South Korea: Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

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President Chun Doo Hwan seems to have lost patience with the growing clamor for democratic reform. Among the first to feel his wrath: Kim Dae Jung, 61, the country's leading dissident, who was placed under house arrest for the ninth time since he returned to Seoul from exile in the U.S. a year ago. Last week government

officials also temporarily detained Kim Young Sam, a leader of the opposition New Korea Democratic Party, and 270 followers, 77 of them representatives in the National Assembly. Meanwhile, about 1,000 police surrounded the N.K.D.P.'s downtown Seoul headquarters, preventing a party meeting from taking place.

The crackdown was sparked by a petition drive mounted by opposition leaders. Its aim: revision of the 1980 South Korean constitution to allow direct election of the President, instead of the current electoral-college system, which allegedly favors Chun's ruling party. Chun, for his part, wants a moratorium on political reform until after the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Scoffs Kim Young Sam: "To say that the nation should absorb all the government madness until 1988 is to say that Korea could go to pieces after the Olympics."