After Year, South Korea’s Leadership Is Different Yet Strangely Familiar : Asia: First civilian president in decades has pushed human rights. Yet like his predecessor, he still rules by decree.

Kim Young Sam, South Korea’s first civilian president in three decades, today marks a year in office that has brought a once authoritarian nation to its highest level of human rights and its government to a peak of popularity.

Yet even as they acknowledge the gains, observers point out an irony: Kim has been ruling largely by presidential decree--not all that differently from the late President Park Chung Hee, a general who took power in a 1961 coup and introduced authoritarianism to South Korea in 1971 when he made himself president for life.

“The style is the same. The content is entirely different,” says Rev. Kim Kwan Suk, a retired president of the Christian Broadcasting System.

Han Sang Jin, a Seoul National University professor of sociology, agrees.

“The power has been concentrated too much in President Kim,” he says. “If President Kim disappeared, I would guess that all of the reforms would collapse. I don’t see any forces that could continue them.

“The present situation is not as solid as foreign observers think,” Han adds. “We are far from achieving the consolidation of democratic institutions.”

Asked their opinion of a post-Kim era, three Western diplomats responded in unison: “It would depend on who takes over.”

Prof. Rhee Sang Woo of Sogang University, who is a frequent consultant to the government, argues that there is a significant difference between Kim and his military predecessors.

“The fundamental difference is that the Korean people, including the opposition, accept the Kim administration as a genuinely democratic government,” Rhee says.

A poll published by the newspaper Joong-Ang on Thursday found 62.3% of the people support Kim, while only 9.4% do not. The others had no opinion or said they neither supported nor opposed him.

Nonetheless, Robert A. Scalapino, professor of government emeritus at UC Berkeley, says Asian political systems, including South Korea’s, suffer a “uniformly weak . . . institutional base. Hence the dependence upon personalities is great.”

That is certainly true for Kim Young Sam. Like Park, he has become a giant tree: Nothing is growing in his shade.

“The machinery of democracy has not been established,” says Gene Matthews, a longtime Methodist missionary here.

The nation’s political parties remain moribund, unable either to generate policies or nurture new leaders.

There is even doubt whether the parties will remain intact until the next presidential election in 1997. The National Assembly still acts largely as a rubber stamp.

Even Korean ideological and cultural ethics have worked against institutionalizing democracy.

According to this year’s U.S. State Department human rights report on South Korea, “the government’s indirect influence on the media remains considerable,” with many journalists practicing “some degree of self-censorship to advance their careers.”

Government payments to reporters “have been curtailed but not halted completely,” it adds.

A national security law designed to thwart subversion by pro-Communist North Korea elements is still used “to violate the freedom of expression, association and travel,” the U.S. report declares.

Prior censorship of the arts still remains in force.

A ban on broadcast of Japanese movies and music lingers on nearly half a century after the end of the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

Laws that violate the standards of the International Labor Organization, to which South Korea belongs, have not been changed because of such Confucian beliefs that teachers belong to a sacrosanct profession and should not organize unions, Labor Minister Nam Jae Hee says.

“My headache is how to compromise the ILO standards with Korean realities,” Nam says. “We are not accustomed to the union activities of advanced countries.”

And a “curfew” that has been in effect since 1945 for all but the pre-1988 Olympic period is still enforced only by a government edict. In its form now, Koreans are allowed to stay out all night, but bars and restaurants must close at midnight. Kim amended it--again by decree--to allow 41 specific bars and restaurants that cater to foreigners to operate until 2 a.m.

The National Assembly has never voted on the issue.

“Most people don’t feel affected by these undemocratic practices,” Rev. Kim says. “A system of democratic cultural values is not deeply rooted. Our traditional political culture emphasizes the wholeness of national identity” over individual rights.

Kim’s predecessor, Roh Tae Woo, another ex-general, deserves much of the credit for ending authoritarian rule and carrying out a 1987 election pledge to “democratize” the country.

Roh’s greatest achievement may have been completing the transition from military to civilian rule by persuading Kim, who had spent three decades in the opposition, to join forces with him in 1990. Roh then anointed Kim his successor.

But Kim promised to go further. In his inauguration speech, he declared that his administration will “open a new era of democracy under civilian government.”

“The government that serves you from today will be a different kind of government”--one that will produce “a freer and more mature democratic society,” a higher quality of life, a respect for the dignity of individuals and a presidential office that “will be your good neighbor,” he said in that speech.

