S. Korea Abduction Eclipses Yeltsin Visit : Politics: President Roh detains brother-in-law, who is set to bolt ruling party as election nears.

SEOUL — Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin arrived in Seoul on Wednesday but found his historic visit relegated to a sideshow in the wake of a revelation that President Roh Tae Woo had abducted his own brother-in-law.

The Yeltsin visit, the first by a Moscow leader to the South Korean capital, was not mentioned until 12 minutes into the Seoul Broadcasting System evening television news. Instead, the focus was on an imbroglio that exploded when a band of 30 or so plainclothes police on Tuesday seized Kim Dok Dong, 59, whose sister is the president’s wife.

Kim was on his way from Seoul to a news conference in Taegu to announce that he is bolting the ruling Democratic Liberal Party. He was stopped at a Taegu expressway exit and was brought back to Seoul.

In a meeting Wednesday with the three major contenders in the Dec. 18 presidential election, Roh said he asked police to stop Kim. Roh said he is dismayed by the dozens of South Korean politicians jumping from one party to another as the election approaches and was appalled to hear that one of his own family members was about to make such a move. “That’s why I asked the police to find his whereabouts,” Roh was quoted as telling the three candidates.

Park Hee Tae, a ruling party spokesman, observed that “opposition parties insist that Kim was kidnaped. But, considering Kim’s public status and his family relationship with President Roh, I can hardly understand their claim.”

Kim, an aide said, resigned from the ruling party in a registered letter sent to party headquarters in the Taegu district, from which Kim was elected to the National Assembly. But South Korean media quoted sources as saying Kim had changed his mind Wednesday after a “family meeting” breakfast hosted by Roh.

Chung Ju Yung, 76, founder of the massive Hyundai conglomerate, contended that Kim had decided to join his party and to support him for president. Chung condemned the arrest of a national assemblyman, an act forbidden while the Assembly is in session. He criticized Roh’s action, saying it was a gross violation of the president’s pledge to remain neutral in the campaign.

Kim is a former army general. In 1980, he fell out with hard-liners who supported a coup that empowered former President Chun Doo Hwan. Kim’s whereabouts were still unknown late Wednesday.

His resignation would have been a heavy blow for Kim Young Sam, the ruling party’s standard-bearer in the election to choose a successor to Roh, who is limited by the constitution to one term. Two major ruling party leaders have already walked out on Kim Young Sam, a former opposition leader who joined forces with Roh in 1990 to give the president a majority in the National Assembly.

No ruling party candidate has ever lost a presidential election.

Even before Yeltsin arrived, the Russian president got ensnarled in South Korean politics by scheduling an exclusive breakfast meeting with Kim Young Sam on Friday. Both Chung and Kim Dae Jung, 68, the opposition’s leading candidate, protested what they called favoritism.

Although former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited the South Korean island of Cheju in 1991, Yeltsin is the first Moscow leader to visit Seoul. The trip replaces one he postponed at the last minute in September when a territorial dispute with Japan led him to cancel a trip to Japan and South Korea. This time he won’t be going to Tokyo.

Yeltsin went from the airport to the National Cemetery to lay a wreath, burn incense and say a prayer for South Koreans killed in the 1950-53 Korean War. The Soviet Union supported Seoul’s enemy, Communist North Korea, in that war. Yeltsin was scheduled to meet Roh today and to address the National Assembly.