Word: chun
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What legitimacy Chun does possess he owes in part to solid support from the Reagan Administration. In 1981 Chun became one of the first foreign heads of state to be received by the new U.S. President. Richard Walker, a former U.S. Ambassador to Seoul, recently described the 1985 South Korean parliamentary elections, which were criticized by many observers as having been weighted in the government's favor, as "generally free and fair." The current U.S. ambassador, former CIA Official James R. Lilley, testified at his Senate confirmation that he regarded South Korea's national security as more important than democratic...
...Chun promised from the outset that he would serve only a single seven-year term as President. He agreed to open negotiations on a series of constitutional and electoral reforms. The parliamentary opposition, led by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam (see following story), had as its main goal the abolition of South Korea's electoral college, a panel of more than 5,000 elected delegates that chooses the President. Instead, the opposition wanted direct elections for a chief executive. The electoral-college system favors the ruling party, according to its critics. Since an elector is allowed to change...
...method: the government party can buy off minor parties to get enough votes to counter a split opposition. One segment of the opposition was amenable to the parliamentary idea, but negotiations dragged on for months without reaching a compromise, and both sides can be blamed for obstinacy. But Chun angered the opposition when, on April 13, he abruptly announced that bargaining on the reforms would cease until after the Olympic Games. By that time, conveniently for the government, the new President scheduled to take office next February will have been long since installed, with a mandate to serve until...
...Tado!" (Down with the dictatorship!) and "Hohun Tado!" (Down with the decision not to amend the constitution!). The latest scandal in the confrontation belongs to the government: police admitted they had tortured to death a Seoul University student during interrogation and then tried to cover up the incident, prompting Chun last month to shake up his Cabinet...
...Chun faces the gravest political crisis of his career, he has remained resolutely silent, conferring with top aides inside the Blue House, his official residence. Furthermore, perhaps to keep the students and their supporters in the opposition off-balance, he has allowed contradictory hints to be dropped about his next moves. One moment his associates are whispering darkly that a new crackdown is imminent. The next they are suggesting that talks with the opposition might be reopened. At week's end South Koreans thus had little idea what to expect in the immediate future...