Chun Agrees to Meet With Leading Foe : Also Expected to OK Constitution Debate to End Korea Crisis

President Chun Doo Hwan agreed today to meet with opposition leader Kim Young Sam in an effort to settle a political crisis and end violent anti-government demonstrations, the chairman of the ruling party said.

Roh Tae Woo, the presidential candidate of Chun’s Democratic Justice Party, also indicated strongly that the party was prepared to reopen debate on constitutional revision--one of the key demands of the opposition. Roh spoke to reporters after a one-hour meeting with Chun.

“I recommended that it was desirable for the president to meet opposition leaders and elders in other fields,” Roh said. “We concluded that it will be better if a comprehensive crisis settlement plan is prepared after getting their sincere views.”

A party spokesman earlier said that the ruling group would need about two or three days to “seek a broader range of view” before announcing a comprehensive package of concessions to opposition demands for democracy, indicating that Chun would seek a meeting with Kim soon.

“The president also accepted my recommendations that maximum considerations be given to opposition demands that the tight house arrest imposed on Kim Dae Jung (another top opposition leader) be lifted and those arrested in the ongoing anti-government protests be freed,” Roh said.

South Korean opposition leaders said these moves must precede any top-level meetings between the government and the opposition.

By mentioning the reopening of constitutional revision talks as a topic of the Roh-Chun meeting, both Roh and a party spokesman implied that Chun would agree, as the spokesman put it, to “resume constitutional revision talks immediately.”

Roh said he has spoken with several opposition leaders and only Kim Young Sam refused to meet with him.

‘My Ardent Hope’

“I relayed my ardent hope that the president meet Mr. Kim Young Sam as part of the proposed contacts with a wide range of leaders and try without any pre-conditions to find a solution to the current crisis,” Roh said.

He said measures including a revision of a basic law on journalism to provide for more freedom of the press were also discussed. He said a detailed crisis settlement plan will be announced in two or three days.

Kim Young Sam met Cardinal Stephen Kim, head of the Roman Catholic Church in South Korea, this morning and said they agreed that the current crisis must be settled in a peaceful way. He said a government decision ending debate on constitutional reform must be retracted as part of the settlement.

“The chairman recommended to the president to meet leaders of political parties and elders in various fields and get their views on the present situation,” a party spokesman said. “Mr. Kim Young Sam is of course included.”

The president is expected to meet separately with Kim Young Sam and other leaders of political parties at the Blue House, the presidential palace, a spokesman for the ruling party said.

“I have been accommodating views from various walks of life,” said Roh, who held weekend talks with officials from his own and two opposition parties. “I will announce my plans early this week.”

Chun, limited by the constitution to one term in office, is due to step down next Feb. 24. Negotiations with opposition parties on how to select his successor broke down in April.

Chun said at the time that constitutional reform would have to wait until after the Seoul Summer Olympics in September, 1988, and called the decision “irrevocable.”

The existing electoral college system virtually assures that Roh, Chun’s handpicked candidate, will succeed him as president. Opposition leaders are calling for direct presidential elections.

Seek Political Solution

On Sunday, South Korean newspapers reported that Roh pledged to a special party caucus that he would seek a political solution to the turmoil that has swept South Korea since the party nominated him June 10 as its candidate to succeed Chun.

“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.”

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 people 205 miles southeast of Seoul.

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

Report in Error

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 and is on a life-support system in a Pusan hospital, authorities said.

Students demonstrating with Lee, who fell from a highway overpass, said he was hit in the head by a tear-gas canister before the fall, but a doctor said the cause of a skull fracture could not be determined.

Kim Tae Ryong, a spokesman for the Reunification Democratic Party, said today that the injuries suffered by Lee Tae Chun and a Yonsei University student, Lee Han Yol, 21, who was hit in the head by a tear-gas canister June 9, were “not isolated incidents.”

Two people, he said, were seriously injured by what he described as police brutality in Kwangju and were now hospitalized.

Using Sticks and Pipes

Police brutality “is driving students and citizens to use sticks and iron pipes to protect themselves,” he charged, adding that the opposition party intends to protest to the government.

Here in Seoul, Sunday’s principal protest took place at the Roman Catholic Myongdong Cathedral, site of some of the most intense earlier demonstrations. About 1,000 students filled the driv1702322553dictatorship” 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.

Visits by U.S. Officials

The ruling party’s efforts to find a peacemaking formula coincided with announced 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 a visit by Edwin Derwinski, under secretary of state for security assistance, science and technology, who flew in Saturday for a five-day visit.

No schedule of appointments for Sigur or Derwinski has been made public, but both were expected to meet South 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 free and 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.”