Funeral for 6 S. Korea Police Draws Thousands

Thousands of South Koreans attended funeral ceremonies Sunday for six Pusan policemen killed in a clash with student radicals last week.

Two thousand people attended a service with both Buddhist and Christian rites around a makeshift altar at a police base.

Thousands more gathered in nearby streets, clustered at windows or watched from rooftops.

The six men, two of them conscripts in their early 20s, were among hundreds of police who raided a library at Pusan’s Dongui University last Wednesday to rescue five colleagues held hostage by students.

They died either from inhaling smoke or from jumping out of windows to escape a fire thatstarted when students set pools of paint thinner ablaze with gasoline bombs.

Many in the crowd wept as Chong Mun Dok, whose 27-year-old nephew was among the dead, burst into tears while speaking on behalf of bereaved relatives.

“Can those who pour paint thinner and hurl gasoline bombs be called patriots?” Chong wailed.

“Violent, illegal demonstrations cannot be justified with any excuse or under any pretext,” he said.

The national outcry after the incident has clearly sobered workers and radical students who in recent weeks had staged almost daily protests, many of them violent.

Radical leader Ihm Chong Chul said Saturday that his National Student Representative Council would renounce violence because of the Pusan deaths.

In an address, Prime Minister Kang Young Hoon echoed the harsh condemnation of radical violence expressed by President Roh Tae Woo after the incident.

“We will resolutely fight against dogmatic revolutionary forces who try to overthrow the constitutional order and turn our peaceful society into chaos,” Kang said.

Kang was near tears when he added his own yellow and white chrysanthemums to the piles of flowers already placed at the funeral altar.

Roh threatened to take emergency measures if the violence continues, but there have been no serious confrontations since then.