World Notes SOUTH KOREA

It's hard for any President to get his program going in the face of heavy political opposition. It's triply difficult -- not to mention confusing -- when that opposition consists of three disgruntled political parties. The solution for South Korea's President Roh Tae Woo was to wade in and woo. Last week Roh stunned the nation by announcing that two of the three Kims who control the competition will join him in a ruling coalition he describes as "middle-of-the-road democrats."

Roh's new team, tentatively called the Democratic Liberal Party, embraces his own Democratic Justice Party, Kim Young Sam's Reunification Democratic Party and Kim Jong Pil's National Democratic Republican Party. This leaves Kim Dae Jung, head of the Party for Peace and Democracy, out in the cold with a mere 71 seats in the 299-seat legislature.

Kim Dae Jung denounced Roh's gambit as a "political coup d'etat" and demanded a general election, but most South Koreans were not so disgruntled. The country's fractious four-party system is unwieldy and inefficient, and besides, the opposition parties themselves are largely one-man shows. If nothing else, the realignment will reduce South Korea's confusing roster of same-sounding political parties, and perhaps with it, put an end to internecine bickering in the legislature.