TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/87/87capts.13

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 14KB | 272 lines

                                                                                December 28, 1987

SOUTH KOREA

A Vote for Stability


Roh wins big, but opponents cry "fraud" and vow to overturn his
election


Late in the evening, officials at the Seoul counting station
carefully -- almost tenderly -- unlocked scores of metal ballot
boxes. Then, amid the glare of television lights and the
intent stares of observers, 80 people began to tot up the
results.

The election night scene mirrored all the hope and anticipation
of South Korea's first free presidential race in 16 years. For
weeks, Opposition Leaders Kim Dae Jung, 62, and Kim Young Sam,
60, had charged that Roh Tae Woo, 55, the candidate of the
ruling Democratic Justice Party, would have to resort to
widespread fraud to win the contest. The allegations poisoned
the campaign atmosphere with distrust and helped provoke
sporadic violence. Still, South Koreans flocked to the polls
last week in record numbers:  nearly 90% of the 26 million
registered voters braved long lines and freezing cold to cast
their ballots.

When the results were announced, the verdict stunned the
country.

Though a neck-and-neck race had been expected, Roh won the
contest for the five-year presidential term with 36% of the
tally. Kim Young Sam, leader of the Reunification Democratic
Party, finished second with 27.4%, followed by Kim Kae Jung,
who heads the Party for Peace and Democracy, with 26.5%.
Former Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil, who was considered a threat
to drain votes from Roh, picked up 8%.

For Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung the results provided a
bitter and all too obvious lesson:  the opposition's combined
total of nearly 55% of the vote would have beaten Roh had there
been a single candidate. Because neither Kim would bow out,
Roh's rivals managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The size of Roh's margin startled even his own supporters. "we
underestimated people's desire for stability," said Hym Hong
Choo, vice-chairman of Roh's campaign. That yearning proved
crucial in a country that has suffered many a spell of
repression and rebellion since the republic was founded in 1948
in the wake of post-World War II partitioning of Korea. Having
grown over the past decade into a sizable economic power, South
Korea now longs for political maturity. That would help ensure
the success of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, which South
Koreans view as something of a coming-of-age festival.
Continued turmoil, by contrast, could threaten the Olympics and
deal a shattering blow to South Korean prestige.

Roh, a former general, ran well in small towns and rural areas,
which tend to be conservative. He won strong support near the
Demilitarized Zone with North Korea, where thousands of U.S.
and South Korean troops are a constant reminder of the threat
of a Communist invasion. Said a 77-year-old Roh backer and
refugee from the North:  "I voted for the candidate who was
best qualified to defend the nation."  Roh's effort was
bolstered by a tragic event:  the Nov. 29 disappearance near
Burma of a Korean Air Lines jet with 115 people aboard. When
the Seoul government charged that the plane was destroyed by a
bomb planted by North Korean agents, the Communist threat was
raised anew.

The opposition attributed its electoral loss entirely to fraud
by the military-backed government of President Chun Doo Hwan.
Deriding the vote as the "worst instance of election rigging in
the history of my republic," Kim Dae Jung predicted "utter
chaos" and a national uprising against Roh and Chun. Said Kim:
"They have dug their own graveyard."  Kim Young Sam described
the election as "totally null and void" and pledged to "be in
the vanguard of the struggle" to oust Roh and Chun. The
National Coalition for Democracy, an opposition umbrella group,
called for a return to the "glory of the National resistance in
June" when student-led protests forced the Chun government to
abandon its plans for an electoral college vote that the regime
could control. The scheme was replaced by last week's direct
election.

The opposition was not alone in accusing the government of
cheating. Poll watchers reported a number of suspicious
incidents:  most than 3,000 were claimed in Seoul, another 300
in the southern city of Kwangju, a Kim Dae Jung stronghold.
But compared with the Philippine elections last year that
eventually led to the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos, the Southern
Korean vote seemed relatively clean. While there were instances
of ballot- box stuffing, many of the cheating charges appeared
to be based on hearsay and could not be proved.

