Son’s Case Casts Doubt on S. Korean President

TOKYO —  Did he or didn’t he?

With the arrest of South Korean President Kim Young Sam’s son last week on charges of taking millions in bribes in exchange for business favors, public attention has shifted to a potentially more explosive issue: whether the president knew about--or directly provided--the $13.6-million political slush fund prosecutors say the younger Kim controlled.

During his four years in office as South Korea’s first civilian president in more than three decades, Kim has staked his credibility on clean politics.

But in one shattering revelation after another, evidence has surfaced that Kim’s own family--and perhaps even the president himself--may turn out to have been little different from the crooked bureaucrats, businessmen and politicians he jailed by the hundreds.

Many Koreans draw a distinction between any political slush fund amassed before Kim took office and his son’s alleged corrupt acts after Kim became president.

Kim Hyon Chol--the president’s 38-year-old second son who helped mastermind the successful 1992 presidential campaign and reportedly influenced everything from political appointments to business licenses--was arrested on charges of tax evasion and pocketing $3.6 million in bribes.

Even political rivals seem dubious that the president knew about those alleged activities, much less requested that his son act as a behind-the-scenes bagman.

The ignorance may have been deliberately maintained: Reports by the media and opposition parties allege that the president quashed early warnings about his son and ostracized those who persisted--such as fellow party member Kim Dok Ryong and former presidential chief secretary Park Kwan Yong.

“It’s possible the president might not have known about Hyon Chol’s activities,” said Kim Sang Woo, a National Assembly member with the opposition National Congress for New Politics.

Referring to the presidential residence, he added: “The Blue House is like that. The president can be really kept in the dark and secluded from the real picture.”

A presidential aide declined comment on whether the president rejected warnings about his son but said Kim knew nothing about the alleged bribery.

“He had no knowledge of his son taking bribes and was shocked and deeply disappointed,” the aide said.

If the public seems ready to believe that Kim was not involved with his son’s alleged bribery, the political slush fund is a different matter.

In recent days, allegations have grown that President Kim succumbed to the entrenched culture of money politics during his 1992 campaign.

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Prosecutors say they have discovered a $13.6-million slush fund left over from the campaign stashed away in several secret bank accounts and allege that Kim Hyon Chol asked friends to launder it for him.

Opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, quoting unnamed government officials, has charged that the money came from former President Roh Tae Woo, who was convicted and jailed last year in part for amassing a $653-million secret slush fund. The opposition also charges that millions came from Chung Tae Soo, chairman of the disgraced Hanbo business group now under arrest for bribery in connection with receiving nearly $6 billion in questionable loans to bail out his ailing steel operation.

This week, the reputable Monthly Chosun magazine reported that Roh testified to prosecutors that the Kim campaign spent $361 million--10 times more than officially reported.

The magazine also reported that former President Chun Doo Hwan, convicted last year of bribery in connection with Roh’s slush fund, sent a memo to Roh shortly before their arrest urging him to disclose Kim’s campaign spending along with how much in slush funds he transferred to the president.

Kim has denied taking money from Roh, and prosecutors initially signaled that they did not plan to delve into the explosive issue.

But as public clamor for a full accounting grows, prosecutors began grilling Kim Hyon Chol this week about the slush fund.

The slush fund issue has deeply divided Kim’s advisors, resulting in postponement of a presidential apology that had been widely expected this week.

According to one presidential aide, those who oppose a public statement about the slush fund say that taking unreported donations from business was the “political culture of the time” and that the opposition broke the rules as well.

But Kim’s vulnerability is that he retroactively applied new rules of clean politics to Chun and Roh by pursuing their arrests last year in a “dangerous game” of political morality, said Chaibong Hahm, a Yonsei University professor of political science. Shouldn’t Kim retroactively apply those new rules to himself as well? Hahm and others ask.

Although it is still unclear how far prosecutors will push ahead on the slush fund investigation, not even the opposition is calling for President Kim’s head.

Instead, they want the president to reveal the facts about the fund, apologize for any improprieties and pledge neutrality in the presidential election this year.

Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.