From: mj03@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (MINHO JO)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
Subject: Re: Answers to Mr. Byngtae Lee's questions
Date: 29 Dec 92 05:15:53 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <1992Dec26.182526.28677@midway.uchicago.edu>, sl26@ellis.uchicago.edu
 (sangjin  lee) writes:
>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.
>




I AGREE with your EXCCELLENT contradiction.



                       Minho Jo,  Lehigh University
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean