South Korea: Chun, the Kims and the constitutional struggle

Abstract

In December 1987 South Koreans will vote in the country's first direct presidential election since 1971. The candidates are expected to be Roh Tae Woo, a former general who heads the ruling Democratic Justice Party (DJP), and either Kim Dae Jung or Kim Young Sam, the leaders of the two largest factions of the main opposition party, the Reunification Democratic Party (RDP).1 The DJP was founded in 1981 by the current president, Chun Doo Hwan. In May 1980 in the wake of the assassination of Park Chung Hee in the previous year, Chun led a group of generals who seized power from an interim civilian government. Roh played a key role in the first stage of the coup, leading an army division from the North Korean border in an attack on military headquarters in Seoul in December 1979. In September 1981 Chun shed his uniform, organised a political party, and in February 1981 was elected president in an indirect (and stacked) election designed to win an easy victory. The party draws its political base from the hundreds of local officials Chun has appointed, and from the upper ranks of the middle class-retired military officers and businessmen with a stake in the system. Its policies have been based on anti-communism, fostering strong economic growth, deepening the country's alliance with the USA and Japan, maintaining hostility to North Korea and unrelenting repression against Koreans it considers 'subversive' and 'anti-state'. The DJP makes two claims to legitimacy. First, President Chun has promised to relinquish power in 1988 and preside over the first peaceful transfer of power in South Korean history. A laudable goal that has been. praised-with enthusiasm-from Washington. Chun's preference for a 'cabinet style' of government, in which the president is elected indirectly by the National Assembly, has proven to be highly unpopular in Korea. From the perspective of the democratic movement, the cabinet