From: sl26@ellis.uchicago.edu (sangjin  lee)
Subject: Answers to Mr. Byngtae Lee's questions
Reply-To: sl26@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: Department of Physics, University of Chicago
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 18:25:26 GMT

Keywords: 

(1) Difference between LDP and DLP:

You're right in the sense that LDP was born under the threat of progressive
powers like the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. Also, it's true
that the opposition parties in Korea at the time of merge(PPD, NDP, DRP)
were not progressive by any means.
But the fact is in both cases the merging groups were facing threats. There
is no doubt about that. Why did LDP merge? They were not majority in the
parliament at that time. They formed a single conservative party to regain
the power.
What about DLP? Five months after the presidential election, while Mr. Roh
was enjoying the honeymoon, there held the general election. To everybody's
surprise, DJP, then ruling party, was stripped of the majority in the
National Assembly. Three opposition parties took over 60% of the seats.
That's exactly why Mr. Roh and Park Chul Un started working on the idea of
grand merge.
When the heads of the parties were negotiating, DJP wanted to make sure
that they change the Constitution to the Parliament system, which all
agreed. So, their big picture was merge, changing to the parliamentary
system, and shared power between three factions. YS Kim had something
different in mind. That's why he broke the secret deal. He wanted to become
a president. But, you see, the big picture didn't change a lot. That's why
I wrote that DLP will try the Parliamentary system again 'cause they're
concerned about the post-YS era.

(2) Ability of the opposition party to take over the power:

First, I seriously disagree that the opposition party(Democrats this time)
doesn't have the ability to take over the power. But what question I really
want to raise is whether it can be justified not to give a chance to the
opposition party only because they're not prepared.
Why are they not prepared? Because we haven't given them a single chance.
If we don't do it, then they will remain as an opposition group, which
objects for obection's sake, which is incapable of governing.
In other words, from now on, in every election, we'll always have a case
for the ruling party, which is "the opposition party doesn't have ability
to take over the power."
What about the ruling party? Does it really have the ability? After all,
didn't they come to power when they knew nothing about the politics? Didn't
they learn eveything while they were in office?

(3) The Problem of the prisoners of conscience:

All of the bad laws have legitimacy. They are called such when they
violate the fundamental human conscience, or specifically the written
Constitution. That's my definition anyway. That the law has legitimacy
doesn't make it a good law.
There are three exemplary bad laws: The Law on the National Security, The
Law on the Assembly and the Demonstration, and the three laws on the
Laborors' activities. I don't have to explain why they are bad laws, do I?
They violate the freedom of thoughts, freedom of assembly and
demonstration, all of which are clearly written in the Constitution of
Korea.
One distintive feature of them is that they're written very ambiguously so
that they can be applied very extensively. That's why Im Soo Kyung was
arrested for her activity at North korea, while non of the heads of
conglomerates who visited North Korea ILLEGALLY were not prosecuted. Under
the Law on the National Security, their action can be easily illegal.
Have you thought of a situation that a student can be arrested and put into
jail only because he possessed Karl Marx's 'Das Kapital'? I'm not a
communist or something, but it's rather a question of basic freedom. While
it can be used as a textbook in colleges, if a person possesses it, he(she)
may be arrested for it. Why is it so? The authority uses this tool to
arrest the student activists. When they seize the activists or protesters,
and have nothing to put him under arrest, then they look for such books,
and then they can be arrested legally under the Law of National Security.
While Mr. Rohs government claims that there is not a single political
prisoners in Korea, the Amnesty International keeps reporting that there
are ongoing practices of political prisonings. When I said the number of
'em more than doubled during the 6th Republic, I meant basically those
arrested and put into jail by the abusive use of the three main bad laws.