Word: chun
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...rapid was Chun's takeover, and so hazy his background, that Western reporters were summoned to a special briefing just four days before his uncontested election. They learned such basic biographical details as his official birthdate and the preferred spelling of his name. When asked about Chun's possible shortcomings, a military aide paused, then said with a perfectly straight face: "He was molded by the hand...
More terrestrially, Chun spent an impoverished childhood as the son of an herbal medicine man. He finished in the top ten in his class at the national Military Academy, took special forces training in the U.S. and commanded a regiment of South Korea's White Horse Division during a year's stint in Viet Nam. Only last May he insisted: "I have no political ambitions." But his behind-the-scenes maneuvering indicated otherwise. "Chun's not the simple-minded soldier, as many abroad might think," a Western diplomat says...
...Chun's leadership has proved basically popular in a country long accustomed to authoritarian rule and still reeling from the aftershocks of Park's murder. His puritanical law-and-order approach has included the arrest of some 30,500 alleged gangsters and hooligans and the firing of 8,000 bureaucrats for alleged corruption or inefficiency. At the same time, Chun appeals constantly to Korea's less well-off with populist rhetoric. Says he: "We have to usher in a new era by building a democratic welfare society. Everyone must be satisfied materially as well as spiritually...
That goal is apt to be complicated by a severe case of stagflation, which has dropped the growth rate from an average of 9% in the mid-1970s to a record low of minus 5.9% in the second quarter of this year. Chun must also take care not to alienate the business community, which is vital to his political success. Allows Kim: "He has been letting our business men do their business and has not at all been interfering in their affairs...
...unpopular side of Chun's populism has been his unflinching use of repressive measures against opponents. Kim Dae Jung, 54, the vocal opposition leader, is currently being tried for sedition, a charge that the U.S. State Department calls farfetched. Another former rival, Kim Jong Pil, 54, onetime Prime Minister and head of the ruling Democratic Republican Party, is recuperating from 46 days of detention and grilling by the military. Still under house arrest is Kim Young Sam, 52, leader of the opposition New Democratic Party, who has renounced politics altogether. Chun has also imposed rigid military censorship...