Roh Pledges to Resolve Korea Crisis : Chun’s Nominee May Reopen Talks With Opposition

Roh Tae Woo, chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, pledged Sunday to seek a political solution to turmoil that has swept South Korea since the party nominated him as its candidate to succeed President Chun Doo Hwan.

Korean newspapers and the government-owned Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) reported that Roh, with Chun’s approval, was expected to announce soon the party’s willingness to reopen talks with the opposition on revising the authoritarian constitution that Chun imposed in 1980 during a period of martial law.

This morning, however, KBS reported that Chun wanted more time “to seek a broader range of views” before any announcement is made.

Roh made his pledge to a party caucus called Sunday to draft recommendations which the party chairman made to Chun today in an move to halt public protests by tens of thousands of citizens, mainly students, who are demanding democracy for this country and an end to military-dominated rule.

‘Prosperous Achievements’

“Either all of us fall off a cliff together or all of us continue with our prosperous achievements,” Roh told the caucus. “I will see to it that the current situation is solved politically.”

Earlier, both Chun and Roh had described as “irreversible” an order by Chun suspending talks on constitutional revision until after the 1988 Summer Olympics Games that are scheduled to be held in Seoul.

And while newspapers and the Korean Broadcasting System were reporting Sunday that the government and its party might agree to end that suspension, they also reported that no compromise will be offered to accommodate a demand by the opposition for direct presidential elections.

Limited to One Term

Chun, limited by the constitution to one term in office, is due to step down next Feb. 24. The constitution provides for an indirect election, by electoral college, to pick his successor, and that election is scheduled for the end of this year.

The opposition rejects the indirect system, charging that Chun is in a position to manipulate it in favor of Roh, his hand-picked candidate to be the next president. And if the opposition, especially the hard-line Reunification Democratic Party, rejects whatever peacemaking proposals Roh eventually announces, the danger of continued turmoil, followed by a government crackdown, is likely to grow.

A hint of the opposition’s attitude came after Sunday’s ruling party caucus when Kim Young Sam, president of the Reunification Democratic Party, declared that “the ruling party still has not gotten the message of what the people really want.”

Threatens Tougher Measures

Prime Minister Lee Han Key warned in a Friday television broadcast to the nation that continued turmoil, which has confronted South Korea’s military-backed rulers with their greatest challenge to date, would make it “inevitable” for the government to implement an “extraordinary decision” to cope with the unrest.

He gave no details, but his statement implied that measures considerably stronger than the riot-control steps undertaken so far, principally involving the use of unarmed police and tear gas, could be anticipated.

Quiet returned to most of the nation Sunday. The only reported street clashes occurred on the island of Cheju and in the cities of Iri, Kwangju and, once again, in Pusan, a port city of 3.5 million population 205 miles southeast of Seoul.

Sunday’s clashes in Pusan, involving several thousand students, were far milder than earlier demonstrations there, several of which turned into riots.

Because of a translation error, The Times mistakenly reported in its Sunday editions that Lee Tae Chun, 28, a trading company employee, died in Pusan of injuries suffered while demonstrating against the government. Lee, critically injured Thursday, remains in a coma on a life support system in a Pusan hospital, authorities said.

Cathedral Demonstration

Here in Seoul, Sunday’s principal protest took place at the Myongdong Roman Catholic Cathedral, site of some of the most intense earlier demonstrations. About 1,000 students filled the driveway leading to the cathedral plaza, sang anti-government songs and chanted slogans demanding an end to “military dictatorship” and restoration of democracy.

Police, out in heavy numbers in the Myongdong section, fired only one barrage of pepper gas, a virulent form of tear gas, when some of the students tried to march into the street from the cathedral grounds.

The ruling party’s efforts to find a peacemaking formula coincided with visits here by two officials of the United States, which for the first time Friday explicitly urged Chun to reopen talks with the opposition on constitutional revision.

Gaston J. Sigur, assistant secretary of state for East Asia-Pacific affairs, is due here Tuesday for what is described as a visit of “a day or a day and a half” on the heels of Edwin Derwinski, undersecretary of state for security assistance, science and technology, who flew in Saturday for a five-day visit.

No Appointment Schedule

No schedule of appointments for Sigur or Derwinski has been made public, but both were expected to meet Korean politicians.

Sigur, who has been traveling with Secretary of State George P. Shultz on a visit to Southeast Asia and Australia, said Sunday that the United States will press the South Korean government to resume negotiations with opposition leaders and hold open elections.

Appearing from Sydney, Australia, on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” Sigur declared, “We’ve got to have in Korea a reopening of the discussions and the negotiations between the various political elements, the leadership of those elements from the government and the major opposition party.”

Central to U.S. policy, he said, is the belief that “the way to broaden the political base in Korea and to move the country toward democracy--which every political leader says he supports”--is to get everybody talking to each other again.

Sigur also said he will press for other measures, including freedom of the press, broadcast and assembly and freedom for political prisoners.