TOWARD A NEW ASIAN ORDER : A WORLD REPORT SPECIAL SECTION : Briefing Paper : Democracy Taking Many Roads on Pacific Rim : It is entrenched in Japan and absent from North Korea. There’s every variant in between.

Democratic institutions in Asia range from the well-established, such as those in Japan, to the nonexistent in North Korea. Where democratic seeds have been planted, they continue to grow, slowly in some cases and almost always in ways notably different from the way such institutions first sprouted in Britain and the United States.

Here is a look at democratic developments around the western arc of the Pacific Rim:

JAPAN

Japan’s Parliament dates back more than 100 years, but full democracy did not come until after World War II when U.S. occupation authorities stripped the emperor of sovereignty and ordered that women be given the vote. The framework for present-day Japanese politics took shape in 1955 with the founding of the Socialist and Liberal Democratic parties.

The Liberal Democrats, a conservative grouping in spite of their name, have governed ever since, although three years ago a voters’ revolt against a consumption tax and an influence-buying scandal deprived them for the first time of their majority in Parliament’s upper house.

They still hold a comfortable majority in the lower house and therefore continue to name the prime minister and his government, but since 1989 they have been forced to get the support of moderate opposition parties, notably the Buddhist-backed Komeito (Clean Government Party), to get ordinary legislation through the upper chamber.

Elections to renew half of the upper house are due in July, and the Liberal Democrats already concede they will not be able to regain their majority this time around. Their strategy is now aimed toward 1995.

Right now, the Liberal Democrats lack the strength to impose political reforms in the wake of a series of scandals, and they also find an economic downturn working against them. Their leader, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, has betrayed initially high expectations of him by demonstrating shoddy leadership and failing to come up with new initiatives.

But a bright spot for Liberal Democrats is a lackluster performance by their principal opposition, the Socialist Party. The Socialists’ charismatic woman leader, Takako Doi, fell by the wayside in 1991, and a key to the outcome of July’s elections will be the attitude of women voters.

Barring a major political realignment, the beleaguered Miyazawa appears certain of retaining the prime minister’s post after July--mainly because no effective replacement is in sight.

SOUTH KOREA

Until President Roh Tae Woo came along, South Korea had been ruled by a dogmatic Confucian and two authoritarian former army generals who seized power in coups. And though Roh carried out most of his promises to democratize the nation, he too is a former general. Now, for the first time since a fleeting interlude in 1960-61, South Korea can look forward hopefully to a civilian-led, democratic government.

By the end of this month, all major contenders in December’s presidential election will have been nominated and be running. None is a former general and all bill themselves as reformers.

Roh’s regime has been widely described as a transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. And many critics give him credit for traveling about 70% of that distance.

Unfinished work of democratization lies ahead: dealing with a National Security Law that often has been used to suppress dissent, with labor laws that restrict union activity and with behind-the-scenes political manipulation by such institutions as the former Korean CIA, now called the Agency for National Security Planning.

Whether the next president, who will serve five years beginning in February, 1993, will oversee reunification of a divided Korean Peninsula remains unpredictable. But not since the fratricidal 1950-53 Korean War have moves toward rapprochement between the Stalinist north and the capitalist south offered as much hope for reconciliation and peace as now.

TAIWAN

Taiwan has a unique constitutional structure because it still claims to be the Republic of China, established on the Chinese mainland in 1912. This framework was used in the past to deny political power to native-born Taiwanese.

But great strides toward democracy have been made since four decades of martial law were ended in 1987. Free speech and a free press have basically been established, and political reforms have given Taiwanese voters a greater voice. Last week, Taiwan’s legislature broadened free speech by eliminating from sedition laws the threat of punishment for advocacy of “Taiwan independence.”

Late last year, elderly members of the National Assembly, who had not faced voters in more than 40 years, were forced to step down. They were replaced in a December election, Taiwan’s first general balloting since 1949.

The National Assembly is now nearing the end of a 70-day special session on constitutional reform but seems certain to end without action on the key issue before it: how to elect Taiwan’s president.

