S. Koreans Riot Over Merger of 3 Political Parties

Tens of thousands of demonstrators protesting the merging of two South Korean opposition parties into President Roh Tae Woo’s ruling party invaded downtown Seoul on Wednesday for the first time since July, 1987, stoned the U.S. Information Service and set fire to a corner office in the American building.

About 4,000 students from a main force of an estimated 40,000 protesters smashed 13 windows in the first and second floors of the USIS building, which houses an American cultural center.

A guard at the Lotte Hotel across the street said he saw students toss a burning log into the corner office, setting it afire at about 8 p.m. More than two hours later, firefighters were still spraying water into the smoldering ruins of the office.

There were no reports of injuries at the USIS building.

Police said dozens of officers and protesters were injured but gave no numbers. One witness said almost 50 police officers were overpowered by students, who took away their tear gas masks and shields.

The violent clashes spread to at least eight other cities and involved about 50,000 protesters nationwide, police and news reports said. Police said they arrested at least 912 people across the country. According to Yonhap, the national news agency, radicals attacked five police stations and ruling party offices in three provincial cities, destroying the office in the central city of Chongju. Other cities where clashes occurred included Taegu, Taejon and Kwangju.

South Korean radicals criticize the United States for supporting Roh and charge that the presence of 43,000 U.S. troops here prevents South Korea from reunifying with Communist North Korea.

Shortly before sunset, the main crowd of protesters, including students, laborers and some white-shirted office workers, filled more than three blocks of the six-lane Namdaemun Street in the downtown area near the Shinsegae Department Store.

It was massive demonstrations in the same area that won support from average Koreans in June, 1987, against former President Chun Doo Hwan’s planned rubber-stamp transfer of power.

Not since July, 1987, when nearly 1 million people filled the streets in mourning for a student who died in a demonstration, has the downtown area been paralyzed by demonstrators. Wednesday’s protest also was the largest and most violent in Seoul since then.

As in 1987, the demonstrations Wednesday came on the occasion of a ruling party convention.

In formally establishing his new Democratic Liberal Party, Roh took into his ranks Kim Young Sam and Kim Jong Pil, both of whom ran as his opponents in the free and open presidential election that the demonstrations of 1987 forced Chun to approve. Before the merger, Roh’s party held a minority of seats in the single-chamber National Assembly.

Protesters called the tripartite alliance an illicit annulment of presidential and legislative elections in which people voted for the two Kims and their parties as expressions of anti-government opinion. They demanded that the merger be annulled.

Since the surprising Jan. 22 announcement of the merger, which gives Roh enough votes in the National Assembly to amend the constitution, opinion polls have shown Roh’s popularity falling. In one poll taken last month by the ruling party, only 10% supported Roh.

Continuing economic troubles, highlighted by a halt in export growth, a plunge in stock prices, rising inflation, soaring housing costs, and labor unrest, as well as feuding among the factions in the enlarged ruling party, have exacerbated the situation for Roh.

In a speech at Wednesday’s inaugural convention, Roh admitted that his newly enlarged party is losing popularity because of “disharmony.”

Beginning at 6 p.m., shops and department stores shut down and traffic was halted for about three hours as the demonstrators battled police with chunks of concrete torn out of sidewalks. Half a block from the USIS building, protesters torched a riot police bus and a police jeep. Police replied with heavy barrages of pepper gas, a powerful form of tear gas that left sidewalks white with powder and the air heavy with acrid fumes hours later.

When traffic was able to resume, cars and buses moved at a snail’s pace over rocks and chunks of concrete cluttering the streets.

Police estimated that more than 10,000 people participated in the protest, while a coalition of 17 dissident groups that sponsored the demonstrations said more than 60,000 turned out. The throng in Namdaemun Street alone appeared to number at least 40,000.

Police raids against strikers in late April at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard in Ulsan and the Seoul headquarters of KBS, the semi-governmental national TV and radio network, had stirred political controversy. But not until Wednesday were students, workers, and dissidents able to mount a major demonstration against Roh. A dissident labor federation’s call for a nationwide strike on May Day, for example, was all but ignored.

Human rights advocates, including the Rev. Kim Kwan Suk, the former president of the Christian Broadcasting System, and I Don Myong, president of Chosun University in Kwangju, issued a statement Wednesday calling for all remaining opposition forces to unite in a single party against Roh’s ruling group. Two separate opposition groups are now moving to form political parties. Also in opposition is the Party for Peace and Democracy, headed by Kim Dae Jung.

BACKGROUND

Riots in several cities reflect deep divisions in South Korean society. President Roh Tae Woo, who won election in late 1987 when two major rivals split the opposition vote, moved to strengthen his hand by merging his party--which lacked a majority in the National Assembly--with two opposition parties. Protesters charge that the merger subverts anti-government votes that had been cast for the opposition.