S. Korea Democracy Seen Still Fragile After Vote : Roh’s Leadership, Military’s Stance in Doubt After Opposition Wins Assembly

In many respects, South Korea’s National Assembly election last week seemed like democracy’s finest hour in a nation long governed by military-backed authoritarian regimes.

A former miner won election over the president of his old coal mining firm.

An anti-government retired general who promised an expose was elected.

A ruling party candidate caught mailing out nearly $120,000 to voters was defeated.

Ten former generals running with the ruling party went down to defeat but so, too, did all but one of the 49 candidates fielded by a radical splinter group of dissidents.

Most of all, the unthinkable became the reality: The opposition, for the first time in 40 years of South Korean constitutional history, won a National Assembly election, three parties emerging with a combined total of 165 seats to 125 for the ruling Democratic Justice Party. Independents won nine. A majority in the 299-seat Assembly is 150.

The State Department professed to be elated.

“This election shows that democracy in Korea is alive and well and getting stronger every day,” spokesman Charles Redman said in Washington.

But few insiders, diplomats or analysts believe that democracy, or even the two-month-old government of President Roh Tae Woo, have taken firm root in South Korea.

Indeed, the ruling party’s failure to win control of the assembly has brought into the open new questions about Roh’s leadership and his support from the ultimate arbiter of South Korean politics: leaders of the 625,000-strong military.

It was overconfidence that brought Tuesday’s surprising setback for the ruling party, which owes its power not to public support but to a coup in 1980 and a split of the opposition in 1987, in the view of Prof. Han Sung Joo of Korea University.

“If the ruling group had been really scared, I think things would have turned out differently,” Han said.

His implication was clear: The election would have been rigged or, at least, not held with the single-member district format that was used for the first time in 17 years.

Han is not the only Korean with little confidence in the government’s genuine commitment to democracy. The three opposition parties that pulled off the victory announced even before voters went to the polls that the election was rigged. Two of the parties planned a post-election rally to protest the fix.

The rally was canceled. But the doubts about the future remain.

“I don’t see any commitment to the process of democracy,” a Western diplomat said. “They (the ruling group) want democracy as one of the trappings of economic development--like tall buildings for the (summer) Olympics.”

All governments since 1972 have won support from only about a third of the voters but kept control over the legislature by such devices as appointing large numbers of representatives or taking the lion’s share of blocks of seats allotted by proportional representation.

This time, though, Roh and the ruling party counted on the opposition’s split to pull them through and did not stack the deck, said Korean and foreign analysts, who before the vote shared the assumption that Roh’s party would win.

Millions of dollars were poured into the 18-day campaign, said a knowledgeable foreign source who requested anonymity. But resentment at eight years of high-handed control by the ruling party under former President Chun Doo Hwan proved stronger than disgust with the splintered opposition for its internecine feuds.

“It looks like the voters went through the process of figuring out which opposition candidate had the best chance to beat the ruling party and voted for him,” a Western diplomat said.

Prof. Han said voters looked not at the new open atmosphere that Roh has brought since he took office Feb. 25, but rather “at the empty half of the glass.”

“They were dissatisfied that more wasn’t done,” he said.

For President Roh, the outcome was a devastating setback.

The southwestern Cholla region rejected his apology for branding demonstrations in Kwangju against Chun’s coup in 1980 an “insurrection” and elected candidates backing opposition leader Kim Dae Jung to all 37 seats there.

The nation’s voters seemed to be saying they had no confidence in Roh’s promises of reform. From the 36.7% voter support for him in December’s presidential election, backing for his party slipped to 34% in Tuesday’s voting for the National Assembly.

His decision to override ruling party objections and accept the opposition’s demand for single-member constituencies, instead of two-member districts in which at least one government candidate was likely to have won, was viewed by the ruling camp as a blunder, not an act of statesmanship.

Roh compounded his trouble, Han said, by nominating his candidates on the basis of loyalty to him, “not on their electability.”

The result was that Roh threw away help from many Chun backers, a significant supporting faction in his own party, one Korean insider said.

Han said “the ruling camp”--particularly the military--will not forget Roh’s handling of the election if the outcome ultimately undermines political stability.

A mood of “play it cool” through the Olympic Games, to be held in Seoul from Sept. 17-Oct. 2, promises to keep a lid on potential explosions until autumn. And the military, its reputation tarnished by its intervention in politics in 1980, is not likely to act again without a pressing cause, foreign and Korean analysts agree.

The military, Han said, “don’t have any other place to go.” But after the Olympics, “If the system becomes completely immobilized so that it affects the economy and national security, then, I think they certainly would have second thoughts.”

Han added that he does not expect that kind of turmoil.

A Korean insider, however, was not so optimistic. He flatly predicted trouble after the Olympics.

There are doubts about Roh’s ability to contain demands for a full airing of the army suppression of the Kwangju uprising in which at least 194 people were killed, and to protect Chun, his mentor.

The new National Assembly, which no longer can be dissolved, now has the power to summon officials and carry out investigations of “state affairs.”

Full investigations of either Kwangju or Chun would strike at Roh’s own roots--in the coup he supported and in the ruling Establishment that Chun and he set up in 1980.

Worse yet, no longer is the assembly a safe venue for a vote of confidence that Roh pledged to seek from the people after the Olympics.

“The government is in a very difficult situation,” Han said. A member of the Establishment said the three opposition parties “can do anything they want if they can agree on it.”

The Rev. Kim Kwan Suk, honorary president of the Christian Broadcasting System, questioned Roh’s leadership ability. He also noted what he called surprising political instability in the apparent conflict between Chun’s and Roh’s forces in a scandal involving Chun’s brother, who is under arrest on embezzlement charges, and in nominations Chun approved for the National Assembly election.

“Roh’s leadership is disappointing,” Prof. Han said. “His administration is drifting. There are many issues he hasn’t even started addressing.”

High on the list of such issues are U.S. demands that South Korea open its markets and pay a larger part of the cost of maintaining 43,000 American troops here--issues Roh ignored in public statements in his presidential campaign and since taking office.

Roh’s administration “seems (to have made) no real effort to understand what should be done and how to do it in both trade and security,” Han said.

Both he and diplomats here predicted that the opposition-dominated legislature would “adversely affect U.S.-Korea relations.”

“Every major issue (between the two countries) is going to be debated in the Assembly . . . by a lot of guys who know nothing about the issues,” one diplomat said, noting that two-thirds of the new assembly members were elected Tuesday for the first time.

Han and others criticized Roh for failing to get a grasp on issues. Han said the president has surrounded himself with “protocol men.” One source called Roh’s aides “idealists with no idea of how to carry out politics.”

“Roh’s been a nice guy,” Han said. “He carries his own briefcase. He holds meetings at round tables. But the country needs strong leadership, . . . especially if it’s going to have democracy.”

Still, Roh may be the kind of man needed to lead the country now that dialogue and compromise between ruling and opposition parties have become necessary. Those commodities have not been hallmarks of South Korean politics under a succession of governments that had no need to deal for opposition votes.