Seoul Boosts Security After Protest

South Korean police beefed up security for President Bush’s visit after university students occupied the U.S. Chamber of Commerce here for nearly three hours Monday, trashing furniture, breaking a window and tossing anti-American pamphlets from the 45th-floor offices.

It was the most dramatic in a series of protests around South Korea against Bush’s visit and an embarrassment to the government, which had been trying to keep anti-American protests at bay on the eve of the visit. Thirty-two students were arrested. The government said it would increase security along the route of the president’s motorcade in anticipation of further disruptions.

Also Monday, a South Korean legislator in the National Assembly called Bush a “symbol of evil,” prompting a shoving match among legislators.

“Bush is a symbol of evil trying to perpetuate the division of the Korean peninsula,” said Song Seok Chan, a member of the ruling party. President Kim Dae Jung later chastised him for the remark, and Song issued an apology.

The tumult at the Chamber of Commerce marked the first time an American office here has been occupied since the 1980s. The well-organized takeover was credited to Hanchongryon, a left-wing student organization that at times has been banned for sympathizing with North Korea.

About 30 students, most of them dressed in suits and ties to disguise themselves as a business delegation, appeared at 12:50 p.m. and pushed their way into the locked headquarters by following employees returning from their lunch break. The intruders then quickly overpowered a small deployment of Korean policemen assigned to guard the offices.

“They were relatively calm and told our staff to get out. . . . They were shouting something about Bush. I couldn’t understand, but I got the feeling they weren’t happy with him,” said Tami Overby, executive director of the chamber, as she waded through the trashed offices in this city’s Trade Tower on Monday afternoon.

“I locked myself in the computer room, where I called the police,” Overby said. “There was pushing and shoving. It was intimidating, but I was not worried for my safety. At no time did I feel like they were going to kill us.”

Inside the offices, the students broke a large window and dangled from it a banner protesting Bush’s visit to South Korea. They also scattered literature to the streets below decrying U.S. arms sales and Washington’s tough policy toward North Korea.

“Can America, which produces and exports most of the arms to the world, point the finger at arms sales by North Korea?” demanded one pamphlet.

The students overturned furniture to build a barricade against police and held out for nearly three hours before they were overpowered by 1,000 riot officers, some using ropes to climb down the side of the building. Thirty-two protesters were arrested.

Jeffrey Jones, the chamber president in Seoul, said it was the most serious incident in the organization’s 50-year history here. Student radicals occupied the chamber’s offices twice before, most recently in 1987 during a wave of protests over what demonstrators perceived as U.S. support for the authoritarian regime then in power in South Korea, Jones said.

Jones said he did not believe that the attack indicated widespread hostility toward Americans or U.S. companies in South Korea.

Police apologized to the Chamber of Commerce, saying they had anticipated a protest by students but did not expect it to be so large.

North Korea, which has been encouraging anti-American protests in official media broadcasts, gloated over the incident.

“The entire South Korean territory is fiercely seething with anti-U.S. and antiwar rage as the U.S. Bush administration continues to criticize our republic and spew out hard-line, absurd remarks,” North Korean radio said Monday.