Direct presidential elections are favored by a liberal faction within the ruling Nationalist Party, including President Lee Teng-hui, and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. Nationalist Party conservatives led by Premier Hau Pei-tsun have demanded retention of the present indirect system under which the elected Assembly chooses the president. The Nationalists, with control of nearly 80% of the Assembly seats, can change the constitution at will. But a compromise supported by the party leadership calls merely for the Assembly to decide this issue by May, 1995, in time for presidential elections in 1996.

Many supporters of greater democracy, in both the opposition and ruling parties, argue that direct presidential elections are key to giving the people control over their government.

THAILAND

Although it has been 60 years since the absolute monarchy was replaced by constitutional government in Thailand, Monday’s declaration in Bangkok of a state of emergency is only the latest sign that democracy has not yet firmly taken root.

The country’s current problems began last February, when the military overthrew an elected civilian government in a bloodless coup because of widespread corruption. But after new elections in March, a new prime minister was appointed from the military junta, rather than elected, and 11 of his Cabinet ministers were identified as being “unusually rich”--a euphemism for corrupt--by an investigative body appointed by the military.

Student-led demonstrations demanding that the former armed forces commander-in-chief, Suchinda Kraprayoon, step down as prime minister have continued, off and on, since last month. On May 11, five parties in the governing coalition promised constitutional amendments that would require the prime minister to be an elected member of Parliament. But the amendments face an uncertain fate in Parliament, and a rally was called Sunday to keep up public pressure for the change. The protest began peacefully but later turned violent, resulting in the shooting deaths of at least five demonstrators.

PHILIPPINES

In most countries, elections end when the votes are cast. In the Philippines, it seems, they just begin.

Glacially slow counting and growing allegations of cheating threaten to undermine what seemed free and fair voting on May 11 to select a new government--more than 17,000 posts in all, from president to town counselor. The three-month presidential campaign was marked more by mudslinging than debate by the seven candidates on how to combat the country’s growing poverty, crumbling infrastructure and rocketing population.

After a week, less than a third of the returns have been tallied. But the two leaders both suggest voters affirmed the nation’s fragile democracy, even as they want to change it. Former Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos vows to step up economic reforms begun by his mentor, outgoing President Corazon Aquino. And scrappy former Judge Miriam Defensor Santiago created her own popular crusade by campaiging against graft, corruption and traditional politics.

Whoever wins, the election already has produced one unlikely victor--Aquino herself. After six years of lurching from crisis to crisis, including seven coup attempts and a volcanic eruption, she not only survived her term but promises to fulfill her pledge to hand over power peacefully to a successor. Moreover, she helped block the political comeback of several followers of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos.

MYANMAR

After nearly four years of increasingly harsh rule, the military rulers of Myanmar, formerly called Burma, have given their first signs of relenting.

The country has been ruled since 1962 by military leaders, first by the eccentric Ne Win and since 1988 by a military junta called the State Law and Order Restoration Committee. The military held remarkably free and fair elections in May, 1990, but after it lost in a landslide to pro-democracy forces, the junta promptly arrested most of the leading members of the National League for Democracy, which had won.

Three weeks ago, Gen. Saw Maung, the uncompromising leader of the SLORC junta, resigned for health reasons and was replaced by Defense Minister Than Shwe. While considered to be a hard-liner like his predecessor, Than Shwe surprised many Myanmar experts by freeing 60 political prisoners and promising to meet with the opposition within six months. He even set new rules allowing family visits to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader who has been held under house arrest since June, 1989.

CAMBODIA

Despite continuing clashes on the battlefield and a generation of hostility and mistrust, the United Nations has managed to keep to its tight schedule for a peace settlement in Cambodia that is designed to lead to the country’s first free and fair elections in April, 1993.

After the signing of a four-party peace accord in Paris last October, the United Nations has sent in two battalions of peacekeeping troops and has begun repatriation of nearly 370,000 refugees from camps along the Thai-Cambodian border. A key test will come in June, when, according to the U.N. timetable, the four factions, including the hated Khmer Rouge, are to be 70% demobilized. The remainder are scheduled to go to U.N.-supervised camps, where they will store their heavy weapons under international control. The country is still plagued by the presence of millions of land mines and a broken economy.

