South Korea Talk And Fight

Once again, last Friday, the heart of Seoul was turned into a combat zone. Tens of thousands of demonstrators roamed through the capital's streets and squares, unfurling banners and shouting slogans protesting the rule of President Chun Doo Hwan. Once again they were pursued relentlessly by squads of police wearing their familiar Darth Vader helmets and brandishing chest- high shields. Once again the stench of pepper gas, fired in prodigious quantities by the police, wafted into the early summer night, an acrid testament to the scenes of defiance.

The sudden burst of mass protest was not the largest or most violent in South Korea's increasingly bitter cycle of protest, but it was dramatic enough to indicate that the crisis was not abating. The demonstrations climaxed a week that had up to then been dominated by a potentially hopeful outbreak of meetings and discussions. For the first time the U.S. entered the fray in a major way. Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur was dispatched on a hastily arranged three-day visit to Seoul with instructions to assess the situation and warn the government against a military crackdown. Chun, for his part, offered a major concession to his opponents. But opposition leaders rejected the President's peace offering and returned defiantly to the streets.

Chun's concession was to rescind his April 13 order postponing debate on democratic reform of the constitution until after next year's Summer Olympics in Seoul. But the President wanted to restrict such debate to the National Assembly, which had already considered the matter for nearly a year without taking action on it. The opposition, which has set as its primary goal direct presidential elections, insists that the issue be submitted to a national referendum.

Though the government and the opposition missed an opportunity to settle the country's most serious crisis in seven years, the week produced no lack of movement. For the first time in his presidency, Chun met face to face with Kim Young Sam, one of the country's two principal opposition leaders. At Kim's urging, the President then freed the other leader, Kim Dae Jung, from eleven weeks of house arrest. The stopover by Sigur, who is Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was prompted by growing alarm in Washington at the nightly clashes between demonstrators and riot police in the cities of a major ally. Sigur urged Chun and other officials not to overreact to the demonstrations, especially by calling out the military, as they have done in the past. Said Sigur: "Any use of the armed forces in this situation is unwarranted."