Except for the old Establishment, Kim’s reforms have drawn praise bordering on awe.

Kim has ended three decades of political intervention and manipulation by the Korean CIA, now euphemistically called the National Security Planning Agency.

He ousted a clique of more than 60 politically minded generals from the army. For the first time, the National Assembly has been empowered to examine the KCIA’s budget and oversee its activities.

In South Korea, these are rated as epochal accomplishments.

“I never expected President Kim to accomplish such a feat as eliminating that clique of generals. . . . I compliment him without reservation,” says Park Kwon Sang, a commentator who was ousted as editor of the daily Dong-A Ilbo in the wake of a 1980 coup by Maj. Gen. Chun Doo Hwan.

“Before President Kim, I always got calls from the Korean CIA and the police--if only to maintain contact,” Rev. Kim says.

The notorious Defense Security Command, through which both Chun and Roh advanced to the top, was also downgraded and prohibited from conducting surveillance on civilians.

“The coup watch is over,” one of the Western diplomats says.

But while surveillance has ended, reports persist that government agencies are still eavesdropping and bugging telephones without warrants, Kim says.

Human rights advocate Kim Keun Tae, whose most recent imprisonment came under Roh, says about 300 political prisoners remain in jail.

(The U.S. human rights report put the number at “well under 100,” excluding persons jailed for committing violent acts while expressing opinions.)

The U.S. report focused on two steps taken by the president as “democratic institutional reforms of historic nature.”

One was presidential jawboning--followed by enactment of an “ethics law”--requiring all high-level officials and politicians to reveal their family’s personal assets.

Hundreds of politicians, judges, prosecutors, policemen, generals and high officials with questionable fortunes were forced out of office.

The other was a decree requiring all financial transactions to be carried out under real names, rather than aliases. It was designed to thwart funds for bribery and tax evasion.

Although few charges were filed and no one was asked to give up any illicit earnings, the public was delighted by the sense of economic revenge and justice that both actions created.

In addition, the courts, once under the thumb of the president, also “are moving strongly toward establishing an independent judiciary,” says Matthews, the missionary.

The scene is not all rosy, however.

Union membership, which shot up after Roh’s promise of democratization in 1987, is now falling. Labor strife continues on a much-reduced scale but is still regarded as a potential threat to economic progress.

Nor have student radicals faded away. But democracy is no longer an issue that draws any support for anti-government demonstrations from average students, Prof. Han says.

Many Koreans forgive Kim for his authoritarian approach to implementing reforms because, they say, it is the only possible course.

His own followers remain a minority in the ruling Democratic Liberal Party that is dominated by backers of Roh and Chun.

“If he tries to compromise, he can’t have reform,” Labor Minister Nam says. “Only by using public opinion has President Kim overpowered his ruling party opponents.”

The government itself has recognized its shortcomings.

“Despite its considerable results, the reform drive during the past year can hardly be said to have met the people’s expectations,” Prime Minister Lee Hoi Chang said in a speech to the National Assembly on Feb. 16.

Henceforth, the government will concentrate on institutional reform and enactment of Kim’s reform policies into law, he added.

Several planned major reforms also remain to be carried out.

In its first attempt to write legislation on its own, the National Assembly is now trying to work out new election laws to slash campaign spending. Once that is accomplished, the last major piece in the planned framework of democracy--Korea’s first election of governors and mayors since 1960--is scheduled for next year.

Those elections, Prof. Rhee says, may produce a desperately needed new platform for the emergence of new leaders not hand-picked by the president.

They may also spur reform in both ruling and opposition parties. But they will also constitute a high risk to Kim’s own standing, he says.

For example, an elected mayor of Seoul, a city of 12 million, or more than a quarter of all South Koreans, is expected to exercise power rivaling that of the president.

Despite Kim’s own popularity, this is a race that the ruling party, which has usually fared poorly in the nation’s capital, might lose.

“The single issue of democracy will not be the determining factor for Kim’s support,” Rev. Kim says.

Although the economy appears to be turning upward again, rapid inflation poses an emerging danger.

The president’s opening of the Korean rice market to foreign imports and his handling of the North Korean nuclear issue have already lowered his support ratings, Rev. Kim adds.

“It will be very difficult for him to maintain his popularity of the last year,” Rev. Kim says.

But in historic terms, if the president continues his reforms successfully, Matthews says, Kim could become the first president in South Korea’s history to go into retirement “looking good and retaining a lot of credibility.”