The Phnom Penh regime was given a significant boost when the former monarch, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, returned home last November and took over as head of the figurehead government called the Supreme National Council. He also hooked his political fortunes to the Phnom Penh regime by having his son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, form a coalition with Phnom Penh Prime Minister Hun Sen.

VIETNAM

The Vietnamese regime has undergone dramatic changes since 1986, but virtually all of the alterations concern economic policy and leave a doctrinaire socialist party in place. A leadership change took place last year that led to noted economic reformer Vo Van Kiet taking over as prime minister. But the changes took place just two months before the collapse of Vietnam’s onetime patron state, the Soviet Union, which left the Vietnamese horrified at the costs of political reform and multi-party politics.

A new constitution has been drawn up, but the charter emphasizes that despite the sweeping economic reforms of the past few years, power will remain concentrated in the hands of the Communist Party indefinitely.

INDONESIA

Under Indonesia’s system of partial democracy, the country is in the midst of a muted election campaign for the House of Representatives. Under the unusual system, 400 seats are filled by elections and 100 seats are appointed by the military, which has long had a dominant role in Indonesian politics.

Next year, the 500-member house will join 500 other representatives appointed by President Suharto to form a Consultative Assembly, which will then choose a new president and vice president. The system is heavily slanted in favor of the 70-year-old Suharto, who has yet to choose a successor and shows every sign of being interested in the top job himself. Despite a tremendous advantage in the election, the government has carefully controlled the political campaign, with democratic groups being prohibited from holding public meetings and photographs being banned from use on election posters.

MALAYSIA

Perhaps the most democratic country of Southeast Asia, Malaysia has a relatively free press and an outspoken opposition in Parliament. But tight controls are still exerted by the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed on the degree to which people can dissent.

In the general election of October, 1990, the ruling National Front captured two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, but rival parties took control of two of Malaysia’s state governments: Sabah and Kelantan. In Sabah, the central government began a crackdown on leaders of the ruling party, putting six in prison indefinitely on dubious national security grounds.

In neighboring Sarawak, the government continues to jail natives who have protested against the harvesting of the region’s rain forests.

SINGAPORE

With a population of just 3 million, tiny Singapore has been ruled since the 1950s by a single party, which governs on a principle dubbed by some as “soft authoritarianism.” In return for record rates of economic growth, Singaporeans in every election have given a majority in Parliament to the People’s Action Party headed by Lee Kuan Yew, who until 1990 served as the country’s prime minister.

In an election in August, 1991, the opposition managed to win four seats in Parliament in a setback for Lee’s handpicked successor, Goh Chok Tong. Singapore’s opposition is meek compared with opposition parties in other Asian countries, in part because the government has not hesitated to prosecute opponents on a range of charges over the years. The press is owned by a monopoly and is tightly controlled, while censorship is extensive.

HONG KONG

Under British colonial rule, Hong Kong has a full range of civil liberties, including freedom of speech and press, but has not enjoyed democratic self-government. A Legislative Council plays a largely advisory role, but real power is concentrated in the hands of a London-appointed governor.

In 1984, London agreed to return sovereignty over Hong Kong to Beijing at midnight June 30, 1997. For its part, China pledged that Hong Kong could retain its capitalist economic system and civil liberties for at least 50 years. Beijing promised that Hong Kong would enjoy a “high degree of autonomy,” but the agreement allows Beijing to appoint Hong Kong’s governor--a power that raises questions about how much autonomy Hong Kong will really enjoy.

Many Hong Kong residents, fearing Beijing may not keep its promises, want to see a democratically elected Legislative Council to help defend their interests. At present, the 60-member council includes 18 directly elected members, a number that will rise to 20 in 1995. But there is no guarantee of further democratization after that.

Compiled from reports by Times correspondents Sam Jameson, David Holley, Charles P. Wallace and Bob Drogin.