Strange Crisis in Korea

South Korea’s government deeply embarrassed itself last week when it rushed to announce the death in a purported power struggle of Kim Il Sung, the Communist dictator of North Korea. A few days later Kim was shown to be very much alive, and the natural question became why the Seoul regime had been so hasty to put its credibility at risk. Several answers were proposed, among them that President Chun Doo Hwan wanted to use the uncertainties stemming from murky events in the north as an excuse to tighten his control over the south. That notion at first seemed too crude to be plausible. Now it is looking less so.

Citing “a new threat to national security” arising from North Korea’s “disinformation” campaign, the Chun government is trying to stop its political opponents from holding a mass rally in Seoul on Saturday. Kim Dae Jung, a leading oppositionist, once more has been placed under house arrest. Other dissident political figures have been targeted for detention. What does a rally called to support direct presidential elections have to do with last week’s supposed Communist broadcasts along the demilitarized zone? In the view of government officials, such a rally would somehow threaten “social and political stability” at a time of heightened tensions.

That is a feeble and even an irrational explanation for government suppression. Because the Seoul regime let itself be suckered by spurious announcements from across the border--if such announcements in fact were made--it now argues that it dare not allow an exercise of free expression in its own capital. Democracy, it is saying, is too dangerous a thing to be entrusted to the people in these trying times. That is, of course, what the Communists in the north also say.

Organizers of the Seoul rally believe that they could draw 1 million people. Could a demonstration of this size produce some violence? Of course; that risk is always present. A small segment of the government’s opponents, centering on a few thousand radical students, has shown itself eager for violence. It’s even possible that North Korean agents are at work to promote such action. But if the government doubts that its formidable security forces aren’t capable of containing rowdyism or even riot, it is confessing to a weakness that no one else is aware of. Most South Koreans support the organized opposition’s commitment to peaceful political confrontation. That mass is not going to take to the streets to try to overthrow the government or listen to those who would.

The government fears this demonstration, like others, because it fears any public display that gives proof of its unpopularity. It fears allowing direct presidential elections, which almost certainly would see an opposition victory, because it does not want to yield power. Behind a facade of transparent excuses, the government is showing that it doesn’t trust the good sense of the South Korean people, who are no more likely to be seduced by communism than are the leaders of the military-backed regime. Is that regime truly worried about a threat to national stability? The remedy is at hand. The surest barrier against instability would be to give Koreans the freedom to choose their own political future.