Park Talks (a Little)

He calls his bribery "an American success story

His black shoes sparkled, his gold watch glittered. In the lapel of his crisp blue jacket a gold pin with five pearls gleamed. Under the hot glare of TV lights he kept dry and cool, sipping club soda. From behind the immaculate facade, however, came a sordid account of influence peddling. In two days of public hearings before the House ethics committee, Tongsun Park, the South Korean rice broker and Georgetown party host, provided the details of how he gave 31 past and present Congressmen, two congressional candidates and President Nixon's re-election committee upward of $850,000 in gifts and "campaign contributions." Indicted last September on 36 counts including mail fraud, failure to register as a foreign agent and bribery, Park testified with immunity from prosecution and claimed: "What I have done in Washington constitutes an American success story, on a small scale."

While Park added no major revelations to what has been disclosed over the past 18 months, his air of injured innocence, his flippant responses to questions revealed much about the man. Said committee Counsel Leon Jaworski, who was often irritated by Park's demeanor: "He treats this whole affair as just an ordinary sort of thing." Park practiced, according to a report he wrote on how to win support for Korea in Congress, "invitation diplomacy." He entertained Congressmen in his George Town Club; he arranged junkets for them and their wives to Seoul. "The past records indicate that the effectiveness of invitation diplomacy is nearly 100%," Park told the Korean government.

His biggest cash gifts were awarded to those former Congressmen who could best help his rice business. Louisiana's Otto Passman, who had not liked Park's arrangements for rice deals in his state, was pursued to Hong Kong in 1970 and given $5,000 "for his campaign." Passman, who was indicted last month for bribery and conspiracy, received another $274,000 from Park over the course of six years. Given the law barring campaign contributions from foreigners, Park also developed an interest in antique watches and jewelry, which Passman happened to collect. Park started buying Passman's trophies at 50% above the market value.

The most puzzling turn in the scandal concerned Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill. Before Park's public testimony, the Justice Department released a document to the ethics committee that cast doubts on the Speaker's repeated assertions that he had nothing to do with Park other than being given two elaborate ($6,000 total) birthday parties at the George Town Club plus a set of golf clubs and some hurricane lamps. The paper, written in Korean and titled "U.S. Congressional Delegation's visit to Korea," was found in Park's house in Washington. The document discussed the trip that O'Neill, 19 other Congressmen and some of their wives took to Korea in 1974. It said: "Mr. O'Neill specifically requested us to provide those Congressmen with election campaign funds and their wives with necessary expenses."

Four Congressmen on the trip did receive payments from the Koreans, and two wives have testified that they were offered money but turned it down. O'Neill called the document "self-serving and a total fabrication." Park denied having written it and complained that the committee had violated his rights by seizing documents in his house. But Committee Investigator John Nields retorted, "The question was how the document got into your house, not how it got out." Still, the committee probers say they have "no faith" in the memo, thinking that at best it is an exaggeration.

Both Nields and Jaworski hammered away at Park on his connection with the Korean government, and he repeatedly denied being an agent of the Seoul regime. If it could be determined that Park was, indeed, a South Korean government agent, then even the campaign contributions would be illegal. As Millicent Fenwick, a committee member from New Jersey said, "High Korean officials knew what he was doing, approved what he was doing and supported what he was doing." Specifically, South Korean President Park Chung Hee wrote numerous directives to Korean officials in Washington, asking them to aid Park in his activities.

To clarify Park's relations to his government and to expose more South Korean influence peddling in Washington, the ethics committee investigators want to summon former Ambassador Kim Dong Jo, who they are convinced conducted a similar payoff operation. Seoul, which is claiming diplomatic immunity for Kim, may have gotten a boost for its argument when former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea William Porter admitted last week that the U.S. had bugged the Blue House, Korea's presidential home and office, before he arrived there in 1967. Korea has apparently decided not to question Porter on the bugging, which other U.S. officials still deny, and getting Kim to talk may be even more difficult now that Seoul has relaxed its position on Porter.

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