Word: koreas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That cry has echoed more and more across South Korea in recent months, and more often than not it has been uttered by the country's students, especially the radical hard-liners. On every side, demands are growing that President Chun Doo Hwan reform a regime that, while not nearly as repressive as Communist North Korea's, stifles dissent and tortures and imprisons political opponents. In frequent demonstrations, university students have demanded an end to dictatorship when Chun, a former general who seized power in 1980, fulfills a pledge to step down next February. The students' aim is nothing less...
...students, who began a new school term last week, have attracted intense scrutiny by Washington and other capitals. With a 40,000-troop garrison in South Korea, the U.S. views that countryas a key Pacific ally and a bulwark against the Soviet-backed North Korean government. Washington was thus taken aback last year, when North Korean slogans began creeping into South Korean protests and student rhetoric turned sharply anti-American. The U.S. has since urged Chun to help defuse the situation by compromising with the opposition on a formula for the transition to democracy. Secretary of State George Shultz...
...would be the first South Korean leader to leave office voluntarily, wants to convert the presidential system into a parliamentary one that would choose his successor. That move would allow the party that controls the National . Assembly to name a Prime Minister. But opponents argue that under South Korea's complex method of apportioning seats, such a system would give Chun's Democratic Justice Party a stranglehold on power. That in turn would perpetuate the grip of Chun's strongest supporter, the 600,000-member armed forces, on the political life of the country...
While the students are clear about their goals, they are vague about their ties to North Korea, one of the world's most repressive Communist regimes. South Korean police are always quick to draw a link between students and the North or pro-Communist groups. Said Lee Yong Chang, the director of the national police, last week: "These student activities will provide pro- Communists with an opportunity for terrorism...
Police claimed they had proof of such charges last fall when they discovered a North Korean newspaper article reprinted on wall posters at Seoul National University. Banners urging unification of the two Koreas, in terms used by North Korea, later cropped up during a four-day student occupation of Seoul's Konkuk University. Though radical leaders contend that police planted the provocative materials, many students champion unification with the North. Says a student-union president: "The North and South are one people. Unification is a nationalistic goal, not an ideological one." Adds a frequent demonstrator: "Unification of the fatherland...