Priests, Civic Leaders Protest Chun’s Policies

More than 70 Roman Catholic priests, civic leaders and university professors staged protests Wednesday against President Chun Doo Hwan’s freeze on constitutional debate.

Dissident statements said the protests took place in Seoul and the southern provincial city of Kwangju, the scene of a bloody nine-day armed insurrection in 1980.

In Seoul, 30 professors of the private Korea University said in a statement that Chun’s reasons for his decision to shelve the constitutional debate until after the 1988 Summer Olympics here has failed to convince the South Korean people.

“A government which gives up a historical task cannot be called a responsible government,” the statement said.

A few hours earlier at the Korea National Council of Churches in downtown Seoul, 28 Christian clergymen, college professors, Buddhist monks, lawyers, poets and human rights activists declared that they would launch a nationwide campaign to press the Chun government to change the country’s constitution.

On April 13, Chun reconfirmed his plan to step down when his term ends next Feb. 24 but said he will keep the current electoral college system to pick his successor. The opposition wants to replace the electoral college system with direct presidential elections.

After Chun’s announcement, the government intensified its clampdown and put opponents in prison, creating “a situation exceeding martial law,” the statement from the protesters said.

The statement also accused the Chun government of using “all violent means” to block the creation of a new opposition party led by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, South Korea’s two best-known dissidents.

The two Kims, who broke away early this month from what had been the country’s major opposition New Korea Democratic Party, are pushing to activate their new Party for Unification and Democracy by next week.

In the provincial city of Kwangju, 162 miles south of Seoul, 15 Catholic priests began an indefinite hunger strike, demanding that Chun’s successor be elected by direct, popular vote.

The priests began the protest at the Catholic Center in downtown Kwangju, the scene of the 1980 insurrection that killed at least 192 people and injured more than 800 others, according to government statistics. Dissidents say the toll was higher.