Seoul Targets ‘Radical Left’ Amid Reforms

President Chun Doo Hwan is stepping up a campaign against “radical leftists” that is tightening the screws on freedom of speech and thought even as censorship of the press, movies, books and songs is being eased.

Despite a July 1 promise to release all political prisoners, the jails are filling up again. As many as 1,000 people are being held for what human rights advocates say are political reasons.

“Four or five people are being arrested every day,” said the Rev. Kim Dong Won, the chairman of the human rights commission of the Korea National Council of Churches.

Since Chun’s government stunned the nation by promising to end authoritarian rule and transform South Korea into a democracy, press controls have been loosened, censorship of movies has ended, a ban has been removed from 186 of the 325 songs that were outlawed and more than 1,000 forbidden books have been cleared for publication.

But, at the same time, Koreans have been arrested for reading or studying books and other materials the government considers leftist. Others have been jailed for urging voters to boycott a scheduled Oct. 27 referendum on a revised constitution.

8,000 Under Surveillance

Neither Chun nor any other official has attempted to define the magnitude of the threat they profess to see from the left. Police officials said last month that they had placed about 8,000 “leftist radicals” under surveillance. Some experts estimate that, in all, no more than 10,000 people are involved.

But almost every day Chun, his designated successor, Roh Tae Woo, and others speak out in urgent tones about what they insist is a growing threat to democracy.

The campaign is beginning to shape up as a disguised attack on Kim Dae Jung, a leading opposition aspirant for the presidency.

Because the radicals’ ideas, including anti-Americanism, have spread far beyond their limited ranks to broader segments of the populace, the middle class has become concerned. Even critics of the government acknowledge this. As a result, scholars say, the anti-left campaign may influence middle-class voters in the presidential election, which is scheduled to take place by Dec. 20.

Prime Minister Kim Chung Yul announced the crackdown on the left on Aug. 27, warning that “the voice of seditious, subversive forces is growing, while that of sound conservative groups is diminishing.”

Justice Minister Chung Hae Chang warned at the time that the radicals would undertake a campaign of violence in late September. The violence did not materialize, but the anti-leftist campaign continues.

Pro-Communist Brand

In a speech on Oct. 1--South Korea’s Armed Forces Day--President Chun denounced “prominent citizens” who “take sides with clearly recognizable pro-Communist groups out of political expediency.”

Government officials have repeatedly branded as pro-Communist many of the civic groups that support opposition leader Kim Dae Jung. Roh, in campaign speeches, has echoed the charge.

Politicians who exercised power under the late President Park Chung Hee, along with retired military officers, have joined in.

A Park-era official, Chung Il Kwon--in announcing that he and about 3,000 others will join in an Alliance to Protect Freedom and Save the Nation--said the other day: “Riding the wave of democratization, leftist thought is growing in society. Some persons are even siding with North Korean propaganda lies. We should eradicate any leftist movement infiltrating this democratization trend.”

Chung and many of his supporters fled North Korea after it went communist when Korea was partitioned after World War II. Their hatred of communism is based on an experience that the great majority of South Koreans never had, for about 70% of the population was born long afterward, following the Korean War of 1950-53.

The Korea Times has raised questions about Chung’s group, citing “misgivings about its leadership,” which is dominated by former generals, and “the timing of its formation” as the December election approaches.

Even members of President Chun’s Democratic Justice Party have criticized the anti-left campaign. Last Tuesday, Chung Soon Dok, a ruling party member in the National Assembly, warned that any crackdown failing to offer “a clear distinction under law as to who falls into the category of ‘leftist’ . . . will cause social chaos and harm national reconciliation.”

The next day another party member, Rep. Pong Du Wan, was even more critical.

“For some time,” Pong said on the Assembly floor, “the government has been blowing up the slightest anti-government slogan into leftism, thereby creating a sense of distrust among the people toward government announcements.”

