Wild-Card Candidate Out to Ace S. Korean Elections With His Promises of Prosperity : Asia: Hyundai founder’s fledgling party could sap support from traditional blocs. Many voters view him as a symbol of prosperity.

Kim Dong Il, 23, is one face of a new South Korea. He’s a university graduate, an assistant accounting analyst at IBM Corp. in Seoul and a man more concerned with the nation’s shaky economy than democratic reforms, which he said have largely been realized in the last four years under President Roh Tae Woo.

Today, as South Korea opens the polls for its National Assembly elections, Kim plans to vote not for Roh’s ruling party nor the main opposition led by Kim Dae Jung. He’s going for an entirely new face: Chung Ju Yung, the 76-year-old founder of the giant Hyundai conglomerate, who has rattled the political Establishment with a wild-card candidacy.

“The ruling party has failed in the economy. Kim Dae Jung is too radical, and they (the opposition) don’t have a sense of the global situation,” said Kim, who attended the business tycoon’s weekend political rally with his father, also a Chung convert.

Chung’s 2-month-old Unification National Party, however, is “economic-oriented, management-oriented,” he added. “The new generation is attracted to the UNP.”

But just how attractive Chung really is--and whether Koreans will actually vote for him--is the question of the day in an election that looms as a preview of the presidential race in December.

Conventional wisdom holds that the ruling Democratic Liberal Party will retain a majority of 55% to 60% of the 299 seats in the single-chamber legislature. Such a result would be a setback compared to the 70% share that it gained when Roh persuaded two former opposition parties to join forces with him in 1990 after his old ruling group failed to win a majority in the 1988 election.

Yet, given Chung’s unexpected appeal, no one is placing any firm bets on the election outcome. Park Ki Jung, political editor of the respected newspaper Dong-A, called the election “the most difficult . . . to predict in anyone’s memory.”

As an indication of the uncertainty, Park said the paper is not planning to print extra election day editions. It would make such plans if it believed the ruling party would lose its majority, he said. Yet, in the same breath, he added, there is “a strong possibility” that Roh’s party could lose its majority.

“Chung is the most talked about politician now. He’s a new figure among people sick and tired of politics and politicians. People regard him as a hero, a self-made big guy,” Park said. “But that doesn’t mean people will vote for him.”

Chung claims his followers will win more than 25% of the seats. But if his party collects even 20 victories, or enough to be recognized as a bargaining group in the National Assembly, his effort would be rated a success--and probably encourage him to run for president in December.

Chung’s appeal comes against a political context considerably different from the one four years ago.

Then, Koreans cried out against years of authoritarian rulers and voted on the revolutionary issues of freedom and democracy. Today, they grumble about the economy.

Then, Koreans castigated leaders for being too strong. Today, they criticize them for being too weak.

In particular, they fault President Roh for his failure to control a 10% inflation rate, a $10-billion trade deficit, zooming land prices and a shortage of building materials that occurred as the president built 2 million housing units in four years.

“Today, 10,000 won (about $13) is like 1,000 won--you can’t buy anything with it,” grumbled So Sun Bok, 31, a homemaker. It was the most frequently heard complaint in a day of political rallies.

The ruling party has sensed the discontent and offered a message of stability as the best hope for reinvigorating the economy and dealing with Communist North Korea on reunification.

“We have to make the country an economic power, and only the ruling party can make the country come out of recession,” said Kim Young Sam, one of the two opposition leaders who joined forces with Roh two years ago and now hopes to succeed him when he steps down next February. At a weekend political rally, that line from Kim got the biggest applause, and about the only sign of life, from a lackluster crowd of about 600.

But Park, the Dong-A political editor, said the ruling party is “extremely unpopular,” and not only because of economic woes. He said the party’s image is one of political heavy-handedness, a perception strengthened by reports Monday that commanders with the Military Security Affairs Division had ordered that 80% of the army’s 560,000 absentee votes be doctored to go to the ruling party. The accusation was made by Lt. Lee Chi Mun, 24, of the army’s 9th Infantry Division at a news conference held by the Citizens’ Fair Election Committee. Lee was apprehended by military officials after the news conference.

Two-time opposition presidential candidate Kim Dae Jung has also sensed the changed voter mood. He instructed his campaign workers not to stress his freedom-fighter image but to fashion economic reform policies.

Kim is also urging voters to check the ruling party’s power, lest it gain a two-thirds majority and ram through a constitutional amendment to change to a parliamentary Cabinet system. Such a change would tend to perpetuate the ruling party’s power.

Yet, to some, Kim is a political anachronism, an aging freedom fighter whose courage paved the way for the nation’s fledgling democracy but who is now ill-equipped to tackle complex issues of international competitiveness.

To many Koreans, Chung may be the man with the most credible economic message. He built himself up from poor beginnings to head Korea’s second-largest conglomerate. The Hyundai Group, with annual sales of $51 billion, consists of 41 different firms engaged in everything from construction to electronics, including the largest shipyard in the world and Korea’s major car maker.

The group also offers a built-in advantage for Chung, as demonstrated by a woman at one of his weekend rallies. She said she has always voted for the ruling party but planned this time to switch to Chung. Why?

“My husband works for Hyundai,” she confessed with a smile.

Indeed, the conglomerate employs 170,000 workers who, with their families and friends, make up a potentially formidable campaign force. Yet it is not only Hyundai employees who like Chung. Park Un Sik, 31, works for Hyundai’s archrival Samsung and still intends to vote for Chung--as does his wife. Park says Chung’s real-life experience building a company from scratch gives him an authority over business and economic issues that people like Roh, a former army general, do not have.

“Before, Korea used to be one of the (Four) Dragons, but after Roh came to power, the dragon became a tadpole,” Chung thundered at a recent rally, which drew a mixed and lively crowd of 2,000--three times more than his rivals that day.

Chung has promised to turn the $10-billion trade deficit into a $30-billion surplus in three years and cut housing prices by half, among other things. But the business tycoon, himself a supporter of past authoritarian governments, has a number of liabilities.

As Kim Chung Jae, a 61-year-old laborer, put it: “Chung gave his money to the ruling party when he should have invested it in the country. His party is a bunch of opportunists.”