South Korean Police Crush Student March to Border

Tens of thousands of South Korean police punched, kicked and tear-gassed students today to keep them from reaching the border and meeting students from the Communist North.

Thousands of students, chanting “Let’s Unify the Fatherland,” were arrested or violently dispersed as they tried to leave Seoul for the Demilitarized Zone just 30 miles north of the capital.

About 10,000 students who tried to march out of Yonsei University were turned back.

60,000 Officers Mobilized

Police mobilized 60,000 officers at campuses, train and bus stations and at checkpoints along the road to the border to block the march.

Witnesses saw tens of thousands of green-uniformed and plainclothes policemen repeatedly punch, kick and charge at youths. Hundreds of rounds of skin-burning tear gas were fired to enforce an official ban on the “reunification” meeting.

Seoul, host of the Summer Olympics that begin in 99 days, called the meeting a Communist propaganda ploy.

Of the 40,000 students who had vowed to march toward the bridge on the edge of the Demilitarized Zone bisecting the Korean Peninsula, only two on a motorcycle managed to elude 10 heavily guarded checkpoints on the road from the capital.

They were seized just a few hundred yards from the Imjin River, the last natural barrier before the border.

Another man was arrested as he tried to take a mountain trail down to Freedom Bridge, usually manned by American troops of the U.N. Command. The bridge has been closed since the beginning of the month for repairs.

Altogether 37 students managed to reach Munsan, a few miles short of Freedom Bridge, after slipping around police roadblocks. They were quickly arrested.

No Problems North of Border

There were no such problems north of the border. At 3 p.m., a 13-member student delegation from the North turned up at the Panmunjom truce village, the proposed site of the reunification meeting, and sat down to score propaganda points.

To disperse the demonstrators swiftly, authorities in the South brought up black armor-plated riot control vans that spewed out a dense cloud of choking “pepper fog” while riot police wearing gas masks poured out a hail of tear gas grenades.

Blue-uniformed special police forces then moved in on the students, kicking and punching, witnesses said.