Thousands of Korea Students Battle Police

Thousands of South Korean students today battled equal numbers of riot police trying to keep them from marching to the border village of Panmunjom to meet students from the communist North and press for reunification.

Witnesses said legions of students, wearing headbands and makeshift plastic gas masks, poured over the fence at Yonsei University to be met by huge clouds of pepper gas fired from at least five black armor-plated anti-riot vans.

The special forces of the riot police, plainclothesmen known as “grabbers,” roamed the streets in front of the campus in large teams, looking for students trying to join the Yonsei protest.

Tear gas wafted over Seoul, which also today began a 100-day countdown to its playing host to the Summer Olympics. In the provinces, police and students clashed at 57 campuses and there were more than 200 arrests, Yonhap news agency said.

Games as Steppingstone

The student drive to reach Panmunjom, where selected delegates hoped to discuss national reunification with 13 North Korean students from Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung University, was outlawed by the government, which said it was merely pandering to communist propaganda.

The militant students from the South support North Korea’s demand to be allowed to co-host the Olympics, saying the games should be a steppingstone toward reunifying the peninsula, split into two hostile states by the 1950-53 Korean War.

In the last month, three Seoul students have committed suicide, one by stabbing and two by fire, to express their opposition to President Roh Tae Woo’s policies toward inter-Korean dialogue and human rights.

Checkpoints on Roads

The government mobilized nearly half the country’s 120,000 police to thwart the march.