S. Korea Focuses on Dissident’s Tale of Torture : Prosecution of Kim Keun Tae’s Case May Signal Seoul’s Human Rights Course

Conversations with Kim Keun Tae lead invariably to the subject of torture.

Kim, one of South Korea’s most prominent dissidents, endured three weeks of beating, electric shock and water torture at the hands of the anti-Communist bureau of the national police in 1985, according to international human rights advocates and Kim’s own account.

Now there is a chance that his tormentors will be brought to justice--if the government abides by a court order requiring a thorough investigation of the allegations. Authorities say they have interrogated four police suspects and begun a nationwide hunt for a fugitive police captain accused of directing Kim’s chamber of horrors.

The case has taken on symbolic importance ever since the country began its tumultuous journey toward democracy two years ago. In some ways, one man’s defiance tells the story of an entire generation of political dissidents in South Korea. And how the case is resolved in the courts may provide a signpost for the course of human rights here.

The situation in South Korea is improving, the U.S. State Department said in a report on human rights around the world, issued earlier this month.

Few Major Cases

Although the number of political prisoners remained high, “no major cases of torture or politically related killing came to light” in 1988, the report said. (Human rights advocates estimate that 270 “prisoners of conscience” remain in detention.)

But in the recent past, allegations of police brutality and torture-induced confessions were frequent. The torture death of a student activist in January, 1987, sparked massive anti-government protests. Kim warns of the lingering potential for renewed abuse, especially if the feared National Security Law, under which he was arrested for anti-state activities, remains on the books.

President Roh Tae Woo’s ruling Democratic Justice Party has said it is considering modifying the law and changing its name. In its current form, the law prohibits such acts as making statements that might be interpreted in such a way as to advance the cause of Communist North Korea--one of the charges of which Kim was convicted.

“They can resume torture whenever they want,” Kim said. “They want to keep the law for emergencies.”

Kim, 42, who, with his wife, activist In Jae Keun, shared the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial human rights award for 1987, was released from prison under a political amnesty last June. He has since returned to the work that made him a government target.

Kim began quietly organizing, helping to unite bickering dissident groups into a broad coalition dedicated to “mass struggle”--dissident parlance for the kind of spontaneous street protests that hastened democratic reform and eventually drove former President Chun Doo Hwan into humiliating rural exile.

Kim is a wild card on the South Korean political scene, which settled down only recently after two years of dramatic upheaval.

“He played a pivotal role in bringing dissidents together,” said Lee Hae Chan, an opposition lawmaker. “He has always set an example . . . a rational figure whose affection for his fellows has been deepened by his hardships.”

Recognize His Face

Almost all South Koreans have heard of Kim Keun Tae and have learned to recognize his distinctively melancholy, oval-shaped face. But no one claims to know exactly who he is, what he stands for or how much power he may one day wield.

“I think of him as a fighter for social justice,” said Lim Kyung Moon, 26, a former riot police officer who recently returned to his studies in electrical engineering at Korea University. “He’s one of our martyrs, but I don’t know much about him.”

A similar opaqueness of purpose shrouds the dissident movement as a whole, which increasingly is adopting a tone of righteous anti-American scorn. Radical students and many older activists accuse the United States of propping up Chun and Roh in defiance of popular will.

Kim, one of three leaders who last month formed the dissident coalition Chonminyon , or National People’s Democratic Movement League, is evasive about his vision for political and social change in South Korea.

Yet he insists that mainstream politicians--even the opposition parties--cannot be trusted with the task of steering the nation toward democracy.

“We want to set the course right,” Kim said in a series of recent interviews. “The government only responds with democratic concessions when they face mass struggle.”

The situation is not expected to explode any time soon, though it could heat up later in the year, when students return to campuses and the National Assembly goes back into session. Kim’s coalition is likely to face its first test of effectiveness during the spring labor offensive, analysts say.

Meanwhile, calls are mounting for dissidents like Kim to drop their anti-establishment line and try working within the system. The polarization of society is destabilizing, some observers say.

“They should seek ways to cooperate with democratic forces within the political establishment,” said Lee Shin Bum, himself a former dissident who has joined the opposition Reunification Democratic Party. “It’s wrong to dismiss established forces as strictly conservative.”

The government paints Kim as a seditious troublemaker, although it toned down its denunciations after an international campaign, spurred by the Kennedy award, sought his release from prison.

Defection Report

One ranking government official, who declined to be identified by name, described Kim as a hard-core Communist who advocates “proletarian revolution.” He cited a police report that was circulated at the time of Kim’s arrest in 1985 that alleged that his three older brothers defected to the Communist north during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Although Kim would have been about 5 years old at the time, this family background somehow influenced his political outlook, the official said.

Kim tells a different story. Two of his brothers were killed and a third was reported missing and presumed dead in the Korean War. He remembers his brothers as “patriots,” sympathetic with the resistance movement against Japanese colonizers during World War II and opposed to the division of the peninsula.

But he denies being a Communist or a supporter of North Korea. He dismisses the concept of a socialist class struggle as “befitting the teen-age, utopian dreams” of university students.

“We activists in our middle age must be more responsible and work out a more practical answer,” Kim said. “But to the government, anyone who advocates true democracy is a Communist. That’s one of their tools of repression.”

Kim comes from a middle-class background. His father was vice principal of an elementary school in Suwon, a provincial capital south of Seoul. Kim turned to radical politics while majoring in economics at Seoul National University, South Korea’s most prestigious educational institution, in the late 1960s.

After graduation, Kim chose to forgo the rewards of his elite education; he went underground as a labor organizer.

His quiet, methodical approach to building alliances in the youth and labor movements apparently threatened the government, which at the time adopted a policy of crushing labor activism. But it also earned him the grudging respect of some conservative analysts.

“It was not for the good, in my opinion, but his performance was brilliant when he was a student leader,” said Rhee Sang Woo, a security specialist and dean of Sogang University’s graduate school of public policy. “He is quite a man of integrity, and he demonstrated great skills in organizing people.”

Indeed, an aura of Confucian dignity emanates from the radical leader, who was chairman of the National Youth Alliance for Democracy at the time of his arrest.

Kim ceremoniously offered a bowl of persimmon punch to a visitor on a recent winter afternoon, saying political talk should come only after sharing this traditional drink of the lunar New Year.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of his modest flat in northeastern Seoul, Kim said he observed his first New Year’s holiday out of prison in four years in the old Korean way. He had his two children, ages 7 and 10, kowtow respectfully before him, as is the custom; he in turn bowed toward the graves of his parents.

Kim’s articulate account of his torture experience has given him a cachet of moral authority among activists. He has related his incredulity over how his torturers discussed, with compassion, their family affairs at the same time they attached electrical wires between his toes. Yet he is not happy with his martyr image.

“Torture is something you can never build a resistance to,” he said. “But I don’t want to be made into a sentimental figure, or to be remembered only as a torture victim. I haven’t overcome the experience, but I wasn’t destroyed by it.”