Foreign observers had a mixed opinion of the balloting's
fairness. A group of U.S. congressional aides said they were
concerned about election abuses. But Steven Schneebaum of the
Washington-based International Human Rights Law Group noted,
"There does not appear to be, based on what we've seen,
widespread election-day fraud."

In Washington, the State Department was pleased with the
outcome. "It would certainly seem that the whole process has
gone pretty well," said one official. In a cautiously worded
statement, State Department Spokesman Charles Redman
congratulated Roh on his victory and said the U.S. "looks
forward to working closely with him."  With 40,000 troops
deployed in South Korea, however, the U.S. is wary of stirring
up anti-American sentiment among the opposition, so Redman took
note of the fraud charges. They must be dealt with "as fairly
and quickly as possible," said he, "so that the process of
reconciliation can proceed."

Throughout the campaign, fear mounted that huge demonstrations
would ensue if Roh won. But students, who were the vanguard of
last summer's protests, were initially quiet after the results
were announced. Though scuffles broke out last Thursday
between some 2,000 demonstrators and police in Kwangju, unrest
did not spread. Antigovernment youths, already exhausted by the
bitter election campaign, at first seemed stunned by the size
of Roh's victory. When 150 of them staged a rally at Seoul's
Yonsei University, not a single policeman showed up to challenge
them. After marching for an hour and shouting antigovernment
slogans in the chilly evening air, the students gradually
disbanded. "This is not like June," one said. "The people
don't support us."

The calm was broken, though, on Friday. In downtown Seoul,
some 300 slogan-chanting students hurled stones and fire bombs
at police, who responded with volleys of eye-stinging pepper
gas. Across town a more violent scene unfolded. In a dawn raid,
riot police stormed a ward office building that opposition
supporters had occupied since Wednesday. The protesters seized
the building after spotting a ballot box suspiciously hidden
among packages of bread, crackers and noodles on a truck parked
outside. Police smashed doors and swarmed up ladders as the
students fought back in fierce hand-to-hand combat. About 1,000
demonstrators were finally led away, some bloody and
unconscious.

For Roh the victory climaxed a remarkable evolution. As the
handpicked successor of the authoritarian, widely disliked
Chun, the ex-general was vilified by many last summer when the
Democratic Justice Party nominated him for President. Under
the electoral college voting system then in use, Roh appeared
certain of victory. But immediately after his nomination,
widespread demonstrations broke out across the country.
Although students led the protests, many members of the growing
middle class supported them by also taking to the streets.

Roh soon realized that although he could win the election, he
might not be able to rule the country. Thus on June 29,
without prior consultation with Chun, Roh bowed to popular
demand and proposed direct presidential elections. That defused
the crisis, but opposition supporters continued to view Roh with
disdain and suspicion, interpreting his concession as a tactical
retreat rather than an authentic conversion to democracy.

Aware that he would never recruit opposition students to his
cause, Roh focused his campaign on farmers, workers, women an
the middle class. He portrayed himself as a down-to-earth
fellow who would finally end military-backed rule. Carefully
distancing himself from Chun, Roh promised to reform the feared
Korean intelligence agency and punish any crimes committed by
the Chun government. He even pledged to hold a referendum after
the Olympics on his performance as President. "Roh was seen as
a successful born-again democrat," said Political Scientist Han
Sung Joo of Korea University. "He endured personal and
physical attacks without resorting to non-democratic responses."

As Roh's appeal grew, the opposition fell into disarray. For
weeks the two Kims jockeyed to see which of them would run for
President. Both had previously pledged that there would be
only one opposition candidate. Kim Dae Jung had actually
declared that he would not stand. But ambition proved too
strong a force, and by October it was clear that both men would
be candidates.

All the while, relations between the two Kims grew frostier.
Only days before the election, Kim Young Sam called on his
rival to drop out of the race. Kim Dae Jung's supporters
responded by storming a printshop that had produced leaflets for
the Kim Young Sam campaign and seizing flyers that, they
insisted, said their man had withdrawn from the contest.

