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June 9, 1983

South Korea's dissident Kims will not be put down, it seems. Nothing much was heard for a while after the most noted of them, Kim Dae Jung, was allowed to go into exile. Now another opposition leader, Kim Young Sam, has reportedly refused to end a hunger strike even though relieved of detention. He asserted his demands had not been met. They were for things like free speech and release of political prisoners, things that the regime evidently still does not feel secure enough to grant. Indeed, the release of this Kim was followed by police storming a civil rights organization's headquarters and detaining three other leading dissidents. This hardly seemed in keeping with the national reconciliation that government sympathizers cited as a reason for lifting Kim's detention in the first place.