Kim Young-sam's Memoir Sparks Row

A memoir written by former President Kim Young-sam and in distribution nationwide since Thursday is touching off yet another political quarrel.

The bickering is between two former allies in the democracy movement; Kim Young-sam describes how he suspended a prosecution investigation into alleged slush funds of Kim Dae-jung in October 1997, two months before the presidential election.

The latest row emerges amid a lingering partisan standoff over a prosecution investigation into alleged funneling of central intelligence agency funds into the ruling camp, then led by Kim Young-sam, in 1996.

The Blue House said on Sunday that the former president's memoir is "full of lies and distortion," adding that legal action to stop distribution or to sue for libel was being considered.

The former president brushed off the Blue House's reaction as "not even warranting a reply as I only wrote the facts," said his personal spokesman, Rep. Park Chong-ung of the opposition Grand National Party.

In a section about "Secrecy Surrounding Kim Dae-jung's Slush Funds," the former president said that he forestalled a prosecution investigation into Mr. Kim's finances in October 1997. The then-ruling party presidential candidate, Lee Hoi-chang, called for a prosecutorial investigation just two months before the December elections, based on documents revealed through the implementation of a "real name" financial system in 1993.

Kim Young-sam writes that he ordered Prosecutor-General Kim Tae-joung to hold off the investigation until after the December elections, fearing popular uprisings in the Cholla provinces and Seoul, because "the arrest of Kim Dae-jung would have been unavoidable had the investigation been allowed to go ahead."

He said that Kim Dae-jung requested a one-on-one meeting on more than five occasions, and later thanked him for suspending the investigation. As president-elect, Kim Dae-jung asked the prosecution to abandon the probe.

But the presidential spokesman said, "The Kim Young-sam administration used every government means possible during his five-year term to dig into President Kim Dae-jung's political funds, but could not find one case of illegality."

An opposition party spokesman said that "the truth about Kim Dae-jung's slush funds must be revealed this time."

by Ko Jung-ae