PASSINGS: Beryl W. Sprinkel, Richard Hamtok Pae

Beryl W. Sprinkel

Economic advisor to Reagan

Beryl W. Sprinkel, 85, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration and who helped guide the administration’s response to the October 1987 stock market crash, died Aug. 22 at a nursing home in Beecher, Ill. He had Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a rare neuromuscular disease.

Sprinkel, protege of conservative economics guru Milton Friedman, taught economics at the University of Chicago and was executive vice president and economic advisor at the Harris Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago for nearly 30 years.

He joined the administration of President Reagan in 1981 as undersecretary of the Treasury for monetary affairs, where he was Treasury Secretary Donald Regan’s principal negotiator on issues of Third World debt and the financing of the International Monetary Fund and other international lending agencies. He also played a role in encouraging the Japanese to open their capital markets to American investment.

In 1985, Sprinkel was named chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, after seven months of uncertainty over the council’s future.

In 1987, Sprinkel was a contender to succeed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, but the job went to Alan Greenspan. Sprinkel announced his resignation as council chairman, but Reagan rejected it. He also elevated Sprinkel’s post to Cabinet-level status.

Beryl Wayne Sprinkel was born Nov. 20, 1923, on a tobacco farm near Richmond, Mo.

Sprinkel taught economics at the University of Missouri and at the University of Chicago before working for Harris Trust in Chicago from 1952 to 1981.

Richard Hamtok Pae

Korean language TV pioneer

Richard Hamtok Pae, 82, who founded the first Korean-language television broadcasting company in the United States and worked on South Korea’s democracy movement with Nobel Prize recipient and former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, has died.

Pae died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from lung cancer, his family said.

In 1972, Pae formed the first TV broadcasting company to air Korean-language programs to the then-emerging Korean American community in Los Angeles.

In the mid-1980s, he helped found the Free Korea Network and worked closely with South Korean political dissident Kim Dae Jung, who was in exile in the United States. At the time, South Korea was under military rule. Kim later returned to South Korea and became president before being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

Times staff and wire reports

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