Roh Offers to Meet N. Korea Leader : S. Korea’s President Proposes Summit as Police, Students Clash

South Korean President Roh Tae Woo on Monday proposed a summit meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Il Sung, renewing a recent effort at reconciliation as his government’s riot police put down a march by students to the North Korean border.

Roh made his summit proposal in a nationally televised speech marking the 43rd anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonizers at the end of World War II. At the same time, he also issued a sharp warning to dissidents, saying his government will not tolerate “activities which destroy free democracy.”

Police used a fusillade of acrid pepper gas Monday afternoon to halt an attempt by about 3,000 students to leave the campus of Yonsei University in Seoul for a march to the demilitarized zone, where they planned to hold talks with North Korean students at the border truce village of Panmunjom. Although the students refrained from violence in the initial confrontation, they later hurled firebombs and rocks in a protracted battle with police cordoning off the campus.

Small Bands Broken Up

Skirmishes also flared in the South Gate and West Gate commercial districts of Seoul as columns of riot troopers and helmeted plainclothes police broke up small bands of protesters trying to assemble.

With about 24,000 police officers deployed to stop the students, Monday’s incident was a scaled-down replay of an abortive June 10 march to the border, also intended for north-south student talks. Scores of unresisting protesters were observed being beaten and kicked by their captors following their arrest Monday. By evening, police had detained 1,200 demonstrators, the state-owned Korean Broadcasting Service reported.

President Roh, in his Liberation Day address, said direct talks with the North Korean leader would be “the most effective and quickest way to resolve all issues between the two parts of Korea.” The government, in outlawing student talks, has maintained that contacts with the north must be conducted through official channels.

Earlier Proposal

It was not the first time that Seoul has advanced the idea of a summit meeting to break the impasse between the two Koreas, which has been marked by the failure to agree on a plan for north and south to act as co-hosts for the Summer Olympics in Seoul. But Monday’s proposal was the first made by Roh himself, coming after he unveiled a six-point plan to improve relations with Pyongyang last month.

“Neither the venue nor the agenda nor the procedures should be an obstacle to the leaders of the south and the north meeting to discuss the future of our people in a frank and honest manner,” Roh said.

On the subject of domestic dissent, Roh echoed the tone of controversial remarks made by one of his Cabinet ministers during the weekend. Minister of Government Administration Kim Yung Kap shocked the opposition by saying the ruling party may want to revise the constitution after the Sept. 17-Oct. 2 Olympics because the current charter, drafted just last year, does not allow the president to dissolve the National Assembly.

Such powers might be necessary to guard the nation from sedition, Kim suggested, adding that opposition parties, which control the majority of seats in the assembly, have been supporting the radical students.

Although Kim’s remarks have been dismissed as his personal views and not ruling-party policy, they are believed to reflect the thinking of conservative elements in the power structure, including the military.

Warning to Students

Roh, a former general who was elected president by a narrow plurality last December, also sounded the alarm about domestic unrest in his speech.

In an apparent reference to student radicals, he warned that South Korea’s fledgling democracy is threatened by “attempts by some groups to overthrow our free democratic system through a violent revolution and to establish a class dictatorship in its stead.”