S. Korean Power Struggle Looms Amid Election Pomp

Three legislators are seeking reelection from jail--and might win.

Some college youths drumming up enthusiasm for President Kim Young Sam’s ruling party are dancing in the streets; others are throwing firebombs to bring the government down--but aiming carefully, so as not to hurt anyone.

Then there is the opposition advertisement decrying high prices--starring “speechless” anchovies so proud of their value that they just don’t know what to say.

A raucous, no-holds-barred--yet fundamentally good-natured--festival of democracy is exploding across South Korea as it heads toward Thursday’s legislative elections, a vote that will define the limits of Kim’s power for the remaining 22 months of his term and strongly influence the race to succeed him.

For the famous “three Kims” of South Korean politics--opposition leaders Kim Dae Jung, 72, and Kim Jong Pil, 70, plus the president--the results of this race will set the tone for the final years of their careers. Will they enjoy triumphs? Or does the future hold defeat and perhaps even disgrace?

Longtime pro-democracy fighter Kim Dae Jung’s hopes for the presidency ride on this vote. Hanging in the balance for conservative leader Kim Jong Pil are possibilities ranging from political oblivion to another term as prime minister, perhaps under a revised constitution shifting power to that post from the presidency. For Kim Young Sam, 68, the results may determine whether he can look forward to an honored retirement.

Immediately at stake are the 299 seats of the National Assembly, with virtually all analysts predicting that the president’s ruling New Korea Party will lose its majority and, thus, face a new era of political flux and uncertainty.

The ruling party was hit last week by mass student demonstrations calling for the president’s ouster. But in the past few days it has also been boosted by North Korean efforts to undermine the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, making national security a campaign issue.

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The election comes against the background of last year’s imprisonment of former presidents Chun Doo Hwan, 65, who took power in a 1980 mutiny, and Roh Tae Woo, 63, a military colleague who backed Chun’s rise and then succeeded him. They face trial on sedition and corruption charges.

President Kim says the former presidents must be punished “to right the wrongs of history,” citing their alleged corruption and roles in the brutal suppression of a pro-democracy civilian uprising in the southwestern city of Kwangju in 1980 that left at least 240 dead.

But it is widely believed in South Korea that money from a $653-million slush fund, which Roh has admitted accumulating while in office, flowed into President Kim’s 1992 presidential election campaign--and that the campaign’s total spending was far in excess of a $48-million legal spending limit.

Kim Dae Jung, who has admitted receiving $2.6 million from the nominally neutral Roh for his own unsuccessful 1992 presidential bid, has repeatedly charged that about $390 million of Roh’s fund went to Kim Young Sam’s campaign.

President Kim has denied receiving any money directly from Roh. But neither he nor his party has said clearly whether funds from Roh flowed into the campaign.

Partly because the president, limited by law to a single term, might be vulnerable to disgrace--or worse--on the campaign funding issue after he steps down, his top political priority is widely seen as ensuring that power remains in friendly hands. Thus, well beyond ordinary issues of legislative control, all three Kims have intense personal reasons to battle for the strongest possible showings this week.

Observers predict a five-way split among three major parties headed by the three Kims, a minor fourth party and a loose grouping of conservatives running as independents, including the three imprisoned lawmakers facing trial in the 1980 mutiny. For each of the three major parties, doing significantly better or worse than expected will be viewed as a victory or defeat for its leader.

“For Kim Dae Jung, the next presidential election is his final bid for the presidency,” said Kim Ho Jin, a dean at Korea University and past president of the Korea Political Scientists Assn. “If he fails in these legislative elections . . . he loses his political base. . . . For Kim Jong Pil, if he loses it means he disappears permanently from the political arena. . . . For Kim Young Sam, if he loses in this legislative election . . . [and] cannot transfer his presidential power to a loyal successor, he might be doomed like presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo. . . . That’s why they are fighting very intensely.”

But at the grass-roots level, even the toughest contests generally retain an undercurrent of civility, lacking the fight-to-the-death bitterness that infected South Korean politics in the years of student-led struggle against military rule.

Fish, for example, play a key role in some of the hardest-hitting political attacks.

“The Anchovies Are Speechless,” declares the headline of a catchy newspaper advertisement run by Kim Dae Jung’s National Congress for New Politics, picturing the longtime staple of the Korean diet on sale for more than twice the price of beef.

“Never in our history has the price of anchovies been so high,” it continues. “Housewives are speechless. They simply give up buying anchovies, yet still the price doesn’t go down. The anchovies are speechless too. They don’t know who to thank for this. . . . Not only anchovies, but the price of everything goes up and up, yet business is bad. We cannot let the people who are unable to revive the economy manage this nation.”

While price increases are a fact of life in South Korea, the opposition cheerfully ignores evidence that oil spills played a big part in driving up anchovy prices.

The country’s fourth-largest political grouping, the Democratic Party, which doesn’t have a Kim at its head, has launched sharp attacks on the three Kims. One came with an unattractive picture of three vaguely grim-faced cooked fish and the declaration: “Let’s have a different meal for a change! How come we just have three Kims for every election? However good a meal is, you get tired of the same thing three days in a row.”

An enormously popular fad in this year’s election, used by all parties to draw youthful voters, is the use of hit songs with the words changed.

One such song, “The Man in a Yellow Shirt,” needed only a single change for a ruling party rally in the southern port city of Pusan, becoming “Kim Woon Hwan [a National Assembly candidate] in a Yellow Shirt.” It went on to proclaim, using original lyrics: “A man of few words. I’m inclined to like him. . . . He’s not that handsome, but he’s manly. Somehow I like him, I like him.”

As this and other songs blared over a sound truck’s loudspeakers, a corps of jeans-clad college students danced furiously to the beat, further helping to draw and entertain a crowd.

With no party now expected to win an absolute majority, heavy postelection maneuvering is expected, possibly leading to party realignments or even constitutional change.

A dismal showing for President Kim’s New Korea Party and a strong vote for Kim Jong Pil’s United Liberal Democrats, some analysts say, could lead to a partnership between the two parties to carry out constitutional revisions that would cancel the presidential election scheduled for late 1997 and install a system of Cabinet government led by a prime minister.

In that case, Kim Jong Pil--an old-line politician seen as unable to win a presidential race but credible as prime minister, a post he held for five years in the early 1970s--might emerge as the country’s next leader.

A resounding victory for Kim Dae Jung’s National Congress for New Politics would give him a running start toward his long-coveted goal of winning the presidency.

If the ruling party comes out solidly on top, that would place President Kim in a strong position to push forward a trusted, handpicked candidate as his successor. Former Prime Minister Lee Hoi Chang, 60, who has a “Mr. Clean” reputation and is the ruling party’s campaign manager, is a leading contender to win the nod.

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