South Korea Protesters Show No Sign of Letup : Unrest: March for slain student draws 50,000 opposed to President Roh. They vow to continue efforts.

South Korean President Roh Tae Woo succeeded Tuesday in preventing a funeral procession for a student beaten to death by police from marching to City Hall, but mourners and protesters, whose ranks swelled to more than 50,000 at one point, showed no sign of letup in their demands for Roh’s ouster.

They promised to renew their effort to march on the city center today.

Tuesday’s protests marked the 19th day of unrest sparked by the student’s death, equaling in length the outpouring that in June, 1987, forced Roh, as a presidential candidate, to pledge an end to authoritarian government.

With a casket bearing the body of Kang Kyung Dae--a 20-year-old college freshman clubbed to death April 26--at their rear, students at the head of a mile-long procession that was blocked from marching downtown overpowered riot police and set ablaze four tear-gas-firing armored vans in an eight-lane street in the Shinchon section of Seoul.

Elsewhere, bands of protesters, striking in guerrilla-like fashion, disrupted two sections of the downtown area. Protests also occurred in 13 other cities. Throughout the country, 200,000 marched in the streets, Korean news media reported.

Although protesters shouted “Dissolve the (ruling) Democratic Liberal Party!” and “Oust Roh Tae Woo!”, posters expressed discontent with an entire gamut of government shortcomings--corruption, water pollution, skyrocketing land and housing prices, inflation and alleged use of force and surveillance to constrain opposition.

Announcing that they would attempt to march to City Hall again today, funeral organizers ordered a procession of five vehicles, including one bearing Kang’s body, to turn back to Yonsei University for the night at 9:45 p.m. But a band of about 5,000 hard-core protesters stayed on until after midnight, hurling pieces of broken concrete at police, who fired volley after volley of pepper gas, a virulent form of tear gas.

After about 5,000 mourners, including Kim Dae Jung, head of the main opposition party, held last rites for Kang at his alma mater, Myungji University, a funeral procession was halted by volleys of pepper gas when marchers attempted to divert from an approved route. They sought to walk through the exclusive Yonghi-dong neighborhood.

Kim, who was booed and chided for “lukewarm” opposition to Roh’s government by some students at the funeral, was among those who suffered from the initial rounds of pepper gas. He was blinded momentarily and led away by aides.

“I was unable to breathe. My face felt burned, and I almost collapsed,” said the 67-year-old opposition leader.

The often-jailed advocate of democracy under South Korea’s previous authoritarian rulers has joined students and dissidents in demanding the ouster of Prime Minister Ro Jai Bong and his Cabinet. But he has refused to call for the ouster of Roh, who in 1987 became the first South Korean president elected in a free and open election in 16 years. Kim was one of Roh’s three opponents.

When police halted the procession, Lee Dok Sun, the student’s mother, cried through an amplifier, “Let my son go peacefully and happily.” She also urged ordinary citizens to join the procession to “help me fight for revenge.”

Police, however, refused to relent, and after a three-hour stalemate the funeral organizers agreed to take a detour and arrived at 6 p.m. at Shinchon, where police had given them permission to stage a “roadside ceremony.”

In the afternoon, only 20,000 protesters had gathered for the planned street ceremony, and all but 5,000 drifted away when the procession failed to arrive on schedule.

But in the evening, the crowd, including students, workers, a smattering of white-collar workers and members of mass-media unions and religious groups, mushroomed to at least 50,000.

When the crowd refused to break up, police started firing pepper gas, and fighting broke out.

Roh ordered about 22,000 police to block the planned march to the City Hall, where a similar funeral for a student victim of government violence drew a crowd of 1 million on July 9, 1987, as an aftermath to 19 days of protests that led to Roh’s now-famous June 29, 1987, democratization pledge.

Lee Chong Kook, national police chief, said the procession was halted because funeral organizers had announced plans for “events that can hardly be considered genuine funeral rituals.”

Nonetheless, the pepper gas attacks on a funeral procession were expected to exacerbate the dissidents’ acrimony toward Roh that was triggered by Kang’s death.

Dissidents and students said early this morning that they will refuse to bury Kang in a “martyr’s cemetery” in the southwestern provincial capital of Kwangju until they win permission to stage “farewell rites” in the City Hall plaza.

Kwangju was the site of a 10-day insurrection that began May 19, 1980, in which about 200 people were killed by government troops. The anniversary Saturday is expected to provide another occasion for demonstrations.