Analysis : Leader ‘Born to Wear Purple’ Feels Unappreciated : For Chun, It’s Bittersweet Parting

Eight years ago, the American commander in South Korea called Chun Doo Hwan a man who believed that he was “born to wear the purple.” But today, the former general did what no other leader of his country has ever done: leave office voluntarily.

For Chun, 57, who has publicly acknowledged being an unappreciated, unpopular president, it was a bittersweet parting. For most of the 42 million South Korean people, it brought a collective sigh of relief.

Wednesday was his last day in office, and Chun spent it pinning medals on South Korean diplomats and Korean Air officials who helped bring to Seoul a North Korean saboteur who had blown up a jet with 115 aboard Nov. 29. He also presided over his last Cabinet meeting and visited the National Cemetery to pay tribute to Koreans who sacrificed their lives for the nation.

Cites Economic Progress

In the evening, at a farewell banquet from which all but a handful of reporters were excluded, Chun said he did “not have any regret about my departure.” He claimed as his chief accomplishment the transformation of South Korea’s economy from stagnation and inflation in 1980 to boom and stability in 1988.

“The legendary stability and growth of our dynamic economy, which has generated balance of payments surpluses, is considered a miracle by the rest of the world,” he boasted.

Referring to the staging of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul next September, he declared that “we are no longer a weak nation in the backwaters of world history.”

He also added a xenophobic note, saying he had come to realize that Koreans “are superior to any other people.”

Earlier, he made it clear that he was hurt, even angered that South Koreans did not appreciate the fulfillment of his pledge to step down at the end of a constitutionally limited, single term of seven years. The reigns of all other South Korean leaders since the repub1818845991with upheaval or violence.

‘Dug Up Other Issues’

“Not many people believed my promise,” Chun complained to South Korean reporters over the weekend. “And when it became clear that I was going to step down, many people dug up other issues and criticized me rather than viewing my act positively.

“I was really saddened--and angered.”

Among the early skeptics was now-retired Gen. John A. Wickham, commander of U.S. Forces and the U.N. Command in South Korea.

In an August, 1980, interview shortly before Chun ended junta control and assumed official leadership, Wickham, who knew Chun better than did any other U.S. official at the time, declared that Chun “feels he’s born to wear the purple” and predicted that he would “wear it right into the grave.”

Wickham was half right. Chun did assume the airs of royalty that have traditionally surrounded rulers in this Confucian nation. He remained a distant and often forbidding presence. Scandals involving relatives helped alienate him from his people. But unlike his predecessors, Chun chose not to make his reign a lifetime proposition.

Chun’s trouble, diplomats here said, stemmed from the former general’s belief that merely stepping down was the only thing the South Korean people expected of him in the way of loosening the screws of control of a rapidly diversifying society.

In that expectation, Chun was wrong, as proven by massive nationwide demonstrations last June against his plans to anoint a successor through a rubber-stamp electoral system.

“My sincere intention was misunderstood by the people,” he complained.

Any other leader during whose rule the economy had scored the gains that Korea’s did under Chun would be leaving office as a near-hero. The gross national product doubled--to $118 billion. A chronic trade deficit was replaced with a burgeoning surplus. Rampant inflation disappeared. An expanding foreign debt turned around to the point that South Korea now expects to become a creditor nation by 1991.

However, Chun departs under a cloud of scorn--even hatred--among broad segments of his people. His future is uncertain, filled, some say, with personal danger.

Although earlier speculation that Chun would attempt to hang on to power after stepping down has largely vanished, fears persist that he might be assassinated in retirement.

Many South Koreans, especially from the southwest Cholla region, will never forgive him for riding to power over the bodies of 194 people, by official count, in a carnage that troops spurred in Kwangju while repressing demonstrations against his May, 1980, coup.

Blamed Critic

The Kwangju incident, which Chun for years blamed on his chief critic, Kim Dae Jung, a prominent opposition leader, dogged Chun throughout his rule, depriving him of legitimacy. It “kept him inevitably defensive in dealing with political dissension,” wrote Kim Myong Sik, political editor of the Korea Times.

