South Korea Electing Assembly Today : Vote Will Be a Test for Chun, but Ruling Party Victory Is Certain

SEOUL, South Korea â€”  After an outspoken and intensely fought campaign, South Korea’s voters go to the polls today to cast ballots in the last election for the National Assembly before President Chun Doo Hwan is scheduled to step down in 1988.

The outcome is certain--victory for Chun’s ruling Democratic Justice Party. Most attention will be focused on the size of the popular vote, which will be seen as either a mandate or a slap in the face for the former army general.

Chun himself has said the results will “amount to the people’s evaluation� of his rule to date. He seized power in May, 1980, while still in the army and assumed the full presidency in March, 1981.

The vote is also considered important because assemblymen elected today will serve through March, 1989, one year after Chun is required by the constitution to step down.

“Any government trickery (to extend Chun’s rule) would have to pass through this assembly--or over its dead body,� said one foreign observer, who asked not to be identified.

Four years ago, the Democratic Justice Party won 35.6% of the popular vote in a National Assembly election. That vote was conducted while 567 politicians were barred by Chun from taking part.

Today, there is a new opposition party, the New Korea Democratic Party, made up largely of politicians freed from Chun’s earlier ban. Its was founded less than a month ago, on Jan. 18, but it is expected to cut into the ruling party’s share of the popular vote.

Still, Chun’s party is guaranteed a majority in the 276-seat unicameral legislature by a law that awards an extra block of 61 seats to the party winning the most seats in the direct election. The other parties--two large opposition groups in 1981 and three this time--will divide another 31 “proportional representation� seats.

In 1981, the Democratic Justice Party won 90 seats--just under half those contested in the 92 two-seat constituencies. With the 61 bonus seats, however, it had a total of 151, or 55% of the total.

In that election, almost all politicians from the era of assassinated President Park Chung Hee were banned, and freedom of speech was severely restricted. This time the 20-day campaign has given full play to what foreign observers called “very harsh criticism� of Chun.

“Voters are hearing things they haven’t heard for years. The result is that public interest is greater and participation of young people is greater,� one such observer said.

Opposition candidates, in joint rallies sponsored by a central election management commission, have branded Chun’s regime as a military dictatorship and accused it practicing “the politics of violence and repression.�

Complicating forecasts about the vote was the return of Kim Dae Jung, 61, the opposition candidate in 1971, when South Korea had its last unfettered presidential election. Upon his return Friday from two years of exile in the United States, Kim was immediately put under “limited� house arrest, meaning that he cannot leave his domicile but can receive certain visitors.

Kim proclaimed that his return will inspire votes for the New Korea Democratic Party, which was established by his supporters and those of Kim Young Sam, 57, another Park-era opposition leader. Although both Kims are among the 14 politicians still on Chun’s banned roster, the new party lists them as advisers, and they have received open declarations of support from the party’s candidates.

The party leader, Lee Min Woo, 70, a former deputy speaker of the National Assembly, campaigned by telling voters that he was running so that he could establish a political base for the two purged Kims.

Lee ran as a candidate in a central Seoul district that, until he entered the race, had been considered certain to elect one of Chun’s chief lieutenants--Lee Jong Chan, 49, a general who retired from the army to help establish Chun’s ruling party and become its floor leader in the National Assembly.