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- <text id=90TT0298>
- <title>
- Feb. 05, 1990: World Notes:South Korea
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Feb. 05, 1990 Mandela:Free At Last?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 47
- World Notes
- SOUTH KOREA
- Roh Clears Up The Confusion
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> It's hard for any President to get his program going in the
- face of heavy political opposition. It's triply difficult--not to mention confusing--when that opposition consists of
- three disgruntled political parties. The solution for South
- Korea's President Roh Tae Woo was to wade in and woo. Last week
- Roh stunned the nation by announcing that two of the three Kims
- who control the competition will join him in a ruling coalition
- he describes as "middle-of-the-road democrats."
- </p>
- <p> Roh's new team, tentatively called the Democratic Liberal
- Party, embraces his own Democratic Justice Party, Kim Young
- Sam's Reunification Democratic Party and Kim Jong Pil's
- National Democratic Republican Party. This leaves Kim Dae Jung,
- head of the Party for Peace and Democracy, out in the cold with
- a mere 71 seats in the 299-seat legislature.
- </p>
- <p> Kim Dae Jung denounced Roh's gambit as a "political coup
- d'etat" and demanded a general election, but most South Koreans
- were not so disgruntled. The country's fractious four-party
- system is unwieldy and inefficient, and besides, the opposition
- parties themselves are largely one-man shows. If nothing else,
- the realignment will reduce South Korea's confusing roster of
- same-sounding political parties, and perhaps with it, put an
- end to internecine bickering in the legislature.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-