S. Korean Ex-General Handpicked for Election : Chun Protege Heads for Presidency

In 1979, the 18-year rule of President Park Chung Hee was put to an end by a bullet during dinner.

Last Tuesday, South Korea once again wrote an end to a regime over dinner. This time, it came in the form of a figurative toast.

Roh Tae Woo, 54, a former general who helped put President Chun Doo Hwan in power, listened as Chun, 56, told 29 members of the Executive Council of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, “I arrived at the decision . . . that Roh Tae Woo is best fitted for the presidency.”

They applauded, and the decision was sealed. Roh stood up and said that his endorsement was “a great honor,” and added, “How can I ever forget my obligation to President Chun?”

Although the formalities of a party convention and a national election to choose more than 5,000 electors to rubber-stamp Roh’s victory are still to be carried out, no doubt exists that once again a new leader of South Korea has been chosen without the participation of the people.

Opposition to Boycott Vote

Already the transfer has produced protest. The major opposition party, dissident groups, clergy and students have condemned the anointment of Roh, who is the chairman of Chun’s party, as an attempt to prolong authoritarian military rule. The opposition has declared that it will boycott the election late this year and refuse to recognize Roh as a legitimate leader.

Still, for the first time in the 39-year history of South Korea, the change of leaders will not come about as the result of a student uprising, a coup or an assassination. Nearly all South Koreans agree, moreover, that some kind of democratic reform is inevitable and that Roh is not a clone of Chun.

When Roh takes over next February, he will be the first full-fledged South Korean president since 1961 to have entered office from a political apprenticeship instead of directly from the military, the path that Park and Chun took.

His task, as he himself has described it, will be to deal with an increasingly rich and educated society of more than 40 million people whose needs have become “too diverse for a centralized government with all of the power concentrated in one man.”

Roh offered that description of what is needed in the way of change in an interview in March, 1985.

Contacts With Public

Since he doffed his four-star army general’s uniform in 1981, Roh has had a series of positions that have brought him into contact with broad segments of the public. Unlike Chun, who has been isolated in the presidential Blue House surrounded by yes men, Roh has been forced to listen to the opinions of others.

But he has not yet engaged in even a single conversation with either of the two most prominent opposition leaders, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam.

Nearly everyone describes his image as that of a moderate, though no one can cite an example of political moderation. To the contrary, Roh is still remembered for his close association with Chun in suppressing protests in Kwangju against Chun’s 1980 takeover. Their action turned the demonstrations into an insurrection and cost at least 194 lives.

The brutal behavior of troops in the southern provincial capital has haunted Chun ever since, depriving his government of legitimacy in the eyes of many South Koreans. A president handpicked by Chun could be expected to have the same legitimacy problem.

Political analysts are unable to cite a single decision or action for which to blame, or credit, Roh. But with Chun holding all power, Roh has not been in a position to prove his mettle.

‘No Visible Achievement’

“So far, Roh has had no visible achievement,” a South Korean source said. “But we can’t blame him. That’s what the system is.”

Entrusted with the task of hammering out a compromise with the opposition to revise the authoritarian 1980 constitution, Roh made no breakthrough. On April 13, Chun declared an end to the attempt to amend the constitution and froze debate on the issue until after the 1988 Olympic Games here in October of next year.

The one thing both sides agree on is that Roh has acted with extreme prudence.

The United States, which has more than 40,000 troops in South Korea, has displayed no evidence of leaning toward Roh, but the next president is expected to establish a friendly relationship with Washington. As the Korean source, a member of the Establishment, put it, “All Korean generals are pro-American.”

Other names have been bandied about as possible dark-horse successors to Chun, but from the beginning Roh has been rated as the front-runner.

Roh, Chun Classmates

Roh and Chun began their association as classmates at a junior high school in the southern city of Taegu. They went to different high schools but came together again as cadets at the Korean Military Academy in 1951. Theirs was the first four-year class at the academy, and they became the brightest of a group called the Taegu Seven Stars.

“We became very close friends,” Roh said in an interview two years ago. He said the two young officers were also together at the Special Warfare School at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Often, they served consecutively in one post or another, and each spent a year in Vietnam as a front-line commander.

As Chun maneuvered for power after the assassination of President Park, Roh sealed their friendship with a decisive move. In December of 1979, as commander of the 9th “White Horse” Infantry Division, Roh sent a regiment of troops to support a mutiny that gave Chun, then a major general, control of the military and set the stage for him to seize power the following year.

Chun returned the favor by naming his old classmate to two key army posts, in succession. First he was commander of the important Capital Security Command and then the Defense Security Command. In the latter post, Roh won his fourth star, then retired to civilian life in 1981.

A Variety of Top Posts

The president moved him through a variety of top government posts: state minister for national security and foreign affairs, minister of sports, minister of home affairs, president of the Olympic Organizing Committee, head of the Korean Amateur Sports Assn. After the elections of February, 1985, Roh entered the National Assembly and not long afterward was named chairman of the ruling party.

As a civilian administrator and politician, Roh stepped out of the obscurity of military life, but his political beliefs are still little known.

A Western diplomat described Roh as well-briefed but cautious, a thumb-twiddler but one who “has learned to employ the vocabulary of political progress.”

Unlike Chun, who monopolizes conversations, Roh is said to have learned to be a listener and willing to hear opposing views.

But in an interview with The Times in 1981, shortly after he left the army, Roh spent 40 minutes replying to a single question--without allowing an interpreter to interrupt. In another interview, in 1985, he did permit some give-and-take.

Chun, by comparison, has rarely met with foreign newsmen and acts far more imperiously with audiences.

Roh once told reporters: “As my second given name, Woo, means foolishness, I often make foolish mistakes. When I do, please tell me.”

Called Less Autocratic

The president-designate is a different man from Chun, the member of the South Korean Establishment said, and added: “He may be less autocratic. Chun acts like the big boss in the army, a field commander type. Roh is more intelligent, more sophisticated.”