Taegu Students Join in Outburst : Chun’s Hometown Not Spared Amid Wave of Violent Protests

Lt. Kim Young Kook of the Taegu police department sat alone at a desk in the otherwise empty office of his substation. Above his head, the ceiling fan was still, its blades wilted by the fire that had scorched the office walls and burned the cabinets.

“They came quietly, on Thursday night, and started banging on the door,” he told a reporter Tuesday. “We had five men on the roof and five inside. The men threw tear gas. That gave them time to escape.”

The policemen, unarmed, hid in the restroom of a restaurant next door, Kim said, while part of a crowd of nearly 1,000 demonstrators forced the door of the substation and burned the records and furniture. He said they piled uniforms in the street outside and set fire to them, along with a new motorcycle.

The violent anti-government demonstrations that have swept Seoul and more than 20 other South Korean cities since June 10 did not bypass Taegu.

Home of 2 Presidents

It is surprising, perhaps, because this south-central city of more than 2 million people is the home of two men who became president, and another, Roh Tae Woo, is the ruling party’s candidate for president. All three are former generals.

If for this reason alone, a knowledgeable Western resident here suggested, the government’s powerful security apparatus “wants to keep Taegu as quiet as possible.”

But high-level anxiety and hometown pride have not been enough to put down the protests. And the pride is not unqualified.

“If it so happens that through the democratic process a man from our region becomes president of the republic, that is a very nice thing,” a local newsman said, emphasizing the words democratic process. Both of Taegu’s presidents, the late Park Chung Hee and the incumbent Chun Doo Hwan, came to power by way of the military coup.

Still, Park was popular here. He was a master of regional politics, and he delivered, among other benefits, an industrial park and the Seoul-Pusan Freeway, which connects Taegu with north and south. There is a saying in modern South Korea: “When they talk about the prosperity of a region, they talk about how wide the highway is.”

Chun has not been so generous, people here say, and in Taegu as elsewhere, the legitimacy of his government is questioned. Roh, Chun’s coup collaborator and high-school classmate, bears the same onus.

As men who made their first careers in uniform, Chun and Roh were never very well known in their hometown. And in a fair, direct election for the presidency, opposition leader Kim Young Sam would win 70% of the vote against Roh, according to Lee Tae Won, an official of Kim’s Reunification Democratic Party. The party’s offices here were the political headquarters of Yoo Sung Hwan, a national assemblyman jailed--despite his immunity--by the Chun government last October for making an allegedly seditious speech in the assembly.

Taegu is South Korea’s third largest city, and it has a long history, including a brief period as temporary capital of the republic in 1950, in the first days of the Korean War. The distinction lasted barely a month as the North Korean army, which had earlier overrun Seoul, pushed the South Korean forces out of Taegu and into the area around Pusan.

Now Taegu is a textile capital. Nearby is a General Motors-Daewoo joint venture that produces auto parts, some for the LeMans now being sold in the United States under the Pontiac brand.

And in the Kumi Industrial Park, which was developed outside the city under President Park, 60,000 workers are employed in various ventures, including production of silicon wafers for Monsanto Corp. and personal computers for a combine of AT&T; and the Korean firm Gold Star. They also make rugs and export them to the Middle East, a mark of Korean salesmanship.

Socially, the people of Taegu are conservative, the Western resident said. They are influenced by the city’s long association with the yangban tradition, an elitist culture that emphasizes education and prepares its children for government service.

“The large majority of the university students here still live with their conservative parents,” the Westerner said. “They don’t have the freedom of movement that the students of Seoul have.”

The social restrictions explain in part the relatively smaller and tamer protests in the city compared with those in Pusan, Kwangju and other provincial capitals over the last two weeks. A demonstration at a local women’s college, for example, consisted of students marching decorously across the campus, carrying parasols to protect themselves from the sun.

Toll of Injured 260

But since Roh’s nomination on June 10, and the promise of continued rule by former generals under the ruling Democratic Justice Party, Taegu has seen its largest street protests since student demonstrators drove President Syngman Rhee from power in 1960.

“And in those days (of 1960), the police were using guns,” the Taegu newsman pointed out.

According to police reports, more than 35,000 students and a negligible number of adult supporters have taken to the streets in the past five days, 10,000 of them on a single day, last Friday. The reported injury toll is 260, including 110 policemen and 70 students. The rest were bystanders caught in the flow of violence.

Six police substations have been damaged by firebomb attacks, including Lt. Kim’s. Just the threat of demonstration caused the cancellation of a professional baseball game between the Samsung Lions and the MBC Dragons.

Compared with those in Seoul and Pusan, the demonstrations here have been moderate in terms of violence and numbers. But in conservative Taegu, the Western resident noted, “just the fact that students are walking through the streets” is unusual.

“The campuses have been hot since April 13,” the Westerner said, mentioning the date of President Chun’s politically explosive decision to cancel debate on constitutional revision until after Seoul’s 1988 Olympic Games.

Tuesday, on the campus of Kyongpook University, the largest of Taegu’s five major colleges, protest leader Park Hyung Ryong claimed as a student victory the moves in Seoul toward possible resumption of constitutional talks. But he was cautious, even pessimistic.

“I’m afraid they might result in compromise and a continuation of military regimes,” Park told a reporter.

Like other student leaders, Park places no particular faith in any politician, including opposition leader Kim Young Sam. “There’s always that possibility” that Kim might betray the students’ ideals, he said.

Bad for Merchants

Will the protests continue here? “We have a dilemma,” Park said, mentioning the political developments in the capital. “In the short term, the plan is to continue the struggle. (As he said this, an anti-government rally got under way nearby.) The long term is uncertain.”

Two hours later, the students had invaded downtown Taegu. The police shut down traffic on three blocks along a main street, and the clashes resumed: rocks and Molotov cocktails from the students and tear gas from the riot police.

The demonstrations have upset downtown merchants. The owner of a restaurant that specializes in tripe soup, a Taegu delicacy, complained that the protests have disrupted his trade.

“Business has been bad for two weeks,” he said. “The demonstrations take place at our peak hours (6 to 11 p.m.).”

The mayor, a former national police official appointed two weeks ago by the Ministry of Home Affairs, has personally apologized to businessmen for the use of tear gas on downtown streets, the newsman said, and students and the police are both credited with a degree of restraint by most neutral observers.

But nearly all agree that political compromise in Seoul is long overdue. Even Lt. Kim, seated in his charred station house, was talking about political compromise.

“People have high expectations for the talks between President Chun and Kim Young Sam,” he said. “They really like that.”