60,000 Rally for Direct Vote in South Korea

The movement for democratic elections in South Korea gathered steam Sunday as thousands of people demanding an end to U.S. support for President Chun Doo Hwan staged the first anti-government demonstration here since troops crushed a 10-day rebellion in this city six years ago.

The demonstrators, shouting “Down with dictatorship! Down with Chun Doo Hwan! Down with America!” blocked traffic along Kwangju’s main street for several hours, until they were dispersed by shield-carrying riot police with tear gas. Eyewitnesses said that 50 demonstrators were detained.

The three-hour demonstration followed an open-air rally at which about 60,000 people listened to speeches by opposition politicians calling for an immediate revision of the South Korean constitution to allow for direct presidential elections.

Seeking 10 Million Signatures

The rally, part of a campaign to gather 10 million signatures in support of demands for constitutional change, was the largest anti-government demonstration since Chun, a former major general, came to power in 1980.

Rally participants were seen affixing their thumbprints in red ink to rectangular pieces of paper on which they had written their names and addresses.

Chun’s government, which originally declared the drive to collect signatures illegal and threatened to jail all who signed, changed its policy last month and asked instead that discussion of constitutional revision be put off until after 1988 to ensure the success of the Summer Olympic Games, which Seoul will host that year.

Opposition leaders, however, have accused Chun of using the Olympics and the Asian Games, to be held in South Korea later this year, for political purposes.

“Are the Olympics more important than democracy? Is there any event that can be more important than democracy?” opposition leader Kim Dae Jung said in a tape-recorded message broadcast at the rally.

Kim, who received 46% of the popular vote in the last direct presidential elections in South Korea 15 years ago and who hails from the Kwangju area, was prevented by police from addressing the crowd in person.

Police stopped Kim’s car in Seoul as it headed for the airport Sunday morning and forced him to return to his home. Kim was also prevented from going to a similar rally that attracted 20,000 people last Sunday in Pusan.

Kim accused Chun of being insincere in a promise to consider constitutional revision after 1988 because Chun, who has said he will step down after a single term in office that same year, “will no longer be in a position to change the constitution.”

First Peaceful Transfer

Chun has promised to give Koreans the first peaceful transfer of power in their modern history by resigning in 1988 and not running for reelection that year.

Chun’s opponents, however, argue that without a constitutional change that permits direct elections, the 1988 vote will not be democratic.

“A true peaceful transfer of power does not mean a mere change of persons,” Kim Young Sam, another former opposition presidential candidate, told Sunday’s crowd. It means nothing unless “the people can freely choose their leader.”

Opposition leaders complain that the present system, under which presidential candidates do not campaign but wait for the verdict of an electoral college of more than 5,000 members, does not give opposition candidates a fair chance.

Points to U.S. Practice

For their part, government spokesmen argue that the U.S. President is also chosen by an electoral college.

As occurred in Pusan, opposition politicians told the Kwangju crowd to take heart from what they perceive as a change in U.S. policy toward authoritarian regimes since last month’s ouster of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines. In his recorded message, Kim Dae Jung told the rally that the United States now opposes dictatorships of both the left and the right.

“U.S. policy has changed,” he said. “This is a good opportunity.” But he added that “everything depends on the success of the signature movement.”

Urged to Avoid Violence

He urged the crowd to avoid violence. In an interview before the rally, however, Kim Young Sam said that if constitutional change does not occur this year and if the government cracks down, “our young men may not stand idly by.”

The rally was held in front of Kwangju’s YMCA, facing the provincial capital building that was headquarters of the 1980 Kwangju rebellion. According to official figures, 191 people lost their lives during that demonstration and 10 days later when troops again moved in on the city.

Another building across the street from the YMCA was used at the time of the rebellion as a temporary morgue, where parents identified the bodies of slain rebels, most of whom were students in their teens and early twenties.

The uprising took place within hours after the government imposed martial law on May 17, 1980, and arrested Kim Dae Jung and detained many other politicians. With Chun pulling the strings, airborne troops were dispatched to Kwangju a number of days later to suppress anti-government demonstrations.

Anti-American Feeling High

Anti-American feeling here is still high because people believe that Chun could not have retaken the city without American permission to move troops away from the area of the demilitarized zone that separates South and North Korea. The South Korean troops are under a joint command, headed by an American general.

Students protesters have occupied American cultural centers in Seoul, Pusan and Kwangju at various times in the last six years. During the latest such incident in Seoul, students demanded that the United States apologize for what they called its role in the Kwangju affair.

In recent months, anti-government demonstrations have increased dramatically on South Korean university campuses, and several hundred students have been taken into custody under Korea’s strict laws. Most of the demonstrations have had a strong, anti-American flavor.

Kim Young Sam visited graves of fallen 1980 rebels at a Kwangju cemetery Sunday, saying “the victims should be called martyrs for democracy and a monument must be established to them.”

Conflicting Events Planned

He also accused the government of attempting to scuttle Sunday’s rally by planning events such as a baseball game and a concert by popular singing stars to conflict with the time of the rally.

Although some of the claims could not be independently verified, teachers and government workers were ordered either to show up for work at the time the rally was scheduled or to leave the city to pick up forest trash as part of a government beautification campaign.

One teacher who attended the rally said, “My principal told me yesterday that I have to take my family to the mountains to pick up trash.”

The teacher said he avoided going by claiming to be a Christian wanting to attend Easter services.

A few hours before the rally was to begin, leaflets falsely saying that the rally had been postponed until Monday “due to Easter” appeared in the vicinity of the rally site. The leaflets were counterfeited in the name of the opposition New Korea Democratic Party, one of the chief backers of the event.