The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [95]
On June 2, Chun summoned the Central Executive Committee of the ruling Democratic Justice Party to dinner at the Blue House and announced that he had chosen his longtime associate and friend, Roh Tae Woo, as the party's presidential candidate. Roh had retired from the army as a four-star general when Chun became president, and then held a succession of civilian jobs, including minister of sports, minister of home affairs, president of the Seoul Olympics Organizing Committee, and ruling party chairman. Nevertheless, he was seen by much of the public as "the bald man with a wig," meaning Chun in disguise just another general who would continue dictatorial rule with support of the army.
Within hours of Roh's formal nomination on June 10 by the ruling party convention, massive and often violent protests erupted across the country, spreading to more than thirty cities. Pitched battles, the largest since the 1960 student revolution that had toppled President Syngman Rhee, broke out between demonstrators and police, more than seven hundred of whom were injured in the first two days. Tens of thousands of protesters were arrested. Citizens suffered in clouds of tear gas as the demonstrations paralyzed the central districts of Seoul and other cities, where such violence had rarely been experienced before. In an ominous development that threatened longterm stability, usually conservative middle-class Koreans displayed widespread sympathy and support for the protests as never before.
Coming on the heels of the Philippine revolution and before the Seoul Olympics, the Korean political crisis attracted extensive international attention. In the last two weeks of June, it was the single largest story in the American press, even surpassing the ongoing hearings on the Iran-Contra political scandal. An outpouring of resolutions, bills, hearings, speeches, and press conferences about the Korean crisis came to the fore in Congress. The Reagan administration, already under siege due to the Iran-Contra scandal, was under heavy domestic pressure to take a stand.
From the beginning of June, a principal concern in Washington was that military force might be used to suppress the demonstrations. Another concern was the possibility that a coup might impose a new era of military rule on the country, although this was considered less likely in view of Chun's control of his former army colleagues and Roh's standing with them. Even before the eruption of the extensive protests on June 10, administration officials were considering how they might exert American influence to head off a potential disaster.
As in earlier internal South Korean crises, Washington believed that its central role was to protect the external security of the South. This time it did so in a message sent via Beijing warning North Korea not to take advantage of the trouble in the South. Pyongyang limited itself to rhetoric, and was cautious even in its comments about the dramatic developments in the South.
One idea discussed at high levels in Washington was to send a presidential emissary-perhaps Vice President George Bush or former ambassador Philip Habib-to take the administration's views directly to Chun, much as Reagan's friend, Senator Paul Laxalt, had gone to see Marcos at a crucial point in the Manila developments. The ROK ambassador in Washington, Kim Kyung Won, strongly advised against this plan on the grounds that it would put Chun on the defensive publicly and complicate the situation.
Officials then developed the idea of issuing a personal letter from Reagan to Chun calling for restraint and compromise-but how to do this without seeming to interfere in Korea's