S. Korea Arrests Dissident for Visiting North; Students Protest

Dissident Moon Ik Hwan returned Thursday from an illegal trip to North Korea and was immediately arrested on charges of violating South Korea’s tough anti-communist laws.

The 71-year-old clergyman’s arrest aboard a plane at Seoul airport by about 40 plainclothes police provoked immediate protests by nearly 10,000 radical students around the country.

Riot police fired tear gas at 2,000 students at Yonsei University in Seoul to keep them from marching off campus, and scores were arrested when they tried to hold a sit-down protest outside the gates, witnesses said.

In all, police detained about 1,800 people, most of them students, in Seoul to prevent them from taking part in Thursday’s protests, a police spokesman said, adding that most would be released later.

Advocate of Reunification

Moon, who was an interpreter for the United States during the 1950-53 Korean War and has a doctorate in theology from Princeton University, has long been a staunch advocate of reunification and has been imprisoned for his harsh criticism of the state.

The Yonsei students had gathered to welcome Moon and condemned the government’s action against him--the first prominent South Korean dissident to visit Pyongyang and a leading campaigner for reunification of north and south.

“Moon Ik Hwan, Pioneer of the Country’s Reunification” and “Whose Land Is This Anyway, Where People Cannot Come and Go Freely?” read two of the students’ banners.

Students fought police with rocks and firebombs at two other universities in Seoul. The Yonhap news agency said more than 5,000 students staged violent protests in the southwest city of Kwangju and in the southern port of Pusan.

Invited by Kim Il Sung

Moon, a Presbyterian pastor, arrived in the north March 25 and spent 10 days there at the invitation of President Kim Il Sung to talk about reunifying the Korean Peninsula, divided into north and south after World War II.

A spokesman for the Seoul prosecutor’s office said they took Moon and a companion, industrialist Yoo Won Ho, into custody on three charges of breaching the National Security Law prohibiting anti-state activities.

Diplomats said they do not believe that Seoul’s hard-line attitude toward Moon’s visit signals a drastic rethinking of President Roh Tae Woo’s drive, launched last June, to improve relations with the north.