Historic Meeting May Ease S. Korea Turmoil : Two Old Foes--President Chun and Opposition Leader Kim--Holding Talks on Ending Crisis

Seeking a solution to turmoil in South Korea, President Chun Doo Hwan today (wednesday) welcomed to the presidential residence a man he once purged from politics, and he promised to release from house arrest the man he blamed in 1980 for instigating a rebellion.

The outcome of Chun’s talks this morning with opposition leader Kim Young Sam was expected to play a key role--but not the only one--in determining prospects for both stability and democracy here.

The dramatic turnabout in political fortunes came in the midst of nationwide unrest that began June 10.

Kim, president of the major opposition Reunification Democratic Party, had vowed to cancel his talks with Chun if the president refused to lift the house arrest of his political ally, Kim Dae Jung, the last opposition candidate to take part in a free and open presidential election, in 1971. But late Tuesday, he agreed to go ahead with the Chun meeting if he was allowed first to meet with his ally and if he was given assurance that Kim’s house arrest would be lifted soon.

Pair Discuss Strategy

The opposition party leader passed through the police cordon around Kim Dae Jung’s house early today, emerging an hour later after discussing strategy for his talks with the president. He was scheduled for a 90-minute session with Chun but asked for more time, an aide said. Chun responded by inviting him to lunch, extending the meeting by at least an hour.

Kim Young Sam said Tuesday that he would demand that Chun lift his edict suspending debate over the issue of revising the former general’s authoritarian 1980 constitution until after Seoul stages the 1988 Summer Olympics. He said he also would insist that Chun allow the people to choose in a referendum what kind of government they want.

Before Chun imposed the freeze on constitutional revision, more than a year of wrangling had failed to resolve a deadlock between the opposition’s demands for a decentralized presidential system with direct elections and Chun’s insistence on a parliamentary system with an indirect election of the nation’s leader, a prime minister.

The present constitution specifies an indirect system to elect a president with authoritarian powers.

Chun, according to ruling party officials, was expected to offer only to remove the ban on constitutional debate and insist that Kim take up the details, as well as other democratic reforms, with Roh Tae Woo, his handpicked successor.

However, Kim said Tuesday that he will continue to refuse to deal with Roh, whose nomination by the ruling Democratic Justice Party on June 10 sparked street demonstrations in major cities across the nation. The Reunification Democratic Party leader said that only Chun has the power to make decisions until he steps down next Feb. 24.

“Simply returning to negotiations on constitutional revision is meaningless,” Kim told reporters Tuesday. “If we are not able to achieve a solution through a dialogue, we should follow the decision of the people by holding a national referendum. In any event, I will see to it that an election based upon the current constitution’s electoral system is not carried out.”

For both of the Kims, the day represented a moment of historic gratification.

As two of the three leading candidates to succeed the late President Park Chung Hee, who was assassinated in 1979, both were swept aside by Chun in his coup in May, 1980.

Chun jailed Kim Dae Jung and then had him convicted of fomenting a rebellion in the provincial capital of Kwangju that began after Kim was imprisoned. A death sentence, commutation to a 20-year prison term, exile in the United States and repeated house arrests--the last of which began April 10--followed for Kim. He is still under a suspended jail sentence on the sedition charges.

Only in 1985 did Chun lift the ban on political activity by Kim Young Sam that he had imposed, without any formal charges. Until today, the two leaders had never met.

Now it is Chun who has been forced to turn to his two enemies for help in curbing unrest.

A secretary to Kim Young Sam said Tuesday that a Chun aide visited Kim’s home to inform him that Chun had agreed to the opposition leader’s preconditions for a meeting--the lifting of Kim Dae Jung’s house arrest and the release of all those arrested since the turmoil began June 10.

As Chun extended his invitation to Kim Young Sam, U.S. Ambassador James R. Lilley met the opposition leader Tuesday. Lilley and Kim agreed that both South Korea and the United States would work to achieve democracy in South Korea, Kim’s aides said.

Kim said he told Lilley that the United States should discourage Chun’s government from introducing tough measures, such as martial law.

Lilley was believed to have asked Kim to adopt a compromising attitude in his meeting with Chun. U.S. officials here have long been exasperated nearly as much by the opposition’s unyielding approach as they have by Chun’s usual hard-nosed policies.

Assistant Secretary of State Gaston J. Sigur, who arrived Tuesday for a two-day visit, met Foreign Minister Choi Kwang Soo and Prime Minister Lee Han Key. The State Department’s top Asia policy-maker urged the Seoul government to resolve the political unrest with dialogue and compromise.

Sigur was expected to meet Chun and Roh, both of the Kims, Lee Man Sup, president of the minor opposition Korea National Party, and Cardinal Stephen Kim, head of the Roman Catholic Church here, before leaving Thursday.

Chun, meanwhile, was to meet later today with the leaders of the two minor opposition parties, a move calculated to avoid bestowing upon Kim Young Sam the status of chief opposition spokesman, Western diplomats said.

The extent to which a Chun-Kim meeting, even a successful one, would affect strife in the streets remained a question.

More than 20,000 students from 25 colleges gathered Tuesday at Yonsei University in Seoul and pledged to join a “grand march for democratization” planned for Friday by a coalition of opposition politicians, clergy and dissident groups.

Kim Young Sam had requested Monday that the march be called off, but the National Coalition for a Democratic Constitution said Tuesday that the march was still scheduled.

The Yonsei protest gathering--the biggest ever at the university--precipitated no violence. Students gathered in an amphitheater to shout “Yankee Go Home!” and burned a huge American flag as well as effigies of Chun and Roh. They accused the Reagan Administration of supporting Chun.

Sporting three dozen shields and helmets seized in street battles from police, students marched through the campus but made no attempt to go out of the main gate, where 6,000 police were waiting.

But police detained 243 students suspected as radicals as they attempted to enter the campus.

Meanwhile, news reports from Pusan said riot police attacked one of four Roman Catholic archdiocese buses carrying home 132 protesters after police had guaranteed them free passage if they ended a six-day sit-in at a Catholic center in South Korea’s second-largest city. Police stopped the bus, fired tear-gas canisters through its windows and then stormed inside, beating the occupants, including two Catholic priests, with night sticks.

Fifteen of the bus passengers, including the two priests, were injured, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Police rounded up the group and forced them to kneel on a cement floor for nearly two hours at a police station before they were released. Police said they had mistaken the bus for one that was believed to be on its way to attack the ruling party’s local headquarters.

Eighty Catholic priests Tuesday launched a sit-in protest over the police raid at the Pusan Catholic Center, the newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported.

National police headquarters, meanwhile, announced that in the 13 days that began June 10, a cumulative total of more than 700,000 “students and citizens” had protested on campuses and on the streets throughout the nation. Police said they detained 12,686 people, of whom 336 were formally charged, while another 596 were still being held for investigations.

They said 189 police stations and government buildings were attacked and 5,493 officers injured. No figures were given on civilian casualties.