DEMOCRACY IN KOREA...

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T02051R000200350045-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2011
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: November 20, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/08/12 : CIA-RDP05TO2051 R000200350045-2
D6 St Nimi , NOvDIRER 20, 1988
Q~be 1P1ft5bW*9t0U 905t
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Democracy in Korea .. .
DEMOCRACY IS at work in South Korea in the
most strenuous way. The opposition now
controls the legislature and with it a new
investigative capacity, which it is using to probe the
suspected lavish misdeeds of its old nemesis, former
president Chun Doo Hwan. The findings are having a
devastating impact on Mr. Chun, who was forced to
step down last February by massive public demon-
strations. They are also deeply embarrassing to his
successor as president, Roh Tae Woo, his longtime
military comrade and political protege, who had
seemed to be doing fine-making Korea more
democratic, holding the Olympics, maintaining eco-
nomic momentum, staying close with the United
States, appealing for reunification-until this truck
came down the road.
Koreans, thinking in broad terms of the abuse of
power, claim to see a resemblance to the American
Watergate. But the Korean case is unquestionably
graver. Mr. Chun, a military man, is accused of
brutality, corruption and unlawful seizure of power.
Hearings have been held-the witnesses include
victims of army torture-into the most* flagrant
incident of his eight-year tenure, the army's suppres-
sion of a popular uprising in Kwangju in 1980 in
which at least 200 civilians were killed. His relatives
are being arrested; a brother has already been
sentenced to seven years for embezzlement. In the
past the opposition said it would not press for
criminal prosecution of Mr. Chun himself if he
apologized fully, returned ill-gotten gains and accept-
ed exile to his home town. But until now he has been
resisting these conditions, and public calls to move
against him are rising.
Pushing President Roh one way are whatever
feeling of personal loyalty he may have to his
erstwhile friend and patron and also the threats
that Mr. Chun is making to tell dark secrets about
his former colleagues. Pulling him the other way
are pressures from the political arena to let the
truth come out and, presumably, his notion of
what is best for his country.
Looking hard at the past is something new to
South Korea. There were always reasons or
rulers to keep that painful task from being done.
This year's transition from authoritarian to demo-
cratic rule, however, has changed the pattern.
There is a passion to clear the air. It would be
startling if some part of it were not of political
origin, but another part seems to entail a deeper
investment: to tell the truth so that ' bad things
will not be done again. Mr. Chun is paying one
sort of price, Mr. Roh another, for a searing
exercise in democracy.
...And in Pakistan
p AKISTAN IS the latest country where military
rulers have sponsored fair democratic elec-
tions to elect a civilian government. It is one of
the more exciting global political developments of the
1980s, as important as the moving of human rights
considerations to the center of things was in the
1970s. While neither of these developments is
complete, the United States can take quiet satisfac-
tion in being a principal patron of both of them.
There was in Pakistan, by all reports, a genuine
and general exhilaration at the opportunity after 11
years to return to popular rule. Democratic elec-
tions do not merely legitimize political power and
establish a country's international respectability,
they confirm citizens' dignity. The time is past
when military governments can be suffered as the
best alternative available in difficult circumstances,
let alone celebrated for their putative advantages.
Everywhere the generals are on the defensive.
Not that in Pakistan they are gone from the
political scene. The international and ethnic tensions
hovering over and in Pakistan ensure that the;
military remains in the near background, politically
discreet now but capable of asserting itself later.
Most politicians associated with fomer military ruler
Zia ul-Haq were rejected at the polls. But 36-year-old
Benazir Bhutto won the most seats (a plurality) and
appears the likely choice to form a new government,
and her elevation is sure to test the detachment of a
Pakistani military that harbors abiding distrust for
her late father, for his and now her party and for her
populist inheritance. In the election period Miss
Bhutto has been taking careful note of the military's
sensitivities. But certain lines-they could turn out
to be lines of agreement or lines of tension-are
shaping up: on one side the duly elected prime
minister governs while on the other the military
presses to retain its lion's share of the budget, its
nuclear enterprise and its control over Pakistan's
assertive policy in Afghanistan.
The United States enjoyed the convenience of
working with the old Pakistani military leadership
in Afghanistan. But although the turbulence gen-
erated by the Afghan war has not yet come to an
end, almost all Americans who think about it are
bound to respect and support Pakistan's achieve-
ment in returning at least formally to the demo-
cratic fold.
Approved For Release 2011/08/12 : CIA-RDP05TO2051 R000200350045-2