South Korea needs a man to match the troubled moment

By Edward Neilan

Next South Korea's president will face international political pressures as well as humiliation of IMF-directed financial repair job.

SHANGHAI (JP): The Chinese academic's words were blunt: "The Korean Peninsula problem is up to China and the United States to settle."

No mention that Koreans themselves might have something to say about it. And an abrupt dismissal, as the conversation progressed, of the possibility that Japan might have some influence in untying the knot. We had been talking about the old Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai which included Syngman Rhee and Kim Ku.

The anecdote is by way of introduction to the Dec. 18 South Korean presidential election, as a reminder that there will be plenty of outside pressures on the next man to occupy the Blue House, coming as they will to be heaped additionally upon the humiliating IMF-directed financial repair job.

South Korea needs a man to match the moment; a leader to withstand the cliche that the country is only a "shrimp among whales" and to lead it proudly out of the valley.

It's a tall order.

One of my pleasures in this business has been to interview all of Korea's presidents starting with Syngman Rhee, continuing with Huh Chung, Yun Po-sun, Park Chung-hee, Choi Kyu-hah, Chun Doo- hwan, Roh Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam.

They all had their wonderful, dedicated moments and they all had their warts.

How could Rhee botch his clear claim to being "father of the country" by entrusting so much responsibility to a weak lieutenant, the tragic Lee Ki-pong?

How could the intuitively brilliant Park go so wrong in his policy toward the press?

Why couldn't Chun and Roh allow their nobler instincts to restrain their greed?

Didn't Kim Young-sam know things would start to go bad, that the Korean whammy would be unleashed, when he ordered destruction of the old Japanese colonial headquarters as a political ploy?

They were human beings involved in great Korean tragicomedies that wrenched a nation.

It will be another thoroughly "Korean" man whom the electorate entrusts to lead the nation out of the current morass and I have every confidence the voters will make the right choice.

The candidates are Lee Hoi-chang, 62, of the Grand National Party; Rhee In-je,49, New Party by the People; and Kim Dae- jung,74, National Congress for New Politics.

Lee is a newcomer put forward by President Kim before their falling out. Rhee is a Park Chung-hee look-alike who will get some votes on image alone.

The sentimental favorite has to be Kim Dae-jung, the legend that walks and talks like a man.

There was a time when Kim was viewed as so radical that the U.S. ambassador wouldn't even invite this man to the July 4 party at the American Embassy.

Now Kim is a political ally of Kim Jong-pil, mastermind of the Park Chung-hee coup of 1961 and inventor of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency which later kidnapped Kim in Tokyo. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard about the Kims' linkup.

But, on the other hand, both men are consummate politicians in the Korean context and "the first duty of the President is to get elected."

Part of their handshake is for Kim Dae-jung to serve the first half of the term as president and then give way to Kim Jong-pil as prime minister in a new parliamentary system.

In exchanging greetings before his Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan speech two years ago, Kim recalled the time this reporter had been his luncheon guest in his Seoul home surrounded by government troops.

The house arrest edict was lifted in time for him to run unsuccessfully for president in 1987--who can forget those great campaign rallies at Yoido Plaza? He had lost in a run for that post in 1971 against Park, lost to Roh Tae-woo in a three-way race with Kim Young-sam in 1987 and lost again to Kim in 1992.

In his Tokyo speech, he expressed disappointment that relations between South Korea and Japan had not improved dramatically. Despite 30 years of trying, "the sad reality is that the spiritual and psychological frictions and conflicts between our two peoples continue to be aggravated rather than to improve."

Kim has said the inevitably-unified two Koreas "will be a member of the five wealthiest nations in the world before the end of the first quarter of the next century." Given Korea's current economic situation, only a candidate making his fourth try for the presidency could be so optimistic.

The writer is a visiting scholar at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.