L.A. Group Emerges as Force in Battle for S. Korea Democracy

The two Korean immigrants--one a longtime foe of South Korea’s military-backed government, the other a recently converted critic--were in an exultant mood as they awaited the arrival of the guest of honor for a ballroom banquet at the Hyatt Wilshire Hotel.

Jong Won Rhee, Western regional president of the Korean Institute for Human Rights, and Ki-myung Rhee, president of the Korean Federation of Los Angeles, had with other community leaders forged a coalition in support of democratization of their homeland that was about to celebrate the first broadly based welcome for an opposition South Korean political figure in the history of Los Angeles’ Korean community.

“They were working all the time for the democratization of our government,” said Ki-myung Rhee, motioning toward Jong Won Rhee, who is no relation. “The people here, 99% of them, last year they didn’t support Mr. Rhee. Now we--the Korean Federation of Los Angeles--support him, and they have changed. It’s very important.”

Standing Ovation

Just then, Lee Min Woo, president of the New Korea Democratic Party, South Korea’s leading opposition political party, walked into the banquet hall and the crowd of 400 rose in an ovation. Jong Won Rhee and Ki-myung Rhee rushed off to join him at the head table.

This scene Tuesday was a moment of sweet triumph for Jong Won Rhee, one that pointed up the emergence of his organization as a key force in the complex international political battle now under way over the future of South Korea.

Ki-myung Rhee’s estimate that 99% of the crowd was new to the democratization movement had at least a touch of hyperbole--a Korean-American reporter guessed that only 20% of the crowd consisted of new converts--but, whatever the numbers, the banquet clearly drew support from many former backers of the South Korean government as well as opposition and human rights groups.

Because the Los Angeles area has the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea--roughly 200,000--and is just a day’s airplane flight from Seoul, news of such events as the banquet travels quickly across the Pacific and political work here can have a direct effect in South Korea, Jong Won Rhee said.

Office in Koreatown

The Korean Institute for Human Rights, which opened a Western regional office in Los Angeles’ Koreatown in November, was founded in May, 1983, in Alexandria, Va., by South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung and supporters in this country.

Kim nearly won South Korea’s last free and open presidential election in 1971, getting 46% of the vote. Kidnaped from a Tokyo hotel in 1973 and smuggled to South Korea by agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Kim was in jail or under house arrest for several years in the 1970s. He was jailed again in 1980, accused of sedition--a charge that the U.S. State Department described as “farfetched”--and sentenced to death. South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan commuted the sentence to 20 years of imprisonment, and later allowed Kim to go to the United States, ostensibly for medical treatment.

Kim’s two-year American exile ended with his return in early 1985 to South Korea. Since then he has frequently been under house arrest.

Because of the institute’s close ties to Kim, it has sometimes been viewed as Kim’s personal liaison office in the United States.

“This organization has been founded by Kim Dae Jung, and has been directed by Kim Dae Jung, so some people think this is just a faction working with the sole purpose of supporting Kim Dae Jung,” said Samuel Lee, publisher of Korean Roots Journal, a monthly Los Angeles-based Korean-language magazine. “But in my personal observation, the organization has achieved a lot, not only for the benefit of Kim, its leader, but for the development of democracy in Korea plus good relations between Korea and the United States.”

Democracy, Human Rights

Institute leaders say that although Kim has a key role to play in South Korea, their concern is not simply for his safety and political future but rather for democracy and human rights for all South Koreans.

It was the plight of another Korean dissident, Kim Keun Tae, that sparked establishment of the institute’s Olympic Boulevard office, Jong Won Rhee said.

Arrested Sept. 4, 1985, by South Korean security agents, Kim Keun Tae was tortured into signing a false confession that he was a communist agent, according to his wife, In Jae Keun, who made the allegations in a tape-recording that another dissident brought out of South Korea. U.S. State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb, speaking to reporters in October, called the allegation of torture “credible” and said the United States had “made known to the Korean government our concern.”

Los Angeles-area supporters of the human rights institute--who, lacking an office, had been meeting monthly in restaurants--were gathered one evening, angry about Kim Keun Tae’s case, when a local dentist suggested setting up an office in property he owned, Jong Won Rhee said.

“He said, ‘Use my place,’ ” Rhee recalled during an interview in the four-room institute office. “Another person said, ‘I’ll donate a typewriter.’ Another said, ‘I’ll donate a copying machine.’ ‘I’ll donate the table.’ ‘I’ll donate the chairs.’ In one evening, we could have this place.”

Jong Won Rhee said institute officials, working out of both the East and West Coast offices, have focused their efforts on trying to sway American officials and the U.S. public against support of Chun Doo Hwan’s government, and encouraging the spread of information favorable to the democratization movement among Koreans in the United States and South Korea .

The struggle has gained new intensity in recent months, as activists in both South Korea and the United States have been encouraged by the Philippine opposition’s ousting of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos. The opposition movement in South Korea is seeking 10 million signatures on petitions calling for constitutional reform to provide for direct presidential elections, and the Korean Human Rights Institute and other Los Angeles Korean community organizations have begun circulating petitions in Los Angeles as well.

On Wednesday, the institute mobilized most of the 35 protesters who showed up for a demonstration called by Amnesty International outside the Korean Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard. Amnesty International called for the South Korean government to release all “prisoners of conscience,” to ensure that torture is not used in interrogations and to commute all death sentences.

Among the demonstrators from the Korean Human Rights Institute was Kim Dae Jung’s son, Kim Hong Up, who is currently residing in the United States. Kim Hong Up declined to be interviewed for this article.

Sohn Hoon, a spokesman for the Korean consulate, declined comment on the demonstration or the activities of the Korean Human Rights Institute, but said he believes that most Korean residents of the Los Angeles area support the South Korean government.

Information Clearinghouse

In addition to mobilizing support for events such as Tuesday’s banquet and Wednesday’s demonstration, the institute functions as a clearinghouse for information that the government-regulated media of South Korea will not publish, but that independent Korean-language newspapers in the United States, such as the Los Angeles-based Korean Street Journal and Korean Sunday Journal, routinely print.

Once news is disseminated in Los Angeles, it quickly circulates back to Seoul, Jong Won Rhee said.

“Now, the telephone is direct,” he said. “Korean Airlines, every day, two flights, three flights. Something happens over here, the same day, it’s back in Korea. Chun Doo Hwan--the dictatorship--they can control what happens in Korea. But they cannot control over here. . . . In a couple of days, all of Seoul knows. It’s true! When you’re hungry, you want food, right? All the Korean people are hungry for news.”