South Korea: Cleaning Up After Chun

President Roh Tae Woo pledged last week that by year’s end he would cleanse his government of the kind of abuses that stained the record of his predecessor, General Chun Doo Hwan. Two ad hoc committees of the opposition- controlled National Assembly will open investigations this week into alleged misdeeds during Chun’s tenure.

The hearings will follow an Assembly “audit” that examined, among other things, the deaths of at least 54 “undesirables” in “re-education camps.” One of the committees will probe such “irregularities” in greater detail while the other will look into the massacre of 180 people during a 1980 popular revolt in Kwangju. Among the witnesses summoned: Lee Soon Ja, Chun’s wife, and Chang Se Dong, ex-head of the Agency for National Security Planning, South Korea’s CIA.