-Caveat Lector-
(Organized by Sun Myung Moon of the K-CIA?)
S.Korea Police Block March to North
By KYONG-HWA SEOK
.c The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Armed with tear gas launchers and water cannons,
South Korean riot police blocked thousands of leftist students from marching
to the border with North Korea Sunday to promote national unification.
After a rally at Seoul National University, several hundred students
confronted 8,000 riot police at the school's main gate at nightfall. About
200 students lay on the pavement, shouting: ``Let's accomplish unification!''
Several students were seen hurling fist-sized rocks at police, who did not
respond with their tear gas and water cannons. No serious clashes were
reported.
The students were among about 5,000 leftists who gathered at the university
demanding unification of the rival Koreas. The rally was part of activities
marking the 54th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan's colonial rule
in 1945.
Authorities deployed 13,000 police around the school and along a highway
leading to the border, 35 miles away, as the leftists had planned to attend a
North Korea-sponsored rally there.
The Seoul rally was one of the largest in recent years. Government officials
expressed concern that the leftist student movement, which has waned
significantly in recent years, may gather momentum.
Earlier, the students held a boisterous campus rally, during which they
demanded the withdrawal of 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, arguing their
presence hinders unification.
In a separate government-sanctioned pro-unification event, 60,000 South
Koreans formed a ``human unification belt,'' a 30-mile chain of people
holding hands along a highway from Seoul to the gateway to the border.
At the border village of Panmunjom, several hundred North Koreans held a
rally calling for unifying the two Koreas under a system that would leave
their different systems intact, the North's official Korean Central News
Agency said.
The border rally, an annual event for the past decade or so, was the
highlight of a North Korean celebration of the Aug. 15 Korean Independence
Day.
South Korea bars its citizens from participating in the rally, which it
regards as anti-Seoul propaganda. Past efforts by students to attend it
touched off violent clashes with police.
The Korean peninsula was partitioned into the communist North and the
capitalist South in 1945 with Japan's defeat in World War II. The North and
the South are still technically at war, having signed no peace treaty at the
end of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
People of the two Koreas cannot visit the other side without government
approval, which is rarely given.
South Korea celebrated the holiday by calling for peace and freeing, among
others, 56 political prisoners, including seven North Korean spies.
The 56 were among 1,742 convicts set free under a sweeping presidential
amnesty. The amnesty also affected 1,115 others who were convicted earlier
but have been free on parole. They had their civil rights restored or their
criminal records erased.
In a nationally televised Independence Day speech, President Kim Dae-jung
urged North Korea to accept talks to discuss peace.
He denounced North Korea for seeking to deal directly with the United States,
while avoiding official dialogue with South Korea. North Korea shuns official
dialogue with the Seoul government, which it regards as a U.S. puppet.
Despite North Korea's intransigent and hostile stance, the South Korean
leader said he will continue to push his policy of engagement with the
North's Stalinist regime.
Opponents criticize Kim's so-called ``sunshine'' policy as coddling North
Korea.
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