S. Koreans Battle Police, Try to March to North

Radical students hurling hundreds of firebombs tried to march to Communist North Korea today as riot police fired volleys of tear gas to drive them back.

About 5,000 students chanted anti-American slogans and shouted “Unite our fatherland” as they tried to march out of Yonsei University in Seoul to head for the border 30 miles to the north to press for reunification of the peninsula.

Waves of students hurling firebombs charged out of the university’s main gate to attack thousands of waiting riot police. Several officers hit by firebombs screamed as they were covered in blazing gasoline.

Other students pelted police with rocks and bricks as lines of officers battled to drive them back into the school.

Police surrounded the sprawling campus after the government banned the unification march as a threat to national security.

Vicious fighting erupted at the school Thursday when students screaming “Skin the Yankees!” clashed with security forces trying to prevent them from assembling. Scores of policemen and students were injured, and police made hundreds of arrests.

Clashes were reported Thursday in at least eight provincial cities between police and students trying to reach the capital for the march.

Eight thousand riot police fired thousands of tear-gas bombs as 20,000 students stormed off the Yonsei campus, and more volleys came from 15 armored vans. Other students trying to reach the campus joined the fray.

“March to North Korea!” students shouted through clouds of tear gas that swept over the scene.

Charging students armed with wooden and metal clubs charged from streets around the campus, repeatedly forcing police back during the four-hour battle.

The protest Thursday was bitterly anti-American. Radical leaders blame the United States for Korea’s division in 1945, at the end of World War II, and several violent anti-U.S. protests have occurred in the past month.