Protest at Tokyo conference

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33418, 27 December 1973, Page 10

Protest at Tokyo conference

(,V Z P A Reuter — Copyright! TOKYO, December 26. Japan and South Korea opened a Ministerial conference at the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo today, as about 70 South Korean students, carrying an effigy of President Park Chung Hee, and about 40 Japanese trade unionists demonstrated outside the heavily-guarded building.

The annual conference, originally arranged for last September, had been postponed after the abduction of the South Korean Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kim Daejung) from a Tokyo hotel last August. The demonstrators today ' protested that the conference ' should not be held while Mr Kim was not completely free.

(He is awaiting Government approval to leave Seoul for the United States, although he has been released from house arrest.) The Japanese Foreign Minister (Mr Masayoshi Ohira) said in an opening speech that it was the duty of the Governments of both countries to heal the scars left by the Kim case, and to develop friendly relations between the two peoples. The South Korean Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Tae Wansong) called for increased economic co-operation between the two countries. The two sides are expected to discuss the international situation, the economic situation, bilateral co-operation, and international trade, and will issue a joint communique at the end of the conference. The students later half burned the effigy of President Park, which had a rifle in one hand and a bundle of paper money in the other. Police said about 700 Japanese. mainly radical students, were also expected to stage demonstrations later today.