South Korea: The President Opts for Mercy

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Chun spares Kim's life

Within the space of a single hour last week, South Korea's political situation took a dramatic and hopeful step forward. To hardly anyone's surprise, the country's 15-man Supreme Court had upheld a verdict rendered four months ago by a military court that sentenced Opposition Leader Kim Dae Jung, 55, to death by hanging for sedition and attempting to overthrow the government. But 60 minutes later, to some surprise and considerable relief, the South Korean Cabinet, at the direction of President Chun Doo Hwan, 50, commuted Kim's sentence to life imprisonment in the interest of "national reconciliation." Harsh as that was, it was far less than a death penalty that would have carried serious international repercussions.

Chun had good reasons for acting as he did. Kim, who has either been in jail or under house arrest for much of the time since he was kidnaped from a Tokyo hotel room in 1973 by the Korean CIA and hustled home, is one of South Korea's most popular politicians. Two years before his kidnaping, he polled 43% of the vote in an election that was obviously rigged to favor then President Park Chung Hee. Hanging him would get rid of a constant nemesis for Chun, an army general who became provisional President last September, nearly a year after Park's assassination. Chun is running for a full term in presidential elections on Feb. 25. Besides that, an execution would mollify Chun's fellow officers, who would like to eliminate their most divisive opponent.

But the argument on the other side was stronger. Since Kim's death sentence, the U.S., Japan and West Germany have conveyed strong protests and low-key threats to head off his execution. More than that, one day before the Supreme Court upheld Kim's death penalty, President Reagan's formal invitation to Chun to visit Washington was announced. The invitation, which Chun has accepted, will make the South Korean strongman one of the first foreign leaders to be received at the White House since Reagan's Inauguration. It would scarcely do for him to arrive with blood on his hands. Indeed, the new Administration would never have issued the invitation if it thought such an event likely.

The reaction to Chun's act of mercy was just what he had hoped for. The Japanese government, for whom the Kim case has become the most vexing and potentially critical problem with neighboring South Korea, was mollified and happy. Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki described himself as "greatly relieved that the worst has been avoided." Said a U.S. State Department spokesman in Washington: "We welcome the decision. Our concerns are well known to the Korean leaders, but this is President Chun's decision."