Seoul police block march.

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 10

Seoul police block march.

NZPA-Reuter Seoul Riot police using tear gas and sticks made 500 arrests yesterday as they stopped 4000 South Korean students and dissidents leaving a Seoul university to meet North Korean students, witnesses said. “Protesters were kicked and punched, beaten with sticks and charged with rocks and tear gas by police ringing the campus,” said one. Police flanked by three armoured vans churning out skin-burning pepper gas rushed into the crowd at Yonsei University as protesters tried to break through cordons. The action took place soon after President Roh Tae Woo proposed a sum-

mit meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, to discuss an eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula. Mr Roh, who had put the country’s entire 140,000 police force on red alert to enforce a Government ban on the student meeting, said, “I propose to President Kim Il Sung of North Korea to meet with me for talks at the earliest feasible date to work out practical ways to bring about national integration in response to the yearning of our 60 million compatriots,” The protesters, who have attacked police with rocks and petrol bombs over the last week, refrained from violence as they walked off the Yonsei campus arm-in-arm.