S. Korea Opposition Party Accuses Roh

Roh Tae Woo, the ruling party’s presidential candidate, was accused by an opposition party Tuesday of complicity in intimidating the president of South Korea in 1979 when Roh was a major general, of disobeying orders of the defense minister and of torturing the army chief of staff.

The accusations were issued in a 12-point “open inquiry” by the opposition Reunification Democratic Party headed by Kim Young Sam, one of Roh’s rivals in the Dec. 16 election for president.

Kim Jae Kwang, the opposition party’s election chairman, who issued the list of charges, accused Roh of seeking to perpetuate a regime born in a Dec. 12, 1979, mutiny in which Roh and five other generals, led by current President Chun Doo Hwan, arrested Gen. Chung Seung Hwa, army chief of staff.

Roh admitted last week that he, as a major general, had called in “reserves” of his 9th Infantry Division to suppress troops loyal to the army chief of staff. But he insisted that the arrest of his superior was a patriotic act carried out in order to question Gen. Chung about a suspected role in the Oct. 26, 1979, assassination of President Park Chung Hee.

The mutiny gave Chun, then commander of the Defense Security Command, control of the army. He led the army in a coup, taking over the government in May, 1980.

Chung, convicted of hazy charges of obstructing the assassination investigation, surprised Roh and the ruling Democratic Justice Party by joining Kim Young Sam’s party Nov. 9, and condemning both President Chun and Roh, Chun’s handpicked nominee, as “political generals.”

Facts of the 1979 mutiny are being revealed for the first time.

Virtual House Arrest

Kim Jae Kwang charged that Roh and the others seized the army chief of staff without obtaining permission from President Choi Kyu Hah and defied the order of the defense minister to release the army’s top general. He also said Roh ordered the disarming of military police guarding President Choi so as to place the president under “virtual house arrest.” The military police were loyal to the army chief of staff.

Only under intimidation by the six generals, Kim charged, did President Choi relent and sign an order authorizing Gen. Chung’s arrest 10 hours after the chief of staff was seized and taken to an army bunker.

Choi had been prime minister and assumed the presidency when President Park was killed by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

The opposition party official demanded that Roh make clear the details of the fighting that broke out among troops at the Defense Ministry and at least one other location.

No figures have been disclosed on how many people were killed and wounded in the army fighting.

He also demanded a full explanation for alleged “inhumane atrocities including water torture” of the deposed army chief of staff. Roh, he added, must offer “an honest explanation and apology” for the mutiny. “Otherwise, Roh’s legitimacy as a candidate cannot be justified.”

Meanwhile, Kim Young Sam disclosed that he had enlisted another prominent former leader--Kim Jae Chun, who took part in the 1961 coup that brought Park to power and headed the Korean CIA in 1963.

The former Korean CIA chief said he joined the opposition party to restore the honor of the South Korean army “degraded by political generals.”

He said that Roh was not telling the truth when the ruling party nominee said last Thursday that the nation was facing a “crisis” in December, 1979. “Dec. 12 wasn’t a national crisis, at all. It was a planned mutiny by some greedy political generals,” he charged.

Lee Min Sup, the ruling party’s spokesman, called the charges “a replay of black propaganda.”

“The opposition should stop exploiting the Dec. 12 incident, which took place during the course of an investigation of the assassination of the president,” he said.