S. Korea Dissidents Trading Riots for Peaceful Politics : Activism: Street battles have gone out of fashion in transition to democracy. Nation goes to polls Friday.

As a former foot soldier in the front lines of South Korea’s battle for democracy, Kim Sung Yon, 26, has done it all: grieved for friends who burned themselves to death, battled riot police, flouted the law and paid for it behind bars.

But now he labors away in a cluttered office plotting public education seminars and legislative strategy to pass laws discouraging land speculation.

Over at the National Assembly, Jeong Tae Keun has given up his Marxist ideology for a gray suit, a somber tie and a job inside the political process as secretary to a Democratic Party official.

Political revolution? Passe. Firebombs? Inappropriate. Unreformed radicals? Out of touch. South Korea’s dissident movement, whose violent street battles and passionate protests once helped define the national image, has fallen out of fashion.

Many of the dissidents have donned suits, abandoned socialist leanings and begun to pursue peaceful ways to bring about social change. Some, like Kim, have joined civic organizations dedicated to solving pollution, traffic and other problems plaguing daily life. Others have joined mainstream politics. Still others have faded into life as ordinary office workers.

With South Koreans preparing to elect a new president Friday, the activists’ conversion from riots to peaceful rallies, from lead pipes and firebombs to lobbying and legal action, is a striking symbol of the nation’s growing democratic maturity.

South Korea’s successful transition to democracy from decades of repressive military rule is also evident in the coming presidential election: For the first time since Park Chung Hee seized power in a coup in 1961, no military candidate is running, and the two front-runners, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, are both former opposition leaders.

“Under (former military ruler) Chun Doo Hwan, throwing firebombs and wielding iron pipes was perfectly justified, because we were defending ourselves from a bigger and greater state violence,” said the activist Kim, a former Seoul National University student leader who was twice arrested and jailed for his activities. “Now we’re continuing our struggles, but in a more realistic way.”

University campuses, once the breeding grounds for fearsome street fighters willing to immolate themselves for the cause, have calmed down considerably. The number of campus demonstrations is way down; so are incidents of rock-throwing, firebomb-lobbing, tear-gas firing and riot police injuries, among the more colorful data that are kept in copious detail by the National Police Administration.

The drastic drop in demonstrations has ended the glory days of South Korea’s notorious riot police. Nowadays, riot police are consigned to monitoring such mundane events as the recent taxi drivers’ strike; their helmets and shields seem almost anachronistic.

As one indication of political image-changing, Democratic Party candidate Kim Dae Jung, the godfather of South Korea’s dissident movement, is crafting what he calls his “New DJ Plan” to modify a radical image that he says was foisted on him by his political enemies. Aside from smiling more on TV to soften his dour mien, the erstwhile liberal described a new course of “dialogue, negotiation and grand reconciliation” with former political enemies--be they onetime dictator Chun, the military Establishment or the chiefs of the chaebols, South Korea’s industrial conglomerates.

“The orthodox formula of dictatorship versus democracy is over,” Kim Dae Jung declared in a recent interview. “The military is out of politics for good. Instead of viewing them as political enemies, I now look at them as political rivals on the foundation of democracy. . . .”

While some dissidents accuse Kim of selling out, the opposition leader said the movement’s radical elements have lost touch with the people, are too soft on communism or too anti-American and frequently resort to excessive violence. Likening himself to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Kim says his approach of working within the system is winning new converts every day.

The activists’ tactical turnabout began after President Roh Tae Woo, a former general elected with a plurality of votes in 1987, gradually loosened political constraints in response to public demands. As freedoms increased, public tolerance declined for the daily street battles, which caused traffic snarls and other inconveniences.

And just as dissidents were losing public support, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc robbed many of the young crusaders of their ideological model, political analysts say.

The changing social environment threw the dissident movement into disarray, splintering it into several groups, said Han Wan Sang, a political science professor at Seoul National University. Aside from those who decided to join the political establishment or civic organizations, some began espousing pro-North Korea sentiments. Others advocated toppling the current regime in favor of a new and as yet undefined social order.

Many of the prominent dissidents, however, are throwing in their lots with the mainstream political process. Take, for instance, Kim Keun Tae, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, who has been arrested nine times, spent a total of 16 years in prison over the past 25 years and recently won a civil suit and $60,000 settlement for being tortured while incarcerated.

Kim is clear on his aims: to work for complete political democracy and fight what he calls the “corrupt, vulgar capitalism” overtaking Korean society thanks to the collapse of communism and the continued presence of U.S. troops on South Korean soil.

He and his supporters debated with themselves for months whether to align themselves with Kim Dae Jung, support a different candidate or simply rely on grass-roots networking. Despite some objections that Kim Dae Jung had betrayed the cause, the dissident leader recently decided to back him as the most realistic means to his ends.

One fallout of the dissidents’ disarray is that still-pressing human-rights problems are going unnoticed, Han and Kim said. Despite the discernible democratic gains made under Roh’s administration, the two activists assert that there are more dissidents in jail today than under the Chun regime.

