May Impose Curbs, Roh Warns Korea Radicals

In a reference to his constitutional powers to declare martial law, President Roh Tae Woo warned Wednesday that he may invoke emergency measures to quell anti-government protests after a violent confrontation between South Korean police and radical students left six young police officers dead.

Roh blamed “revolutionary forces” for the incident earlier in the day in the southern port city of Pusan, in which students holding hostages in a library building at Dongui University torched a barricade soaked with paint thinner and gasoline as riot troopers staged a dawn raid.

Some of the police officers were burned and asphyxiated, and several were injured as they fell from seventh-floor windows while attempting to flee the conflagration. As of late Wednesday, six had died and two of the 11 others who had been hospitalized were reported to be in critical condition.

One student was also seriously injured, while the rest escaped to a roof along with their five hostages, plainclothes officers who were finally freed unharmed. Police reportedly detained 94 students and were expected to file arson--and, according to one report, murder--charges against their leaders.

It was by far the worst case of violence since students, dissidents and labor activists began staging massive anti-government protests two years ago, prompting democratic reforms. And it came at a time when Roh’s government, beleaguered by pressure from its right wing and the powerful military, was already accelerating a campaign to crack down on campus violence and labor unrest, following the controversial visit of a dissident leader to Communist North Korea at the end of March.

“It has become evident that lurking behind the flames that kill young people are violent revolutionaries who indulge in murder, arson, kidnaping and destruction with the goal of overthrowing our democratic society,” Roh said in a nationally televised speech Wednesday night.

“If violence and lawlessness imperil democracy and the future of the nation in spite of the best efforts of the government and the general public, I will have to consider invoking the emergency powers vested in the president by the constitution,” he said, adding that such a situation is “not desirable.”

Roh, a former army general who has cast himself as a populist and a moderate favoring increased democracy in this traditionally authoritarian state, has powers under the constitution to issue presidential decrees, curtailing basic civil rights, or to declare martial law.

‘Will Be Brought to Justice’

“Dens for making Molotov cocktails and scheming violent revolution . . . will all be ferreted out by all means, regardless of whether they are located on campuses or in workplaces,” Roh said. “All those implicated will be brought to justice.”

It was not immediately clear how the president intends to stop widespread student protests and labor disturbances, which have flared with increasing intensity during the last several weeks despite large-scale police intervention. South Korean demonstrations are perhaps notable because they have until now resulted in few serious casualties. Typically, the confrontations are dramatic but largely harmless rituals in which protesters hurl rocks and homemade firebombs at police, who respond with volleys of acrid pepper gas.

Since March, however, police have been under orders to use their firearms to protect themselves when police stations or other government installations come under attack.

The trouble in Pusan was sparked by one of several recent incidents in which police fired warning shots over the heads of protesters. On Monday, Dongui University students involved in a May Day rally stormed a police box demanding the release of a fellow student who had been detained, but they were dispersed by warning shots fired from police carbines.

The students regrouped Tuesday to protest the use of the weapons and took the five police hostages in an attempt to exchange prisoners. About 700 riot police stormed the library at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday after all-night negotiations failed to resolve the standoff.

The situation was tense later in the day, as the government attempted to send out a stern message to radical students and at the same time reassure the ranks of embittered riot police. All but one of the officers who died in the raid were in their 20s. Two of them, Mo Song Tae, 23, and Kim Myong Hwa, 22, were reportedly draftees rather than professionals.

Grief-stricken riot police were shown on news broadcasts weeping over the charred bodies of victims. About 200 of the troopers later staged a sit-in protest at Pusan police station, blaming their superiors for sending them into the building unarmed and without taking proper precautions.

The Korea Herald said national police issued a report Wednesday saying 3,766 policemen had been injured by rocks and firebombs during the first four months of the year. Last year, one officer was killed and 6,701 were injured, while two died and 9,950 were hurt in 1987, according to police.

The superintendent of the national police headquarters, Cho Jong Sok, resigned to take symbolic responsibility for the Pusan incident.

While anti-government demonstrations reportedly flared at two Seoul campuses Wednesday, prosecutors in the Joint Security Investigation Office issued warrants for the arrest of 50 student leaders suspected of instigating campus unrest.

More than 500 students, meanwhile, demonstrated outside the library building at Dongui University, demanding the release of arrested classmates and the resumption of classes. The Education Ministry closed the school immediately after the incident.

Leaders of the major opposition parties were quick to condemn student violence, distancing themselves from past appearances of sympathizing with or condoning campus protest as a means of hastening democratic reforms.

Kim Young Sam, head of the Reunification Democratic Party whose power base is in the Pusan area, went to the scene and reportedly told the local police chief that “violence under any circumstances is the enemy of democracy.”

Kim Dae Jung, president of the largest opposition group, the Party for Peace and Democracy, declared that “even if the motive is just and right, one cannot achieve goals by violence.”

Both Kims said they would join Roh’s ruling party in endorsing legislation in the National Assembly, where the opposition holds a majority of seats, that would ban the production and use of firebombs, according to news reports.

Although the protesters at Dongui were calling for the overthrow of the Roh government, a ritual demand made in nearly every student demonstration in South Korea, the genesis of campus unrest was in a school admissions scandal that broke in mid-March, when a professor accused administrators of rigging entrance examinations.

Student agitation for campus reforms turned violent after a student at Pusan National Teachers College, Lee Kyong Hyon, 22, was seriously injured in a fight with riot police on her campus last month. She remains in a coma after receiving a head injury--authorities say from a flying rock, but students allege it was from police shields.

More trouble was expected today as labor activists said they will defy warnings by authorities and stage a mass rally in the industrial city of Masan, which is near Pusan. More than 7,000 riot police have been mobilized to stop the rally, local press reports said.