Word: koreas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...scene was rich in symbolism: instruments of authoritarian control put to the torch, while their former wielders cowered in fear. Was it, spectators may have wondered, a preview of South Korea's future? Throughout the country last week, students erupted in a frenzy of defiant marches and demonstrations to protest the six-year rule of President Chun Doo Hwan. Night after night they battled with tens of thousands of police, militia and plainclothes officers, who sought to break up the crowds with judo punches, shields and the virulent pepper gas, whose acrid fumes lingered for hours over the scenes...
...that is so, it could be bad news indeed for Chun and Roh at a time when their political scenario calls for nothing but happy headlines. South Korea is enjoying a period of spectacular economic growth, which has averaged about 8% annually over the past 20 years and is currently surging at l5.7% (vs. about 4.8% for the U.S. and 1.2% for Japan). Though South Korea lacks a democratic tradition, Chun's plan to turn over power next February to Roh, a longtime friend and fellow army general, would mark the first orderly presidential succession since the country became...
...emergence of a sizable middle class. In opinion surveys, as many as 80% of South Koreans describe themselves as members of that group. While the middle class embraces a work ethic that naturally abhors instability, it has begun to chafe under the strict, sometimes repressive rule of South Korea's military-dominated government. Last week's convulsions did not amount to a full-scale rebellion or draw a massive government crackdown. But the disturbances recalled the fate of South Korea's first President, Syngman Rhee, who was unseated by massive student demonstrations in 1960. The virulence and ubiquity...
...many non-Koreans, including officials of the Reagan Administration. The U.S. maintains 40,000 troops in South Korea, a military presence that has persisted since the end of the Korean War in 1953. With the heavily armed Soviet- and Chinese-backed Communist dictatorship of North Korea just across the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea serves strategically, along with West Germany, as a kind of point man for the non-Communist world. Instability in Seoul could tempt Communist North Korea, governed by the less than predictable Kim Il Sung, 75, to launch a military adventure that could draw the U.S. into another...
...Washington seemed reluctant to acknowledge that its own close association with the Chun regime over the years was no small part of the problem or that its historic failure to apply skillful pressure for democratic reforms threatens to worsen an already widespread atmosphere of anti-Americanism in South Korea...