2 Sides Confer on S. Korea Charter : In 1st Session, Neutrality of Armed Forces Is Agreed On

The ruling and opposition parties finally began negotiations Monday on the constitutional amendments promised by President Chun Doo Hwan on July 1 to transform South Korea into a fully democratic country.

Four delegates each from the ruling party and the major opposition party, the Reunification Democratic Party, agreed that an amended constitution should require the nation’s 600,000-member armed forces to remain politically neutral. They differed, however, on whether the ban on political intervention should be written into the preamble of the nation’s basic law.

The session, the first of what are to be daily bargaining talks aimed at hammering out a draft of a new constitution by Aug. 20, produced more disagreements than agreements. But it marked the first time in more than a year that the ruling Democratic Justice Party and the opposition had engaged in negotiations on any subject.

Unilateral Passage

Bitter charges and countercharges, punctuated with threats and counter-threats, had blighted the last year of politics so badly that the government was forced to pass the 1987 budget unilaterally, in the midst of an opposition boycott of the National Assembly.

Even after Roh Tae Woo, chairman of the ruling party, stunned the nation June 29 by promising to carry out sweeping reforms, which Chun endorsed two days later, demands by the opposition for release of political prisoners stalled the beginning of negotiations throughout July.

Ruling party delegates insisted that a ban on military involvement in politics, spelled out in articles that it proposed on the duties of public servants and the armed forces, is sufficient to ensure the military’s neutrality. But Reunification Democratic Party delegates cited remarks made last month by the army’s chief of staff to argue that the ban should be specified, as well, in the preamble to a new constitution.

Gen. Park Hee Do, the top commander of the 520,000-man army, told Korean reporters privately that “an unhappy event” could occur if Kim Dae Jung, one of the opposition’s two major leaders, decided to run for president. The remark was not reported in Korea until it appeared in an American newspaper.

Kim, whom the military is known to consider a leftist, was the opposition’s last candidate in a direct presidential election, held in 1971. Since then, the late President Park Chung Hee and then Chun rammed through constitutions that provided for rubber-stamp, indirect elections of the nation’s leader. But Roh and Chun promised to abolish the indirect system, after 18 days of violent demonstrations swept South Korea in June.

So far, Gen. Park has made no move to confirm or deny the threat he was reported to have made against Kim Dae Jung, nor has there been any move to dismiss him.

Residency Requirement?

Other points of dispute that emerged in Monday’s meeting included a demand by the ruling party that any candidate for president be required to have lived in Korea consistently for the last five years. Such a clause, if strictly applied, would preclude candidacies by Kim Dae Jung and by the late President Park’s former prime minister, Kim Jong Pil, both of whom spent more than a year in the United States.

An opposition demand to write into the preamble a statement giving the people the right to resist and overthrow a dictatorial government was immediately rejected by the ruling party.

Despite the disagreements, a new sign of flexibility appeared as the Reunification Democratic Party, which has been critical of the government’s methods in seeking rapprochement with Communist North Korea, praised the government’s response to a July 23 North Korean proposal to open troop reduction talks.

Foreign Minister Choi Kwang Soo, in a statement, rejected the North Korean proposal for tripartite talks, including the United States, directed at slashing military forces to less than 100,000 in both the north and the south by the end of 1991, on the grounds that the United States should be excluded from such negotiations.

“Such a proposal runs counter to the principle of self-determination, which calls for the settlement of pending problems by the parties directly concerned, South and North Korea,” Choi said. No explanation was offered as to why it took him 11 days to respond to Pyongyang’s proposal.

Choi counter-proposed that foreign ministers of the two governments meet in New York between Sept. 15, when the U.N. General Assembly is scheduled to convene, and the end of September. Each nation’s top diplomat is scheduled to attend the U.N. session.

The foreign minister added that he would be willing to meet his North Korean counterpart at any other mutually agreeable location next month.

Although Choi said that South Korea would be willing to discuss any subject without setting preconditions, he added that Seoul believes that conclusion of a nonaggression agreement, U.N. membership for both governments and cross-recognition of both Pyongyang and Seoul by Communist and Free World nations should be topics for such a meeting.

Ministry’s Accusation

Park Soo Gil, an assistant foreign minister, told reporters that the counterproposal embraces the north’s bid to negotiate a troop withdrawal--but without American participation.

Although the Pyongyang proposal called for negotiations to begin next March--after a new president is chosen to succeed Chun--the Foreign Ministry accused the north of trying to “disrupt the process of democratization” now going on in South Korea.

The Communist proposal also was unusual in that it did not call for an immediate withdrawal of about 40,000 U.S. troops here. Instead, it proposed that a phased withdrawal be carried out, with the last American forces removed only after troop levels in both the north and south are cut to below 100,000.

North Korea is estimated to maintain 840,000 people under arms, compared to 600,000 in South Korea.