S. Korea Opposition to Boycott Election : Hopes to ‘Nullify’ Vote if Constitution Isn’t Changed, Leader Says

Kim Young Sam, head of South Korea’s main opposition party, said Tuesday that he and his followers will in the present circumstances boycott the election for the presidency.

Instead, Kim said, “we will launch a national struggle to nullify the election.”

In an interview shortly before the executive committee of the ruling Democratic Justice Party named Roh Tae Woo, a former general, as its choice to succeed President Chun Doo Hwan, Kim told The Times that he will “absolutely not” take part in the election under the existing constitution.

On April 13, Chun suspended talks on revising the constitution until after the 1988 Summer Olympics here. The talks had centered on the ruling party’s support of a parliamentary system of government and the opposition call for a presidential system with direct elections.

Asked whether he will call for a boycott of the Games by the South Korean people, Kim said he will wait and see.

Olympic Boycott Threat

“I do wish personally to see the Olympics carried out,” he said, but he suggested that there will be a boycott if the government tries to use the Olympics to prolong its grasp on power.

The diminutive, longtime opposition leader recently compared the games to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, which glorified Nazism under Adolf Hitler.

“Democracy is more important than staging the Olympics,” Kim said. “With 3,000 political prisoners in jail and without a fuller democracy, if we try to carry out the Olympics in the name of a dictator to prolong his power, I cannot guarantee that the people will not boycott the Olympics.”

Despite government reports to the contrary, Kim said that neither he nor his aides are seeking a meeting with Roh, the ruling party’s choice and a longtime associate of Chun. He might, he said, agree to a meeting after the convention of Roh’s party next Wednesday, when Roh’s name will be placed in nomination.

A likely subject of such a meeting would be revision of the election law, but Kim declined to say whether he would reverse his decision on an election boycott if the law were changed to meet opposition objections.

No Election Law Change

“Now, we are asserting that the government should revise the constitution,” he said. “We don’t want to consider revising the election law.”

If he meets Roh, he said, his primary goal would be to set up a meeting with Chun himself.

Kim also declared that his Reunification Democratic Party and a coalition of religious and dissident groups will reject government demands that they cancel plans for a nationwide series of anti-government rallies next Wednesday, the day of Roh’s official annointment as successor to Chun, who is scheduled to step down next February after a seven-year term.

The main rally, Kim said, will be in a Presbyterian church near the British Embassy in downtown Seoul.

The rally will be nonviolent, he insisted, but there is some concern that it could spill over into the streets, provoking a clash between the police and demonstrators.

Meanwhile, four Reunification Democratic Party members of the National Assembly were forcibly detained for questioning by prosecutors for their role in writing a section of the party’s platform calling for reunification, “transcending ideology,” with Communist North Korea.

Rejected Prosecutors’ Calls

The four politicians were detained after rejecting repeated calls to appear voluntarily for interrogation.

Both Chun and the ruling Democratic Justice Party have condemned that part of the platform as inviting a Communist-led reunification of the Korean Peninsula, which was divided after World War II, and have threatened to disband the party if it fails to revise the wording.

Kim condemned the detentions, calling the act an example of the government’s two-faced tactic of seeking dialogue with the opposition while at the same time intimidating it.

The late President Park Chung Hee and President Chun have made similar declarations about seeking reunification while transcending ideological differences, Kim said. He added that the opposition party has no intention of revising the controversial section of the platform.

Asked if his party would reject compromise on all issues unless its demand for direct presidential elections is approved by the ruling group, Kim said the issues that divide the political parties here are fundamentally different than the issues that divide Democrats and Republicans in the United States.

‘Fighting a Dictatorship’

“In Korea,” he said, “we are fighting with a dictatorship.”

More than 70% of the Korean people want a democracy with a direct presidential election, he said. Bowing to the ruling party’s demand for parliamentary government would “cause the people to turn their backs on us,” Kim said.

The opposition leader predicted that “whoever is nominated by the Democratic Justice Party will not be able to succeed Chun as president next February.” This is true, he said, because of massive distrust of the ruling party.