Chun’s Foes Demand Ouster of Korean Cabinet

Both top opposition leaders Thursday demanded the resignation of South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan’s three-day-old Cabinet, saying that it will not ensure honest presidential elections later this year, and the appointment of a neutral caretaker body in its place.

Speaking to reporters after a breakfast meeting with his fellow opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, Kim Young Sam said, “A fair election cannot be expected under the new Cabinet. Therefore, the current Cabinet ministers should be replaced as soon as possible by neutral figures from the ruling and opposition sides, from the dissident groups and even the independents.”

2 Kims Meet

Specifically, Kim Dae Jung cited Chun’s choice of the new prime minister, Kim Chung Yul, whom he has alleged was involved, as defense minister to President Syngman Rhee, in rigging presidential elections in 1960. The new prime minister’s aides have loudly denied the charge.

Prime Minister Kim personally paid a visit to Kim Young Sam at the opposition Reunification Democratic Party headquarters Thursday afternoon to try to blunt the criticism, declaring: “Your party demands a caretaker Cabinet, but it is only necessary in the case of anarchy. At present, a government does exist, so your demand is inappropriate.”

Seconds after the prime minister left, though, the opposition party’s vice president, Lee Yong Hee, shouted angrily, “That man masterminded the rigged elections on March 15, 1960. How can we expect a fair election from him?”

United though they are on the need for the Cabinet to resign, the two opposition leaders could not agree during their breakfast meeting on what date the opposition should demand for holding the presidential election, which Chun has promised before the end of the year. Reporting on that lack of agreement today, the government-owned media described with relish what it called a “standoff” within an increasingly divided opposition.

The spokesman of the ruling Democratic Justice Party, Lee Min Sup, also accused the opposition leaders Thursday of fueling a new round of social unrest in the country by playing up to the people’s “heightened expectations” and the “mounting wave of demands from the people” since the government’s announcement of planned reforms.

“In consideration of their demands,” Lee said, the ruling party’s officials “doubt that they (the opposition) have the will to safeguard and develop the free democratic system.”

The two opposition leaders have both publicly vowed several times that their Reunification Democratic Party will present a single candidate to challenge the candidate and chairman of the ruling party, Roh Tae Woo. Kim Dae Jung was the opposition’s candidate in 1971, the last time free and open elections were held in South Korea.

Handpicked by Chun

Roh was handpicked by President Chun as the party candidate for president last month. The decision touched off the worst civil unrest in recent South Korean history.

Chun fired several Cabinet ministers on Monday in a move that presidential aides said was meant to reduce partisan politics in the government during the election campaign period. Among the new appointees, though, were some of Chun’s closest friends and political advisers.

South Korean political analysts and Western diplomats based in Seoul say the principal election strategy of Chun’s Democratic Justice Party will be to try to divide the two Kims and split the opposition vote.

Chun’s ruling party, though, was largely preoccupied Thursday with all-day meetings on disaster control, trying to allocate and distribute government aid to thousands of victims of Typhoon Thelma, which devastated the southern regions of the country Wednesday.

Disaster relief authorities in Seoul said today that at least 55 persons had been killed, 110 were missing and 6,000 homeless after the typhoon demolished houses in the southern port of Pusan, sunk dozens of boats and buried entire families under mud slides.

In Seoul, where there was only a heavy rain and strong winds, the ruling party sent legislators from the heavily affected areas back to their home districts to assist the storm victims and hand out government aid money.

Meanwhile, 22 South Korean Anglican priests ended a weeklong hunger strike. The priests were protesting a police raid on Seoul’s Anglican Cathedral during last week’s funeral service for a student killed by a police tear gas canister.