opposing authoritarian government here since the assassinated President Park Chung Hee imposed it in 1972.

“For 13 years, the government has continuously labeled me a ‘revolutionary,’ a ‘demagogue,’ a ‘pro-Communist,’ ” Kim said. “The people are no longer listening. That the propaganda has no effect was shown by the support received by the candidates who used my name in campaigning in this election” and by the showing by the New Korea Democratic Party, which was organized only 25 days before the vote.

While politicians who once supported Park, who was killed by his own intelligence chief in 1979, won only 20 seats in the 276-seat unicameral assembly, Park-era opposition politicians purged by Chun in 1980 but restored to political life recently were elected in numbers that surprised even the leaders of the new party.

Cities Called Key

“Chun labeled us as dangerous and put a lid on us for five years, but this election showed the people didn’t agree,” Kim said. The opposition New Korea Democratic Party’s winning of 67 assembly seats Tuesday reflected the views of what Kim called the “true representatives (of) Korean politics--the cities.”

In South Korea, where all officials except National Assembly representatives “from the president on down to village chief and even the police” are appointed by the president, “the opposition is powerless to even present its views in rural areas,” Kim said.

“If, in the United States, all of the governors and mayors were appointed by the President and there were no elected state and city legislatures, what do you think would happen in an American (congressional) election?”

On top of this, he continued, “you can’t hold your own party rallies. Only four or five joint rallies are permitted during the campaign. Party leaders cannot go to the countryside to give speeches in support of their candidates. And political funds are controlled completely by the government.”

Led Chun’s Party in Seoul

But in cities like Seoul, with 9 million residents, the government cannot wipe out opposition criticism, he said. And the voters in the capital proved that, he added, by giving the new opposition party 16% more of the popular vote than Chun’s ruling party received.

The New Korea Democratic Party, Kim predicted, will “naturally insist on our civil rights being restored.” He also said he expects that the U.S. government--”as a matter of human rights, not as interference in domestic politics in Korea”--will continue to press the Chun government to restore the civil rights of the 14 politicians, including himself, who remain banned from politics under Chun’s 1980 purge.

Kim said he does not want to encourage the new party to adopt confrontational tactics with the Chun government, but rather to try dialogue.

“But if the government doesn’t change its attitude, it will be unavoidable that the struggle (for democracy) will grow more severe. . . .”

Needs Military Backing

Kim, who has not spent a day of freedom on Korean soil since May 17, 1980, when Chun had him arrested, holds no illusions about the realities of political life here.

In answer to a question, he said it is “perfectly correct” that no one could hope to become president of South Korea unless he could at least be “tolerated” by the country’s 620,000-man armed forces.

Kim said he had tried to open contacts with the armed forces and Chun after Park was assassinated in 1979. He disclosed for the first time that the U.S. ambassador then, William Gleysteen, had offered to act as a go-between, in a personal capacity, to bring military leaders together for a dialogue with Kim and other civilian politicians.

Kim said Gleysteen made the offer, and he accepted, in a meeting on Dec. 10, 1980, two days after the end of one of Kim’s many periods of house arrest.

On Dec. 12, however, Chun staged a mutiny in the army, arrested the army’s chief of staff, ousted other generals who Kim said wanted to keep the army out of politics and set himself on a course to take over the nation.

Seeks Military Rapport

A meeting with Chun was scheduled nonetheless, but Chun did not appear, Kim said. “Only two of his aides showed up.” Kim said he continued trying to arrange a meeting with Chun right up to the day of his arrest.

Kim indicated that he will try again to establish a rapport with the armed forces, which has given every sign that it considers him anathema. “I oppose a military regime--not the military,” Kim declared.

He said the armed forces continue to give the impression “on the surface” that they support what he called Chun’s “military government.” However, “their inner feelings are different. Because of the shock of Kwangju (where at least 189 people were killed when paratroopers suppressed an uprising in 1980) and because of seeing the people applaud when candidates in the National Assembly election called for the military to stop interference in politics, many (officers) have come to fear that the military may lose support of the people.”

He added, however, that approval by the American commander in South Korea, who also holds operational command over most South Korean troops, is “an absolutely essential precondition” to a civilian-run government in the future.

“The American commander must make clear his attitude on democracy to encourage the well-intentioned officers in the Korean army,” Kim said.

U.S. General Criticized

There are 40,000 U.S. troops on duty here to help defend the country against the threat of attacks from Communist North Korea.

Kim criticized the U.S. commander at the time of Chun’s takeover, Gen. John A. Wickham Jr., now the U.S. Army chief of staff, for not only “silently approving” Chun’s December, 1980, mutiny and purge of democratic-minded generals in the South Korean army but also countenancing the use of Korean troops “even to the extent of killing people” in Kwangju during the rebellion there.

Kim urged President Reagan to refrain from “encouraging a dictator” when he meets Chun at the White House in April, although he made no objection to the meeting itself. “The U.S. government has to deal with the administration in power in all countries--even when the administration is a dictatorial one,” he said.

“But it is necessary for the United States to show our people that it supports democracy,” he added. Kim said the absence of freedom of speech here victimizes not only the Korean people but also American interests in South Korea.

U.S. Action Urged

“Quiet diplomacy is no good,” he added. “The United States should try to make the Korean mass media publish its comments fully, and if that fails, should use the Voice of America, Stars and Stripes, and the Armed Forces Korea Network to get its message across in South Korea.

“The Korean mass media doesn’t report; U.S. agencies don’t report. So the South Korean people wind up listening to North Korean broadcasts, and then they find out that what the North Koreans report is true. But in the midst of such reports is Communist propaganda. This situation (of South Koreans turning to the north for news) is fearful,” he said.

Kim also spoke of his vision for the future of South Korea.

“Except for the reunification problem, my vision for South Korea is to create another West Germany,” he said. “In Germany, reunification is impossible. In Korea, it is possible, and we must achieve it.”

High educational and cultural levels of the South Korean people, achievements in modernization and the people’s anti-communism give the country much in common with West Germany, Kim said. “The one difference is that West Germany has democracy. We don’t.”

Democracy, Security

Democracy would give South Koreans not only “great confidence in themselves” but also a solid, spontaneous support for national security--”something of value to fight for”--which would ultimately force North Korea to abandon its intention to communize the south by force, Kim said.

Until then, “we will have to maintain a strong military. . . . We can’t advocate saving on defense spending under present conditions.”

For the short term, Kim said, he wants to promote a grand alliance of all South Korean opposition parties under the leadership of the New Korea Democratic Party. “I think we can form a strong, unified opposition party and carry on a struggle in the National Assembly that will attract the attention of the people in Korea and in the world.”

Kim, unlike many opposition leaders, is wary of revising the present constitution to permit direct election of the president, instead of election through an electoral college.

Wants Old Constitution

Chun’s constitution, rammed through in a referendum conducted under martial law, gives the president complete control of all three branches of government (the executive, legislative and judicial), Kim charged. Electing a president directly under this system, he warned, could create a new kind of dictator.

What is needed, he said, is to restore the nation’s 1962 constitution, which clearly separated the powers of the three branches of government. Kim said three direct, democratic elections were held for president under Park in 1963, 1967 and 1971--although he acknowledged that they were conducted “with some unfairness.” Kim was Park’s chief opponent in 1971.

“The people had no complaints against this constitution, which was very democratic. There was no problem between the ruling party and the opposition over it. The only trouble occurred when it was revised to permit a third term for Park,” he said.

Kim said restoration of the 1962 constitution should precede any direct election of the president. He acknowledged, however, that only Chun’s consent would permit that to happen before 1988, when Chun is constitutionally required to step down after one term.