Kim Keun Tae says that as many as 800 political prisoners remain in jail. The government says the number is zero, that all inmates are serving time not for peaceful political activity but for breaking laws on demonstrations, assembly and violence. More worrisome than numbers, Han says, is the fact that the state’s National Security Law, which can and has been used to round up political critics, remains basically intact.

“That inhumane law has been the source of human rights violations in the past decade, and it remains unchanged,” Han said. “But people’s consciousness about human rights is getting dimmer, and I worry about the discrepancy between perception and reality.”

So does Kim Jung Won, 20, a student leader and senior in social science at Sungkyunkwan University. Mass rallies, the kind that used to draw 30,000 students, are not happening these days, as complacency settles over many campuses nationwide, she says.

Not only have students lost the romantic causes of the past. Student leaders have also lost the charisma they enjoyed when forced by Chun to operate underground. When Roh’s reforms allowed the student movement into the open, the mysterious leaders were unveiled as ordinary figures who ate, worked and studied just like everyone else, she said.

“Students are not as easily angered as before, and they are less interested in the arrests of students,” said Kim Jung Won.

Overall, campus demonstrations have plunged from 538 in 1989 to just 187 as of September this year. Political demonstrations in general have dropped from a high of 1,894 in 1987 to 1,212 last year to just 192 as of September, the National Police Administration reported.

The 281 firebombs lobbed this year represented a 72% decline from the previous year; the 171 rock-throwing incidents represented a 79% reduction.

Reflecting the shift from protesting the political system to rallying against road conditions, real-estate prices, pollution and other urban problems, special-interest demonstrations doubled to 301 as of September, compared to 151 the previous year.

Kim Sung Yon, the former “firebomb-thrower,” as he puts it, is one reason behind the surge in special-interest rallies. Now working with the Citizens Coalition for Economic Justice, Kim is lobbying to increase land and inheritance taxes to discourage real-estate speculation, which he says has put homes out of reach of the average citizen.

Over a recent lunch of beef rib soup, the affable activist recalled the catalysts for first getting involved in student activism: In April, 1986, his first year at Seoul National University, two students set themselves afire to protest the forced dispatch of students to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea for military exercises. Six months later, thousands of students suffered from smoke bombs, tear gas, severe beatings and eventual arrests in a clash with riot police over protests against the Chun government.

“At that point, I realized that the Chun government was born of violence and was destined to remain violent; that’s when I resolved to dedicate myself to student activism,” Kim said.

The next five years were a blur of riots, rallies, plotting, protests: the anniversary of the notorious 1980 Kwangju massacre; the discovery of massive vote-rigging in the Kuro district of Seoul; the 1987 presidential elections; the arrests of two prominent activists for traveling to North Korea without permission.

Finally, he was arrested in May, 1991, and underwent a political epiphany while imprisoned. As he heard the news of the Soviet Union’s collapse, he realized there was probably no hope for a socialist state and concluded that his idealism was not in keeping with the public mood.

“We were fighting for the masses, and yet we were separated from them,” Kim said. “To truly enhance their quality of life, I realized I should devote myself to a kind of civic movement such as the Council for Economic Justice.”

Lee Kwang Koo, 28, chose the legal system as his tool. In 1982, the brainy bookworm won a seat in Seoul National University’s Law School--the Harvard of South Korea--and faced a future of comfort and prestige as a prosecutor or judge. Yet he sacrificed that path--and his family’s approval--by quitting school in 1985 to devote himself full-time to dissident activities.

After several arrests and a stint organizing laborers at an auto parts supplier of Daewoo Motors, Lee decided to join a public-interest legal consulting center in 1990. There, he advises clients on everything from filing claims in industrial accidents to organizing unions to pressing for better wages and working conditions.

“We were so oppressed before, but times have changed,” Lee said. “The legal system is credible now.”

So is the political system--more or less, says Jeong, the secretary to Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Bu Young. (Lee himself is a noted dissident and former journalist purged in the mid-1970s who won a National Assembly seat in March.) In joining Lee’s staff, Jeong chose to work for the system rather than for its violent overthrow, as the former Marxist once advocated.

In his charcoal gray suit and burgundy tie, the soft-spoken Jeong, 29, hardly comes across as a flaming radical. But he was arrested in 1985 for helping to mastermind the seizure of the U.S. Information Service’s cultural center over charges of American complicity in the Chun government’s slaying of more than 200 protesters at Kwangju in 1980.

Jeong spent three years in prison, then began working on behalf of the Democrat Family Organization, a group of family members of slain or injured student activists. But in 1990, he says, the dissidents faced a crossroads: Form a mainstream political force of their own or continue activities outside the system.

Jeong chose the mainstream--and was bitterly accused of betrayal.

But as he prepares for Friday’s presidential elections, supervises his office’s National Assembly activities and helps Lee with the nuts and bolts of constituent service, Jeong--like most of the former street fighters--says he has no second thoughts.

“I have consistently felt this is the most effective road. From now, our major tools will be policy proposals rather than street fighting,” he said. “Although we were vehemently criticized at first, most people believe now that we have chosen wisely.”

Chi Jungnam, a researcher in The Times’ Seoul Bureau, contributed to this report.