S. Korea Seeks Law to Charge 2 Ex-Leaders : Justice: President Kim wants to prosecute predecessors for 1979 military mutiny and 1980 attack on protesters.

South Korean President Kim Young Sam on Friday ordered his ruling party to draft a special law to allow prosecution of former Presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo for leading a 1979 armed forces mutiny and carrying out the bloody suppression of the 1980 Kwangju uprising against the coup d’etat that brought Chun to power.

Bringing Chun and Roh to trial “will show that justice, truth and the law exist in this land,” Kim told the Democratic Liberal Party.

The bill, expected to be passed before the National Assembly adjourns Dec. 19, would effectively overturn a ruling by prosecutors in July that the coup was a political issue beyond their authority.

But there was no immediate indication of what charges would be brought against Chun and Roh or when they would be brought to trial. Roh was arrested on unrelated bribery charges Nov. 16.

Kim’s move was clearly designed to set him further apart from the two generals who were his predecessors, by dealing decisively with still-bitter feelings about the Kwangju uprising. More than 200 people were killed and 2,000 arrested in the uprising.

South Korean politics have been in turmoil since Roh confessed that he had accumulated a $653-million slush fund from business people while serving as president.

Although an opposition leader for more than 30 years, Kim joined forces with Roh in 1990 and won Roh’s backing in the 1992 election. More than half the National Assembly members of Kim’s ruling party were once followers of Chun and Roh.

Presidential spokesman Yoon Yeo Joon said the new law would deal with both a 1979 mutiny and the 1980 coup. A ruling party official added that the president also apparently wants to include perpetrators of a 1961 coup--one of whom, Kim Jong Pil, now heads an opposition party.

The president’s move also stole the thunder of Kim Dae Jung, a three-time presidential candidate whose opposition party had proposed special legislation to prosecute Chun and Roh for suppressing the Kwangju uprising. Protest riots broke out in Kwangju city, about 175 miles south of Seoul, when then-generals Chun and Roh arrested Kim Dae Jung during the 1980 coup on trumped-up charges of treason.

“We welcome the move by President Kim, which we believe is a step forward,” Kim Dae Jung commented. “This time, we sincerely hope that light will be shed on the Kwangju crackdown.”

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Lee Chul, National Assembly floor leader of the opposition Democratic Party, also supported President Kim’s move but warned that any attempt by the president to use prosecution of Chun and Roh to cover up the slush fund scandal “will not escape severe criticism by the people.”

Previously, President Kim insisted that judgment on the army’s brutal suppression of the Kwangju uprising should be left to history. After opposition forces sought a ruling from the Constitutional Court against the prosecutors’ decision not to bring charges against Chun and Roh, Kim said he might reconsider his position after a court ruling.

Asked whether the law might violate a constitutional ban against retroactive punishment, Kang Sam Jae, secretary general of the Democratic Liberal Party, said: “Detailed legal technicalities will be dealt with by Democratic Liberal Party legislators who are legal experts.”

How the prosecution of Chun and Roh would affect President Kim’s party remained to be seen. Some of its members in the National Assembly are retired army officers who themselves were involved in suppressing the Kwangju uprising, and they could also be brought to trial if the special law is enacted.

But the move against Chun and Roh appeared to have as much to do with current South Korean politics, and the corruption scandal surrounding Roh, as with the past.

In asking for a law to permit prosecution of Chun and Roh, Kim can claim he was not only bringing an end to collusion between government and business but also cleaning out political intrusions into politics by the military.

In another development, media here reported that prosecutors said they had gathered enough evidence to arrest executives of 24 of the massive conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economy for bribery of Roh and other present and past officials.

Senior prosecutor Ahn Kang Min said a decision on whom to arrest would be taken “just before Roh is formally indicted in court” in early December.