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Can South Korea Make a Peaceful Transition?
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13254 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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10 / 1987 |
1,998 Words |
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Ray S. Cline
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After 40 years of political experiment in which all leaders of the Republic of Korea (ROK) claimed to be aiming at transition from Asian authoritarianism to democratic constitutionalism, the dynamic society of 42 million people in South Korea is still struggling to cross that critical threshold.
The alternate stern repression of opposition by President Chun Doo-Hwan and intermittent promises of a free direct election leave South Korea teetering between the traditional Korean quasi-monarchic style of governing and a new world of representative government and divided powers.
This experiment in modernizing an ancient Asian culture and people is critically important because it is part of a systemic struggle taking place in many parts of the world between totalitarian dictatorship, on the one hand, and representative government with respect for civil liberties on the other.
A major war, undeclared but devastating to the Korean people, was fought in this peninsula 35 years ago, with American, Soviet, and Chinese communist participation. It was precisely to determine whether Soviet-style dictatorship or some other more benign political system would prevail. The war ended in a draw. Dictatorship has flourished in North Korea to this day, and the Republic of Korea has had its ups and downs in struggling to be a democratic success story.
Compared with North Korea, the ROK is an open society and an economic miracle of growth and improved standards of living. It has not yet, however, managed a peaceful and lawful transition from one political leader to the next. This achievement, Chun says, is his sole objective in steering his country through the turbulence that has marked the past year and bids fair to mark the next six months.
Most political groups other than those controlled by Chun are pressing vigorously for immediate change in South Korea. The anti-Chun political opposition is supported by students and businessmen chafing under the tight control Chun exercises over their enterprises and especially over their distribution of profits. Many of them have taken to the streets in nation-wide peaceful demonstrations that Chun's police and military forces could have suppressed only with a bloodbath that would have been condemned by nearly all, including Korea's indispensable alliance partner, the United States.
Some influential members of the Korean military elite feel that the narrow clique of officers closely associated with Chun - who occupy nearly all key governmental and military posts in the ROK - should withdraw from politics and resume a strictly professional role as guarantors of national security. Obviously Chun does not think so. He has carefully built up as his successor retired Gen. Roh Tae-Woo, his Korean Military Academy classmate and coconspirator in seizing political power in the 1979-1981 interregnum after former President Park Chung-Hee's death.
Faced with massive resistance in the streets, Roh and Chun have offered direct presidential elections as demanded and complete freedom for political opposition parties to compete with the Democratic Justice Party (DJP) headed by Roh, provided the National Assembly in which they are represented can quickly agree on a new constitution in time for a late 1987
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