NEWS ANALYSIS : S. Korean Protests Reveal Extent of Public Discontent With Roh’s Rule

SEOUL — The fatal police clubbing of Kang Kyung Dae, a 20-year-old Myungji University freshman, not only launched the most enduring street protests in South Korea in four years. It also served to bring to the surface some of the deep disagreements that South Koreans have with President Roh Tae Woo’s government.

It has shown that South Koreans still have problems with their new-found, still-incomplete democracy.

How the current political unrest will be resolved remains unclear. But the present round of protests already has lasted longer than the 19 days of street demonstrations in June, 1987, that claimed two lives and forced then-presidential candidate Roh to pledge an end to authoritarian rule.

Unlike 1987, however, when protests focused on expanding political freedoms, the current outcry--in which seven have died--comes from a range of groups with differing grievances:

- There have been protests by the radical element--bands of students, workers and lifelong dissidents whose ranks, until Kang’s death, had been dwindling rapidly. To them, Roh’s government remains the military-big business clique they saw in the administration of authoritarian President Chun Doo Hwan, who seized power in a coup in May, 1980.

- There is anger among most other students. Until April 26, they had remained aloof from campus rallies, at which the attendance had run only in the hundreds. But to them, Kang’s death was a symbol of the increasingly severe repression they saw Roh imposing in the last year--ironically, in response to charges that he had been too soft.

- There is displeasure from the organized opposition and many intellectuals. To them, Kang’s April 26 death has served as a reminder that, although Roh has carried out extensive reforms, his June 29, 1987, pledge to implement democracy has fallen short of fulfillment.

- Members of the general public have also expressed discontent. To them, Roh’s government can be faulted for failing to control inflation and spiraling housing costs; they also are troubled by a perception that law and order and South Korea’s overall economy are deteriorating. While few middle-class Koreans have participated in the latest protests, there also has been a conspicuous lack of support for Roh.

“Internationally, the economy has done quite well,” observed Rep. Suh Sang Mok, a National Assembly member from the ruling Democratic Liberal Party. “But the people are making their comparison with the days of stable prices and trade surpluses they remember under Chun.”

The protests have lasted 23 days through Saturday and claimed eight lives, six of them protesters who set themselves ablaze.

The self-immolations--a practice that is alien to Korean tradition--have come as a particular shock. Some analysts speculate that the radicals, as their numbers dwindled, have become more militant and feel a greater sense of crisis than before. But to most Koreans, the political suicides are confounding.

Until a year ago, Roh had adopted a hands-off style of governing, saying that “democracy cannot be imposed from the top.”

But widespread illegal strikes and escalating labor demands contributed to a weakening of the international competitiveness of South Korean manufactured exports. At the same time, a newly free mass media poured out a barrage of reports of crime, creating an impression that law and order was breaking down.

Finally, after citizens started referring to him as “President Mul ,”--President Water--Roh decided to get tough. He appointed hard-liners to key government posts. He ordered police to crack down on illegal demonstrations. To combat crime, he also effectively reinstated a midnight curfew that had been in place until the early 1980s; this time, instead of forbidding anyone to be outside after midnight, he ordered all entertainment shops to close by that hour.

Those moves won wide support; even radical students have not complained about the curfew.

Still, Roh’s hard-line posture appears to have gone too far. And this week he is expected to announce measures that are likely to soften his stance.

Some are expected to permit greater freedom for demonstrations. Although the law on protests was revised with opposition support under Roh, police have seldom allowed demonstrations; protesters even less often have sought permission to stage them.

That has resulted in constant violent clashes--the likes of which set the stage for the police beating of Kang. By their own account, police have fired 122,793 tear-gas shells from Jan. 1 to mid-May, up 34% from the same period last year.

“Now, yes, we want a tough government--but this is too tough. Not only the opposition but the ruling party feels that way,” lawmaker Suh said.

Park Kwong Sang, a former editor of the newspaper Dong-A Ilbo, also faulted Roh for insisting that political issues be discussed in the National Assembly, not in the streets, but then rejecting opposition demands to discuss specific issues in the legislature.

Only after the current protests began did Roh finally get around to revising the harsh National Security Law, which had provided penalties as severe as seven years’ imprisonment for merely praising Communist North Korea. At the same time, a police law was amended to ensure the neutrality of law enforcement in politics.

But even those actions were rammed through as amendments in the Assembly after the government abandoned talks with the opposition.

“The government had no further concessions to offer,” Information Minister Choi Chang Yoon explained.

More than three years into his single five-year term, Roh has not revised laws governing the Agency for National Security Planning, barring domestic spying by the former Korean CIA. Just last summer, the armed forces--which Roh from the beginning has pledged to keep out of politics--were revealed to be conducting their own spying on leading opposition figures and dissidents. Labor laws, despite revisions, continue to inhibit what in most other industrialized countries would be legal strikes.

Roh also has rejected the verdict of voters who made his party a minority force in the National Assembly. Instead, playing on the ambitions of two of his former rivals, he patched together a new ruling Democratic Liberal Party a year ago.

To students and dissidents, the party links its fortunes with the nation’s massive chaebol , or business conglomerates. And Roh’s joining with parties led by Kim Young Sam and Kim Jong Pil, both of whom had run against him in the 1987 presidential election, appeared designed to ensure that a true opposition would never take the reins of government. “If we don’t break up, we can elect our candidate as president,” Suh commented.

For now, Roh’s supporters wonder why he has not won more credit for his real democratic moves--permitting a free press, unleashing a more vigorous labor movement and allowing a far more open society in general. “We will have to look back to see what we have done wrong,” Suh said.

And while his moves toward democracy have been overwhelmed by the frustrations of the moment, demands for Roh’s ouster appear limited to the small but militant student-dissident element.

That, of course, does not immunize the president from considerable criticism. Rep. Lee Jong Chan, an aspirant to succeed Roh in a presidential election that must be held by early 1993, complained that Roh and the patched-together ruling party have failed to provide a vision. Instead, he said, South Koreans have been “disappointed . . . by endless in-house feuding over the pursuit of power. Fundamental measures, not tactical steps, are needed to cope with the situation.”

South Koreans’ economic concerns will be tougher to handle.

But on at least one key issue--housing costs--improvement is in sight. A program Roh launched last year to build 2 million housing units in four years “appears to be overshooting its target,” said Suh, a former government economist. “We may get 2.5 million new units,” he said.

The first batch of new housing will become available later this year, Suh said, adding that as they come on the market, housing costs might even fall.

But further political reform remains up in the air. Analysts forecast an uneasy political atmosphere at least through the next presidential election.