The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [215]
Even before passage of the law, Chun was arrested and jailed when he defiantly refused a prosecutors' summons to appear for questioning. Chun's lawyers argued that his arrest was unconstitutional because the ROK Constitution forbids retroactive statutes. Five of the nine members of the Constitutional Court agreed, but the legal action stood because the votes of six justices are required to overturn a statute.
From March until August 1996, the Korean public was presented with the regular spectacle of the two former presidents being taken before the court from their cells in loose-fitting prison uniforms and rubber shoes to respond to charges of bribery, insurrection, and treason. Former presidential aides in the economic field and the heads of the country's leading economic conglomerates also stood at the bar of justice in the bribery trial; fourteen retired military officers, eight of whom had left the service as four-star generals, were on trial with Roh and Chun in the insurrection case. Prisoner number 1042, former President Roh, adjusted quickly to prison life, continuing to express remorse and apologies but shedding little new light on the events under consideration. Prisoner number 3124, former President Chun, was defiant. Shortly after his arrest, he had protested by going on a hunger strike-an ironic counterpoint to a hunger strike against Chun by then-opposition leader Kim Young Sam in 1983-and persistently challenged the court's right to put him on trial for long-ago events.
On August 26, all but one of the defendants was found guilty by the three judge court. Chun was sentenced to death, the announcement of which caused him to flinch momentarily before quickly regaining his composure. The court noted Chun's argument that while president he had contributed to the stabilizing of the economy and turned over power to his successor by peaceful means, but it said these acts could not offset his serious crimes. Roh was sentenced to twenty-two and a half years in prison, rather than life imprisonment as requested by the prosecutors. The court said it took into account Roh's "achievements in northern diplomacy and the nation's admission into the United Nations," as well as the fact that he had been popularly elected in 1987.
The other defendants in "the trial of the century," as the Korean press described it, were given lesser sentences. Many of the former generals were taken to jail cells from the courtroom to begin their sentences, but all the business leaders were released pending appeal or given suspended sentences on grounds that the nation continued to need their best efforts.
As they stood before the court to hear the announcement of their sentences, Chun and Roh, two old friends and military academy classmates who had become estranged after one succeeded the other in the presidency, linked their fingers in a public gesture of solidarity.
On December 16, 1996, the Seoul High Court commuted Chun's sentence to life imprisonment and reduced Roh's sentence to seventeen years. The court also reduced the sentences of all the other military and civilian defendants. It acquitted two of the chaebol leaders who had been convicted earlier and suspended the sentences of the other big businessmen. Under the ruling, none of the tycoons who contributed the funds were sent to jail.
A year later, in the Christmas season of 1997, President Kim Young Sam pardoned Chun and Roh, who returned quietly to private life.
SUMMIT DIPLOMACY AND THE FOUR-PARTY PROPOSAL
As had been the case with Presidents Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan, and Roh Tae Woo, summit diplomacy with the American president was important to the domestic standing of President Kim Young Sam, a fact that contributed to Washington's leverage in South Korea. In the summer of 1995 and the spring of 1996, the United States sought to use this leverage on North-South issues. Its efforts had mixed success.
President Kim was planning a visit to the U.S. capital in July 1995