50 S. Koreans Occupy U.S. Office, Threaten Suicide

More than 50 college students protesting American support for President Chun Doo Hwan stormed into the U.S. Information Agency office today and threatened to commit mass suicide if police tried to drive them out.

The students demanded that Washington apologize for the U.S.-backed army’s suppression of a bloody insurrection in the southern city of Kwangju five years ago, officials said.

An American diplomat at the U.S. Embassy, in another building in the South Korean capital, said embassy officials were negotiating with the students.

South Korean officials said a group of college students from Seoul stormed the four-story building about noon and barricaded themselves in the USIA’s second-floor library.

Police Ring Building

Hundreds of police and plainclothes agents surrounded the building as the 50 or more students inside, including about 20 women, shook their fists out the windows and hung up red-and-black signs with anti-government and anti-American slogans.

A hastily written statement plastered onto a window warned, “If police forces are used, we will commit a mass suicide by either jumping to the ground or taking poison.”

U.S. Embassy press attache David Fitzgerald said American officials were trying to persuade the students to end the siege, but seven hours after it began, the talks had collapsed, a student spokesman said.

4th U.S. Attack

It was the fourth attack in six years on a U.S. diplomatic post in South Korea, where about 40,000 U.S. troops are stationed to protect the south from the threat posed by communist North Korea.

The incident also was the latest in a two-week series of anti-government protests marking the fifth anniversary of the uprising in Kwangju, 170 miles south of Seoul.

The Kwangju insurrection erupted a day after Chun, then an army general, announced a crackdown on opposition politicians including Kim Dae Jung, one of Chun’s best-known opponents.

The government said 191 people were killed in the revolt, but human rights sources said the casualty figure was much higher.