Chun: Falling, Falling

A year ago President Chun Doo Hwan still possessed near-authoritarian control over 40 million fellow South Koreans. Just months away from the first peaceful transfer of power in modern Korea’s history, Chun believed that he had secured his own future well-being by hand-picking a successor and creating a “council of elders” through which he could wield influence after he left office. Today Chun is a humiliated and broken man. Like failed rulers of old, he has been forced to apologize publicly and accept full responsibility for his administration’s crimes and follies. Like failed rulers of old, he has had to slink away from the capital to seek haven in the countryside. The mighty are indeed fallen. But for Chun the fall isn’t over yet.

Opposition legislators are determined that Chun should be called to account for both the brutalities and the corruption that marked his 7 1/2 years of rule. A parliamentary investigating committee has been grilling Chun’s once-powerful subordinates; now it wants a crack at Chun himself. Young radicals on their part insist that Chun should be tried and executed, with most of them ready to forgo the first demand if they can have the second. But cooler-headed politicians in all opposition parties seem reluctant to bring Chun to trial, recognizing the political instability that could result.

President Roh Tae Woo clearly pressured Chun to make the remarkable nationally televised speech during which he confessed to a long list of abuses and promised to give back some--but, critics say, by no means all--of the fortune that he amassed as president. Now Roh faces the hard choice of trying to curb the continuing legislative pursuit of Chun or letting events take their course, perhaps risking embarrassment or worse if his own previous close connections with Chun are subjected to investigative scrutiny.

Roh has shown himself unusually sensitive to public opinion and, so far, genuinely interested in seeing democracy take root in Korea. He can turn a deaf ear to the demands of the student radicals, and maybe even discount what opposition politicians say. What he probably can’t do is ignore the mood of South Korea’s important middle class. The Chun affair has many ironies. Not the least of them is that Chun’s fate may ultimately rest with those whose prosperity and subsequent political importance are due in no small part to the economic policies fostered by Chun’s authoritarian regime.