South Korean Police Crush Anti-Regime Protest; 584 Detained

Deploying more than 50,000 police throughout South Korea, President Chun Doo Hwan suppressed a major protest against his authoritarian rule after thousands of demonstrators snarled traffic and paralyzed downtown Seoul for nearly three hours Saturday.

Lee Young Chang, director of the National Police Agency, said that 584 people in 21 cities were detained, 323 of them here in Seoul, as protesters attempted to attend a memorial service for a student tortured to death by police Jan. 14.

It was the second time in less than three months that Chun had called upon about half of the nation’s 120,000 police to put down an opposition-sponsored rally. The last was Nov. 29.

Three major hotels used by foreign businessmen and tourists shut their doors as hundreds of bystanders and pedestrians attempted to flee inside from blinding tear gas fired by police to disperse dozens of groups of protesters, whose ranks included college students, religious leaders and members of the main opposition New Korea Democratic Party.

Banks, securities firms and schools, which are normally open Saturday, shut down, as did department stores and hundreds of small shops. Traffic was halted on at least five major thoroughfares.

The disturbances underscored the growing weakness of Chun’s authoritarian government, which for the first three years of its rule managed to suppress all protests, on and off college campuses. Since 1984, demonstrations against the former army general’s rule have grown in intensity and frequency, surpassing police power to nip them in the bud.

Police, Students Clash

Although most of the demonstrators refrained from violence, one band of about 500 students clashed with police for 10 minutes, hurling 40 gasoline bombs. Another group of 100 students attacked two police substations with stones and bottles and set a police bus afire.

Police director Lee said that 14 policemen were injured, two of them seriously. He said he had no information about injuries among demonstrators or bystanders.

“Between 50,000 and 60,000” police were mobilized, 35,000 of them in Seoul, he said.

Although he estimated the numbers of demonstrators in Seoul at only 2,000, reporters witnessed clashes involving thousands of protesters at more than 10 sites.

Unable to move through lines of police wearing gas masks and helmets and bearing aluminum shields, the opposition leaders and students held makeshift ceremonies in the streets in memory of the slain student.

Chun’s forces allowed a planned memorial service for the student, Park Jong Chul, 21, to proceed, as scheduled, at the Myongdong Cathedral in the bustling center of this capital of 9 million people.

Police, however, sealed off a one-square-mile area around the cathedral, the national center for South Korea’s 2.3 million Roman Catholics, and allowed only 800 clergymen, nuns and selected laymen to attend. Only 50 student protesters, who had spent Friday night in the cathedral area, were able to attend the ceremony.

‘Our Dead Patriot’

Before it started, they hoisted banners honoring “our dead patriot, Park Jong Chul.”

Park’s parents and four brothers and sisters attended a memorial at a Buddhist temple in the southern port of Pusan.

Participation by anyone other than clergy was banned at the Myongdong Cathedral. Chun’s justice minister condemned the plans by the opposition and 47 civic and religious groups to attend the ceremony as politically inspired and said they represented “a threat to national survival.”

Only a few stores were open in the cordoned square-mile Myongdong area, filled with fashion shops, banks, and securities offices.

A coffee shop manager, looking out the front window on the heavily armed riot police filling the street, volunteered a comment to a foreign customer that “Korea has made great economic gains but since 1972 (when the late President Park Chung Hee assumed authoritarian powers), it hasn’t made any political progress.”

Chun ignored statements of assurance from opposition leaders that the planned rally would be a peaceful one, as well as a State Department statement Tuesday urging his government to uphold the Korean people’s right to assemble. A two-day crackdown, which included roundups of more than 2,000 people and house arrests of at least 30 opposition leaders, failed to prevent trouble.

The two driving forces behind the major opposition New Korea Democratic Party--Kim Dae Jung, 62, and Kim Young Sam, 59--were among those placed under house arrest.

In a statement issued from his home, Kim Young Sam said the police crackdown “shows that the current regime has no will whatsoever to eradicate torture. . . . This strengthens our conviction that the only way to expel torture from this land is to put an end to dictatorship and realize democracy.”

Dissidents Dispersed

Lee Min Woo, 71, president of the New Korea Democratic Party, gathered with his supporters at the Lotte Hotel to walk to Myongdong Cathedral. But as Lee and a group of supporters got outside, police fired a barrage of tear-gas grenades.

Lee visited a hospital later for treatment for inhalation of tear gas.

Kim Tae Ryong, spokesman for the opposition party, said Lee’s wife, the wives of two other opposition members of the National Assembly, and four opposition assemblymen were injured in scuffles with police.

“A feeble regime with little popular support, the current government had to suppress a peaceful and ceremonial event in a brutal manner,” the spokesman charged.

Chun’s ruling Democratic Justice Party condemned the attempted rally and urged the New Korea Democratic Party to “cease out-of-Parliament struggles” immediately.

The attack on Lee and his followers sent pedestrians and bystanders--crying, coughing and temporarily blinded by the burning tear gas--running into the Lotte Hotel.

A South Korean woman, seeing a foreigner nearly blinded from the tear gas, tapped his shoulder and said in English, “Don’t touch your eyes.”

In front of the Chosun Hotel, about 2,000 demonstrators assembled in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, and dispersed each time police fired tear gas, then reassembled to shout such slogans as “Down with the murderous regime!” “Down with dictatorship!” and “Drive out U.S. imperialists!”

At 2 p.m., as the bell at Myongdong Cathedral tolled 21 times, marking the age of the slain student, a smaller crowd of about 100 New Korea Democratic Party members reassembled in the driveway of the Chosun Hotel, offered prayers, and sang the national anthem.

Opposition leaders had asked drivers to blow their horns and churches to ring their bells in memory of Park at 2 p.m.--and a loud and continuing blare of horns erupted in front of the Chosun at precisely that time. Korean journalists reported that policemen were dispatched to churches throughout Seoul to prevent ringing of their bells.

Chun’s decision to outlaw the opposition’s rally induced a State Department spokesman to declare that “we consider it the duty of a government to protect not only the security of its citizens but also their right to peaceful assembly.”

Needs Popular Support

Gaston Sigur, assistant U.S. secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, followed that pronouncement Friday with a speech at the U.S.-Korea Society in New York. He said that “only popular support can give the stability which the Republic of Korea needs to meet the challenges and its economic security in the future.”

“It is essential . . . to create a more open and legitimate political system,” Sigur added.

The opposition New Korea Democratic Party and dissident groups seized upon Park’s death to press for more democracy, including a direct presidential election to choose a successor to Chun when he steps down Feb. 24, 1988. Chun has agreed to amend his authoritarian 1980 constitution but insists on implementing a parliamentary form of government.

Five days after Park was tortured to death, Chun condemned the killing, arrested two policemen on homicide charges and fired his home minister and national police director. But he also had his government launch a weeklong barrage of attacks against plans for Saturday’s memorial service for Park.

National Police Chief Lee said Saturday night that if the opposition rally had been permitted, “there was a fear it would have caused radical destructiveness and riots, creating social confusion.”