Roh to Quit Party to Help Ensure Clean S. Korea Vote

President Roh Tae Woo, plagued by a raging controversy over election fraud, announced Friday that he will quit South Korea’s governing Democratic Liberal Party and make sweeping Cabinet changes to help ensure clean and fair presidential elections later this year.

Roh’s action, unprecedented in South Korea’s 44-year constitutional history, was taken to try to calm growing public unrest over allegations of vote-buying in a rural southern county during parliamentary elections in March. Han Chun Su, former party chief in Yongi county, confessed in a news conference last month that he was given $45,500 by the Democratic Liberal Party to buy votes.

“An epoch-making step must be taken to thoroughly eradicate the still-lingering residues of such evil practices of the past era,” Roh said Friday.

Roh’s actions signal that he has become a lame duck and “rubber stamp” for ruling party presidential candidate Kim Young Sam, who had urged that the Cabinet be shaken up as a way to to protect his own electoral chances, analysts here say.

Kim has urged that the Cabinet shake-up be extended to include Prime Minister Chung Won Shik. But Roh said only that he would consult with the governing and opposition parties on the makeup of “a new Cabinet of unimpeachable neutrality” after he returns Sept. 30 from visits to the United Nations in New York and to China.

Roh’s moves, however, did not totally mollify opposition party leaders, who charge that many more local vote-rigging operations are in place in a scheme to steal as many as 1 million votes and skew the outcome of presidential elections, tentatively scheduled for December. Led by Democratic Party leader Kim Dae Jung, the opposition is insisting that elections for mayors and governors be held in advance of the presidential race as a way to end any potential for fraud.

The governing Democratic Liberals have rejected that demand, saying that the national treasury can’t afford it.

Opposition leader Kim is threatening to boycott the presidential elections unless local elections are held first.

Anti-Establishment forces are also incensed because Han, the Yongi county whistle-blower, was arrested, while the man who allegedly ordered the fraud--Gov. Lee Chong Guk--was not picked up. On Friday, prosecutors booked Lee for minor violations of election laws but did not detain him further. Lee has quit his post.

“Why have you arrested the confessor and let free those who ordered the rigging?” demanded Friday’s headline in the Democratic Party’s newspaper.

The nation’s largest student activist alliance, Chondaehyop, announced it will launch anti-government rallies to protest what it called an “obstruction of justice” in the Yongi case. Scattered student protests have already broken out in Yongi county and in the opposition stronghold of Kwangju.

At a dramatic news conference Aug. 31, Han said he was instructed to scan voter rolls and use money to persuade citizens leaning toward the opposition to vote for the ruling party instead. The ruling party’s Yongi parliamentary candidate, Im Chae Gil, was also arrested and accused of violating national election laws by arranging special visits to the presidential palace and giving wristwatches to 3,000 Yongi residents.

Im ultimately lost the election to the candidate of former Hyundai chairman Chung Ju Yung’s party.