Panel to Revise S. Korean Constitution OKd

After six postponements, the National Assembly on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution authorizing the creation of a special committee to draft constitutional amendments to transform South Korea into a democracy.

At 10:30 p.m., 90 minutes before its special 20-day session adjourned, the assembly enacted the resolution to set up a 45-member committee with the power to operate until the end of September and to extend its work beyond that if necessary.

The committee’s task, according to a May 29 agreement between the ruling and opposition parties, will be to draw up amendments to “guarantee the people a free choice of government” in 1988, when the constitution requires President Chun Doo Hwan to step down.

Three-Month Delay

Had the resolution not been passed, work to revise Chun’s authoritarian constitution could have been delayed as long as three months, or until a regular assembly session scheduled to begin Sept. 20. Chun approved the revision work last April 30 after six years of rejecting constitutional changes.

“The passage of this resolution is the expression of our will to overcome any difficulties and achieve democracy in the true sense,” said Lee Sei Kee, floor leader of the ruling Democratic Justice Party.

Both ruling and opposition party leaders said they hope that the committee will complete its work in time for proposed amendments to be submitted to the assembly during its regular session, which will last until Dec. 18.

A vote of two-thirds of the members of the assembly is required to put amendments to a national referendum. Chun’s party does not have that many votes.

An Even Division

The committee members, the resolution specified, will be divided evenly between the Democratic Justice Party, on the one hand, and all opposition parties, on the other, with a ruling party legislator serving as chairman.

Even the 11th-hour compromise, however, failed to spell out how the opposition will divide its 22 seats, a detail that the parties agreed to work out later. The ruling party urged inclusion of a 12-man splinter group called the New Conservative Club, which already is on record as favoring a parliamentary system of government, but the main opposition group, the New Korea Democratic Party, which demands a direct presidential election system, objected.

The date for the committee to begin its work also was left unclear, but political analysts predicted that full-scale meetings of the group will begin next week.

Demand Is Withdrawn

The New Korea Democratic Party yielded late Tuesday on yet another condition that it had raised only Monday. It withdrew its demand that the assembly pass a joint resolution calling for release of all political prisoners. Instead, it passed its own party resolution to that effect in a special meeting of its National Assembly members.

The opposition previously had demanded the actual release of all 1,492 political prisoners--the number is the opposition’s count--but Chun and his party had only promised “lenient treatment” during legal proceedings.

Last Thursday, however, the government said it had released 212 of 1,190 people it said had been in detention on political charges as of May 29, when the original promise for leniency was made. It also promised “favorable consideration” for an unspecified number of the others.

The New Korea Democratic Party’s agreement to join in passing the resolution represented a significant compromise on its part. Not only did it fail to win specific assurance of a wholesale prisoner release, but the ruling party also rejected freeing the only prisoner that the party listed by name. He is the Rev. Moon Ik Hwan, 68, chairman of the United Masses Movement for Democracy and Unification, a dissident group with close ties to Korea’s best-known opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung.

Moon was indicted last Thursday on two counts of inciting violence and riot.