Anti-U.S. Korean Protest

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31598, 8 February 1968, Page 11

Anti-U.S. Korean Protest

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

SEOUL, Feb. 7.

About 50 angry South Korean students, ignoring warning shots from United States Army guards, forced their way across the strategic “freedom bridge” just below the Demilitarised Zone today in an anti-American demonstration.

The bridge spans the Imjin River and is within a mile of the zone. It is about five miles south of the Armistice Commission’s meeting site of Panmunjom where United States-North Korean secret talks on the Pueblo were held recently. The demonstration at the bridge began at noon. The 50 were among about 300 students from a Christian college who marched towards the checkpoint of the bridge, shouting slogans denouncing what they claimed was an appeasement policy of the United State's in dealing with the Korean situation. They attempted to cross the bridge. They shouted such slogans as “We protest against secret meetings,” “Let us march north,” and “The U.S.A, cannot infringe upon our sovereignty.” The students clashed with squads of guards who started firing warning shots. Most of the demonstrators were stopped but about 50 made it across the 400-yard bridge to the restricted area on the opposite bank, disregarding an estimated 20 rounds of warning shots, a witness said.

They were picked up later by Korean authorities who rushed to the scene. It was not immediately known if there were any injuries in the clash.

In Washington, President

Johnson was reported infuriated at challenges to the credibility of United States statements in the Pueblo crisis, which have already upset American officials. Administration sources said unfair emphasis was being placed on alleged differences in statements made by Mr Arthur Goldberg, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and the President’s top Cabinet officers on whether the Pueblo had intruded into North Korean waters during its spy mission

There was a widespread feeling in some quarters that the United States was preparing to admit a violation of North Korea’s sovereignty after first claiming that the Pueblo was in international

waters at all times, before it was captured by the North Koreans last month. But officials said that remarks by the Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, and the Defence Secretary, Mr Robert McNamara, last Sunday, that the ship’s exact course would not be known until its log had been examined was not an admission of guilt. They emphasised that the explanation given by the State Department spokesman, Mr Robert McCloskey, on Monday that Mr Goldberg, in telling the Security Council that the Pueblo did not enter territorial waters, referred only to the time it was seized by North Korean patrol boats. President Johnson’s reaction to doubts cast on the American case was given in a dispatch from Garnett Horner, the “Washington Star’s” White House correspondent, which officials described as an authoritative report. Horner, who has frequent access to the President, said Mr Johnson felt critics were emphasising the uncertainties while subordinating the fact that Mr McNamara said he was sure from clear evidence that the Pueblo was in international waters when it was seized.

He added: “It is as if someone asked the President if one of his trusted aides ever robbed a bank, and he said the aide never had while he knew him, he didn’t believe he ever had, but of course he couldn’t be absolutely positive what the aide did before he knew him, until he checked

all the records—and a headline reported ‘President Uncertain Whether Aide Robbed bank’. Officials were also annoyed by reports that South Korea was planning to withdraw its 45,000 troops from Vietnam because it was unhappy over the way the United States was handling the Pueblo affair. The officials conceded that South Korea understandably felt that in its talks with North Korea the United States should raise the problem of the North’s sabotage and violence in the South as well as the problem of freeing the Pueblo. But they reported that South Korea’s interests were being watched and that a withdrawal of its forces from Vietnam was not under consideration in Seoul.