Korean Students Cry Reunification as Route to Reform

South Korea today has the first popularly elected president in nearly two decades and a National Assembly dominated by the opposition parties for the first time in its history. Meanwhile, student protests and anti-Americanism show no signs of receding under the new banner of reunification. Although generally viewed as replacing democracy as the new goal of protest politics, reunification represents a tactical shift.

Several factors are at work here. First, the Roh Tae Woo regime has not vigorously sought democratic reforms. For example, although some prisoners of conscience have been released, an estimated 1,000 political prisoners still languish in jail. Regarding the 1980 Kwangju massacre and widespread corruption during the Chun Doo Hwan era, Roh is insistent on a limited investigation that would spare the unpopular Chun of any culpability.

If the Roh regime’s democratic will is open to skepticism, the opposition has had its own failings. Preoccupied with the wrongs of the Chun era, the opposition parties are yet to reveal their blueprints for the future. As seasoned veterans of confrontational politics, they have always been concrete and detailed in criticizing the dictatorship but highly ambiguous and rhetorical in articulating their own programs and visions.

Further, in the presidential election last December the fractured opposition produced the Roh regime, considered by students to be a mere extension of the Chun dictatorship. Blinded by their ambitions, the opposition leaders have left the hope for democracy mortally wounded. Since their unexpectedly strong showing in the National Assembly election, they have failed to present concrete, credible democratic alternatives to the Roh regime.

There are no immediate prospects for restoring democracy through constitutional or electoral approaches; the Korean people are too regionally polarized, and the opposition remains irreparably divided and lacks vision. Not surprisingly, the students continue to adopt streets as their principal forum, repudiating the opposition parties’ exhortations to use the National Assembly to debate and resolve issues.

As a long-term solution to restoring democracy, students have turned to reunification. Progress toward reunification would reduce tension, which in turn would deflate the size and influence of the military and eliminate anti-communism as a potent rationale for repression. Only then can one expect reforms of the laws and structures like the National Security Act and the National Security Planning Board, the principal means of repression.

With reunification emerging as the new focus of the student movement, anti-Americanism enters a new phase: rejection of the United States. In the past, South Koreans criticized Washington in the hope of drawing its attention to their democratic aspirations. Now America is blamed for the division of the peninsula, and the removal of U.S. troops and influence is presented as the key to reunification.

Student protests are no longer simply anti-government but anti-Establishment. Their anti-Americanism goes beyond criticizing Washington’s support for the dictatorship and aims to rid the peninsula of the United States. Finally, the student movement in the past worked to pressure the regime to accept democratic reforms; now it addresses the reunification issue, thus directly stepping onto the territory of the National Security Act and touching the raw nerves of the ever-dangerous military.

Hoping to appease the recalcitrant students and secure successful Olympics, Roh has proposed a conciliatory approach to relations between the two Koreas. Students, however, see in the Olympics not an athletic extravaganza but a chance to bring the two Koreas closer. Otherwise students have vowed to use the games to showcase their agenda to the world. Attempts to disrupt the Olympics may cost students the support of the Korean public that is already weary of protracted street protests. But students are desperate and destructive today, as evidenced by three protest suicides in May and attacks on U.S Information Service and government buildings.

An isolated but violent student movement offers a ripe pretext for military inervention, as it did in 1960 and 1979 when the military stepped in, alleging disorder. With no credible and acceptable voice in Korea to respond to the students, Washington should move fast to show its commitment to a unified, democratic Korea.

The Reagan Administration should publicly urge the Roh regime to declare a general amnesty on political prisoners in the spirit of national reconciliation, express its desire for a fresh beginning in American-Korean relations by asking the Seoul government to show magnanimity to those in prison for anti-American activities, and initiate proposals for a tripartite meeting with South and North Korea or a four-way conference including China.

Such steps would appease and calm the students. They would also help alleviate rising anti-American sentiments, restore the confidence of the Korean people in the United States as a friend of democracy and ensure trouble-free Olympic Games.