Korean border shooting ‘to foment unrest’

Press, 23 November 1987, Page 9

Korean border shooting ‘to foment unrest’

NZPA-Reuter Seoul South Korea said a shooting incident on its border with North Korea was an attempt to foment unrest in the run-up to Presidential elections in the south and next year’s Seoul Olympic Games.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said North Korean border guards opened fire on a south Korean border post on Saturday, injuring one soldier. Southern troops returned fire “to defend ourselves from the Northern side’s provocation,” he said. "This shows their intention to foment social unrest in our country in the run-up to next month’s presidential elections and the Olympic Games next year,” the spokesman said in a telephone interview.

North Korea’s official news agency said the South started the shooting. “They fired scores of automatic-weapon and large-calibre machine-gun bullets at a post on our side in the demilitarised zone,” said the Korea Central News Agency, monitored in Tokyo. North and South Korea, arch enemies since they fought a three-year war ending in 1953, have lived in uneasy truce, with periodic surges of tension along their 240 km demilitarised zone. The shooting occurred on the frontier about 50km northeast of Seoul, the southern capital and venue for the 1988 Olympics which South Korea

says the communist North , is determined to sabotage. North Korea angrily disputed the International Olympic Committee’s 1981 decision to award the 24th Olympics to Seoul and has demanded that it be allowed to co-host the games. It has also threatened to

organise a boycott by communist nations if it’s demands are not met. The 1.0. C. and Seoul

offered in July to hand

over 10 of the 237 individual events, an offer Pyongyang rejected as grossly inadequate.