Kim Reportedly to Decide Soon on Roh Trial

President Kim Young Sam was reportedly determined Monday to decide within 10 days whether to put his predecessor, Roh Tae Woo, on trial for accepting bribes, as a minister in Kim’s Cabinet declared that the South Korean people will demand the arrest of the former president.

“Prosecutors will initiate criminal proceedings against Roh before President Kim leaves for the summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation [APEC] forum” in Osaka, Japan, later this month, the newspapers Moonhwa Ilbo and Korea Times both quoted a high ruling party official as saying.

Roh, who confessed to amassing a $653-million slush fund while he was president, from 1988 to 1993, “will be the only politician made to shoulder responsibility,” the ruling party figure was quoted as saying.

“If the Roh affair is prolonged, it will impede passage of the budget in the National Assembly,” the official said, according to the two newspapers. He also was reported as having declared that “core members” of the party have concluded that Roh’s arrest is “inevitable.”

Information Minister Oh In Hwan, meanwhile, told reporters that “public opinion will not accept it if there is no arrest” of Roh. Ministry officials later played down the remark--the first by any government official to mention a possible arrest. They said Oh was not speaking in an official capacity.

The newspaper Hankook Ilbo reported that a poll it conducted with Media Research Co. found that 69.4% of respondents thought Roh should be arrested. The respondents were divided, however, on whether the former president, who ended authoritarian rule and launched democratic reforms, should be jailed, exiled or pardoned.

Prosecutors, who questioned Roh for more than 16 hours last week, announced that leaders of at least six conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economy will be summoned for questioning today.

Ahn Kang Min, the prosecutor in charge of investigating Roh’s slush fund, refused to name the tycoons.

“We cannot rule out the possibility that Roh took kickbacks in the process of signing contracts with foreign contractors . . . and deposited them in banks abroad,” Ahn said. “If that turns out to be true, it would play a decisive role in deciding whether to lodge bribery charges against Roh.”

Speaking to reporters, Park Tae Keun, a director of the Hanbo Group, said he told prosecutors in questioning over the weekend that his conglomerate accepted an offer of a loan from Roh for $78 million at 8.5% interest with a five-year grace period. He denied that the transaction was intended to help Roh conceal his funds.

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this story.