Pong cited the case of Woo Sang Ho, president of the student body at Yonsei University, who was arrested because of remarks he made in an interview with the New York Times. Woo, he said, “had a reputation of being fairly moderate, but the government accused him of being a leftist.”

Pong said: “We cannot go along with the government’s attitude of stamping out intellectual and progressive ideas as pro-Communist.”

But party executives continue to defend the campaign. Rep. Kim Yong Hio, director of the ruling party’s Office of Ideological Studies, said at a recent seminar: “Foreigners wonder why the Korean government is so intolerant of leftists. That is because Korean radical-leftists are different from leftists in Western society. They are all revolutionaries.”

He went on to say that workers, farmers and the urban poor, led by students, are expected to carry out a revolution, establish a “democracy of the masses” and proceed to unify Korea on the basis of ideology fixed by Communist North Korea.

“Hatred, violence and vengeance” is their creed, he charged.

Ahn Byung Joon, a professor at Yonsei University, said in a seminar paper that extreme radicals espouse the cause of the masses “but include in this category only poor workers, peasants and intellectuals, while excluding the middle class.”

He said that “extreme nationalism and anti-American sentiment” dominate the thinking of the radicals, who blame the United States for dividing Korea after World War II and maintaining the division.

A widespread popular desire for reunification with the north appears to be developing, despite the regimented Communist society that has been built up there over the years.

The Rev. Kim Kwan Suk, former president of the Christian Broadcasting System, said the trend among students toward reunification at any price has taken root “in reaction to the monolithic anti-communism definition of national security.”

Opening the unification debate to the public, he said, will reduce “strong anti-government trends.”

Emerged in Mid-1970s

Assemblyman Kim and others agreed that radicalism emerged noticeably in the mid-1970s, when President Park banned any discussion of the authoritarian constitution he imposed in 1972 under martial law. It accelerated after President Chun seized power in May, 1980. Violence, including arson and the seizure and destruction of public buildings, started about four years ago.

Rep. Kim fixed no blame for the radicalism, but Rep. Lee Chul Seung of the splinter opposition New Korea Democratic Party put the blame on President Chun.

“The ruling camp has used anti-communism as a pretext to justify holding power,” he said. “It created an anti-government tendency in which anti-communism lost favor, and even today shows no sign of repentance at what it has done to our country.”

Prof. Youn Joon Suk of Chungang University said that no more than 1% of the students on the most radicalized campuses fall into the category of hard-core leftists prone to violence. He estimated their nationwide strength at about 7,000.

“They don’t have much influence over the general public, but they are very violent,” he said.

Youn added that activists often threaten opinion-makers. He said that he personally had received many calls in response to articles he had written for newspapers. He said some callers threatened to kill him.

“Because of such threats, I have stopped writing about delicate issues,” he said. “I have lost my freedom of speech. The lack of freedom I feel is more from these people than from the government.”

Youn complained that the National Security Law defines Communists as “those who are sympathetic to North Korea, or make demands similar to those of North Korea.”

“As a result,” he said, “liberals opposing the authoritarian regime are often stigmatized as leftists or Communists.”

‘Inevitable Product of Change’

“Radicalism is an inevitable product of rapid social change,” Yonsei University’s Ahn wrote recently. But he warned that “the more leftist the radicals become, the more rightist a reaction they may create.”

Clergyman Kim described the problem the other way around, saying that “when you have an ultra-right, there is always an ultra-left.”

“If Korea achieves substantial democracy,” he said, “I don’t think there will be a danger from the ultra-left. But if Korea continues to be dominated by the ultra-right, the ultra-left will continue to exist, threatening national security.”

He acknowledged that South Korea faces a danger from “disguised Communists acting in the democratic movement.” But he said he is not concerned that memories of the Korean War are fading, with a subsequent decline in the fear of communism.

“As we develop a strong self-consciousness as democratic citizens,” he said, “the people will reject communism out of conviction, not out of fear. If you encourage fear of communism, that means you are controlling society by fear.”

Kim Young Sam draws a massive crowd to a rally in Pusan. Page 10.