Though the flyers were ambiguous, Kim Dae Jung attached Kim
Young Sam as deceitful and "immoral."  Kim Young Sam's forces
called the attack a clear sign of panic.

Throughout the campaign, the Chun government spared no effort
on Roh's behalf. News programs by the two
government-controlled television networks again and again showed
Roh surrounded by warm, admiring crowds and broadcast his past
speeches on days when he did not campaign. At the same time,
a spate of news stories described South Korea's rapid economic
growth in terms that reflected glowingly on the Chun government
and the ruling party's candidate. So biased was the coverage
that some 30 journalists from the government-owned KBS network
staged a sit- down strike to demand more objectivity.

Right up to the end, election fever swept the country. Crowds
grew bigger, the cheering louder -- almost as if the country
were trying to make up, in a few weeks, for the years when
strongman rule made a mockery of democracy. Kim Dae Jung
claimed that 3 million people heard him at a single Seoul rally.
Roh drew a turnout only slightly smaller in the capital. Kim
Yong Sam attracted cheering crowds in cities along the route of
a motorcade that would 300 miles from Pusan in the south to
Imjin- Gak, just below the North Korean border. By election
eve, following dozens of rallies and speeches, all three major
candidates were rasping and wheezing; a sever cold, exhaustion
and rising blood pressure forced Kim Dae Jung to cancel his
final pre-election appearance.

When he takes office in February, Roh Tae Woo will lead a South
Korea that in a few short years has grown into one of the
world's most vibrant industrial nations. "Any new President has
to be really dumb to make a mess out of the South Korean
economy," says Suh Sang Mok, senior economist with the
Seoul-based Korean Development Institute. Fueled by exports of
everything from cars to clothing, the South Korean gross
national product is expected to grow by more than 8% next year.
The country's new prosperity is astonishing. Per capita income
climbed from $105 in 1965, when the country was a Third World
backwater still recovering from the three-year Korean War, to
$2,950 today.

Roh's first task will be to heal the wounds inflicted by the
election campaign. Before he even moves into the presidential
Blue House, the government will have to cope with protesters
claiming that the voting was rigged. In an interview with
TIME's Barry Hillenbrand last week, Roh said the protesters
were "opposed to the present democratic system."  The way to
deal with those people, he added, "is to make continuous efforts
at dialogue and persuasion."  He defended the use of pepper gas
as "necessary to prevent violence from creating a more chaotic
situation."

Roh's status as a minority President should cause him to tread
lightly in many areas. Says he:  "I am aware that a
considerable amount of votes went to the opposition candidates."
Accordingly, Roh pledged to craft his policies "to reflect
those wishes of the people who voted for the opposition."  Roh
also said he would consider opposition party members for Cabinet
posts. That may be essential in any case. With National
Assembly elections possible in February, the opposition could
make a strong showing. In the 1985 National Assembly ballot,
three antigovernment parties won 60% of the seats.

After Roh's victory, many Koreans were calling for an era of
reconciliation. In a sense, the election represented a
struggle between the autocratic and faction-ridden South Korea
of the past four decades and the democratic industrial state
that is trying to be born. Roh's common-man approach may be
just what is needed to speed the transition. "Roh is not vastly
popular," Romberg said voters turned to Roh as the "man who
could keep the country on course for prosperity and stability."

Roh may also represent something deeper. Throughout much of
their history, Koreans have held strong feelings against past
conquerors and injustices. Such resentment is known in Korean
as han. More recently, South Korea adopted a jaunty, animated
tiger called Hodori as the symbol of the Seoul Olympics and the
national spirit. In the race between the backward-looking han
and the ever optimistic Hodori, last week's election may be a
sign that the tiger has bounded ahead.

By John Greenwald. Reported by S. Chang and Barry Hillenbrand/
Seoul.