Seoul Students Protesting Trip Ban Clash With Police

Radical students protesting a South Korean government ban on travel to North Korea clashed violently with police Saturday, and President Roh Tae Woo ordered a crackdown on student leaders.

At Seoul’s Hanyang University, the 24-hour siege of a classroom building ended after hundreds of students wielding metal pipes and clubs fled down a hillside through a police blockade. Some were arrested and others surrendered.

More than 1,000 students had barricaded themselves in the building Friday after riot police stormed the campus to break up a rally of thousands of students planning to march to the truce village of Panmunjom, on the border between north and south.

Want to Attend Festival

The students want to attend the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, which opened Saturday in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

Police arrested about 650 students Friday in the biggest single raid inside a college campus since Roh came to power in February, 1988. About 2,000 riot police stayed inside the campus overnight.

The Seoul government banned participation in the youth festival and said anyone going would be charged with violations of national security.

Roh issued a statement Saturday saying officials would punish anyone who has unauthorized contacts with Communist North Korea.

The north has “instigated students and other figures to secretly visit Pyongyang . . . showing that the north is still harboring an intent to communize the south,” he said.

Police arrested 100 students Saturday before the building siege ended. Many were caught after several hundred students, wielding pipes and firebombs, slid down a steep hill behind the building and raced from campus with police in pursuit.

Witnesses said about 20 police and students were injured in fighting before the students fled.

Twenty-two student leaders later surrendered to police peacefully after a college official was allowed to talk to the students.