Any physical attack upon Chun now, however, both Western diplomats and Korean analysts agree, could wipe out the contribution that he has made to Korean democracy in turning over the reins to Roh Tae Woo, a friend and former Korean Military Academy classmate. Roh won a four-way race Dec. 16 in a direct presidential election that the opposition had demanded in place of Chun’s rubber-stamp electoral college.

“Korea must establish a tradition of allowing retired rulers to live with peace of mind if rulers are going to step down voluntarily,” one Western diplomat said.

Chun’s disappointment at lack of appreciation from his people also sprang from his view that he had no choice but to assume power in the aftermath of the 1979 assassination of President Park Chung Hee.

“The nation was on the brink of collapse in 1980,” he said over the weekend. He even contended that he was forced “involuntarily” to take power.

‘Unavoidable Course’

On Wednesday night, Chun said he came to power “in accordance with an unavoidable course of events” that flowed from a power vacuum and “a national security crisis.”

But that was not how the South Korean people saw it. To a majority, it was a power grab.

Chun’s promise to step down after one term, said Prof. Han Sung Joo of Korea University, “was far from adequate to mollify the anger and frustration of those who saw their democratic aspirations . . . nullified by a group of ambitious military officers.”

In 1980, there was a consensus in Park’s old ruling party and the opposition that the country should chose a new leader through a direct presidential election and not through an electoral college. Moreover, nearly all the needed reforms were in place when Chun sabotaged the process by staging his coup, disbanding all political parties and purging the leading candidates for president.

“There was nothing inevitable” that brought Chun to power in 1980, Han said. “. . . Due process was ignored and popular aspirations betrayed.”

Kim Jong Pil, a strongman of the 1961-79 Park era who was purged in 1980 as the ruling party leader, charged that South Korea finally did late last year what it could and should have done in 1980: elect a new president in a direct popular vote. Chun’s years in office, he said, were a “waste of time.”

The Rev. Kim Kwan Suk, honorary president of the Christian Broadcasting System, disagreed.

‘Learned Through Struggles’

The eight years of Chun’s rule “were a very valuable experience for the Korean people,” he said. “Because we have been through such an ordeal under a repressive regime, we understand now how valuable freedom is. We also learned through our struggles the power we hold.”

To Chun, adopting policies beneficial to the nation, rather than yielding to popular causes, led the people to view him as “stern and authoritarian,” he told reporters.

“It is true I set a strict example of maintaining law and order and stability. The public’s impression of me may be due to the way I carried out those tasks,” he said.

“I think I was destined from the beginning to be an unpopular president.”

Despite his disavowal of seeking popularity, Chun carried out a series of reforms that, indeed, were designed to curry public favor.

He ended a midnight-to-4 a.m. curfew that had been maintained for more than three decades. He abolished a requirement that pupils wear military-style school uniforms. And he approved color television broadcasting and professional baseball, both of which Park had forbidden. He also doubled the number of students permitted to enter college.

Yet, none of these moves won him gratitude or popularity.

Koreans, the Rev. Kim said, “believed such measures should have been promoted in a democratic way, not handed down from the top.”

Now, ironically, if the promises of Chun’s successor are carried out, South Korea stands on the brink of the best democracy it has ever had--a change to which Chun, in a back-handed way, made a major contribution.

‘Blessing in Disguise’

“That Chun was not a good politician,” said Prof. Han, “was perhaps a blessing in disguise for South Korean democracy. It made authoritarian rule vulnerable and democratic movement stronger.”

Chun left office making one prediction that almost certainly will come true.

“Our country will join the ranks of the advanced nations of the world in four or five years,” he said. “Before long, the entire people will enjoy a quality of life and a living standard the same as that of the people of advanced nations today.”

That the balding former general did not stand in the way of that destiny ultimately may give Chun his place in Korean history.