Chun, Foes Strive for a Compromise : Opposition Calls for Cancellation of Peace March

President Chun Doo Hwan and his opponents appeared Monday to be moving toward a compromise that would put an end to almost two weeks of public disorder.

Top opposition leader Kim Young Sam urged cancellation of an anti-government “peace march” tentatively scheduled for Friday, and Chun said he wants to halt the turmoil without resorting to repressive measures harsher than those employed so far to cope with 13 days of street violence.

Seoul was relatively calm Monday, although scattered violence continued in at least 10 provincial cities.

Meets With Ex-Presidents

Chun made his statement after meeting with South Korea’s two living ex-presidents, Yun Po Sun, 89, and Choi Kyu Hah, 67. Those talks were the beginning of a series he promised earlier in the day to hold with “opposition leaders and elder statesmen,” including Kim, president of the hard-line opposition Reunification Democratic Party.

Yun was the nation’s ceremonial president when the late President Park Chung Hee staged a coup in 1961, and Choi was the interim president after Park was assassinated in 1979.

“If at all possible, it’s better not to take any emergency action,” a Chun spokesman quoted the president as telling Yun and Choi, clearly referring to drastic repression. “It’s better to solve current chaos without introducing stern actions.”

Chun also appealed to the public to reject moves leading to social instability that might halt progress toward economic prosperity and make it harder for the nation to deal with what the regime sees as a continuing threat from Communist North Korea and to stage successfully the 1988 Summer Olympics Games.

Kim, whose appeals for a meeting with Chun had been rejected for more than a year, was offered an appointment with the president after the latter held talks with Roh Tae Woo, chairman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party and Chun’s personal choice to be South Korea’s next president.

If it is held, the Chun-Kim meeting would be the first between the former army general and the opposition leader he barred from politics from 1980 to 1985. Any agreement between them, or a falling out, was seen here as likely to determine whether or not calm will soon return to South Korea.

No date for their meeting was set, and Chun failed to say whether he was willing to meet Kim one-on-one rather than as a member of a group of leaders of opposition parties. Kim has insisted on a one-on-one meeting.

Initial Reaction Favorable

Kim’s initial reaction was favorable, reflected by his announcement that he would ask a newly formed coalition of dissidents, clergymen, and opposition politicians to call off a “peace march for democratization” that was tentatively set for Friday.

Roh said that Chun has agreed to meet Kim’s preconditions for a top-level meeting. These are that all persons arrested since protest demonstrations erupted June 10 be freed and that Kim Dae Jung, another major opposition leader, be released from house arrest, a situation under which he has already been confined for 74 days.

Although no announcement was made on the subject by the American Embassy here, a top diplomat, Thomas P. H. Dunlop, acting deputy chief of mission, met with Kim Dae Jung at his home for 70 minutes Monday. Aides to Kim Dae Jung, the opposition’s presidential candidate in the nation’s last free and open election in 1971, said they discussed “domestic political affairs.”

Chun’s offer to meet with Kim and strong indications that the president is ready to rescind his April 13 ban on talks aimed at revising the constitution were the regime’s first steps toward changes that could end the turmoil, which broke out in cities across the country after Roh was anointed June 10 as the ruling party’s nominee to succeed Chun.

Only last Friday, the government threatened to take “emergency actions” to put down the protests against continuation of military-dominated rule, something that Roh’s nomination symbolized to broad segments of South Korea’s 42 million people.

Chun and Roh are both former army generals who collaborated in a 1979 military mutiny and a 1980 coup that put Chun in power.

Under Chun’s authoritarian 1980 constitution, a new president is scheduled to be chosen in an indirect election, involving an electoral college, at the end of this year. The opposition rejects that scenario as being rigged to ensure a victory for Roh. Chun’s term ends next Feb. 24.

After his meeting with Chun, Roh also mentioned a willingness by the regime to modify a repressive press law and take other steps to “accelerate the nation’s democratic development.” He mentioned no specifics, however.

These political moves all came on the fourth straight day of relative calm in this capital of 10 million people. However, on the streets of 10 provincial cities and on 65 college campuses, including campuses in Seoul, disturbances continued.

At least 6,000 students clashed with police at Seoul’s Yonsei University, where a sophomore was critically injured June 9 by a tear-gas canister fired by police and remains in a coma in the university’s hospital. Women students in the Yonsei nursing school treated students injured in clashes that broke out when students hurled firebombs and rocks at police.

Students told a photographer they had prepared more than 2,500 firebombs for use against police in an attempt to break out of the campus onto the streets.

“We’re going to make it today,” one student leader said.

Riot police fired barrages of pepper gas, a virulent form of tear gas, and hurled stones back at the students, who taunted police by shouting, “Throw apple bombs at us! Don’t throw rocks!”

“Apple bomb” is student slang for round tear-gas hand grenades, as opposed to the cylindrical tear-gas canisters that police fire from shotgun-like launchers.

Clashes continued for more than 2 1/2 hours.

With government-ordered closures now in force at 90 of the nation’s 103 colleges and universities, new on-campus demonstrations were launched to oppose implementation of early summer vacations, the newspaper Hankook Ilbo reported.

Kim Chong Ha, president of the Korean Olympic Committee, expressed “deep concern” Monday that the continuing unrest might bring “disgrace to the nation in front of the world if we would be unable to stage the Games.”

In the first such statement by a South Korean, Kim Chong Ha described the situation as “so grave that we are worried they might leave an irremovable blot on the . . . history of the nation.”

Moves toward reopening a dialogue between the government and the opposition--which the United States has been urging for months--came on the eve of the scheduled arrival here today of Assistant Secretary Gaston J. Sigur, the State Department’s top Asia policy-maker.

But the moves stopped far short of a breakthrough.

No Mention of Demand

Neither Chun nor Roh said a word about the opposition’s demand that Chun’s 1980 constitution be rewritten to provide this country with a decentralized, presidential form of government, with the president chosen in direct, popular balloting. Chun’s military-backed administration has rejected that demand since the outset of talks on constitutional reform more than a year ago.

Chun has insisted on a parliamentary form of government, with the chief executive, a prime minister, being picked by members of a popularly elected National Assembly.

Nor was there any specific response to opposition proposals to let the public decide by referendum which of the two forms of government they prefer.

Talks Won’t End Protests

Urging the government to carry out such a referendum, opposition leader Kim Young Sam warned Monday that “resumption of talks on constitutional reform alone will not automatically put an end to nationwide protests.”

“The people should be given the opportunity to select the form of government they want,” he declared.

Roh told reporters that he hoped to come up with an overall package of proposed reforms “within the next two to three days.”

Roh and Kim met separately Monday with Cardinal Stephen Kim, archbishop of Seoul and spiritual leader of South Korea’s 2 million Roman Catholics. Both asked the archbishop to help solve the current turmoil, and both leaders assured him that they are committed to finding a peaceful solution through talks.

On June 15, the archbishop had publicly urged the government to rescind Chun’s order freezing debate on constitutional revision until after the Olympics, scheduled for September, 1988.

Meanwhile, police arrested Ho Chong Gil, 30, an ex-convict, for killing a riot policeman--the only fatality in the turmoil to date--by driving a hijacked bus over him in Taejon last Friday. Earlier, police had suspected student protesters of seizing the bus and ramming into a line of policemen, killing Ho and injuring two others.

More than 500 policemen have been injured since disturbances began June 10. No figures for injuries among protesters were available.