Battles erupt over N. Korea in Seoul as families meet
Battles erupt over N. Korea in Seoul as families meet
SEOUL (AFP): Student riots and political battles over North Korea erupted in Seoul on Friday as 200 people met with relatives they had not seen since Korea's Cold War frontier went up 50 years ago.
The long-lost families shed tears in private hotel rooms on the second day of the exchange reunions in Seoul and Pyongyang. But clashes between police and students demanding the abolition of South Korea's national security law, which bans contacts with the North, saw dozens of people injured.
The South Korean opposition and newspapers meanwhile accused the government of giving in to North Korean threats over the organization of the family reunions.
Disturbances erupted outside the National Assembly when thousands of riot police stopped a march by 1,500 students who were beaten by police wielding truncheons. The protesters in turn, kicked and punched police.
More than 30 people were injured on both sides, witnesses said. Police took away dozens of students.
President Kim Dae-Jung has promised to revise the National Security Law which lays down long jail terms for unauthorized contact with the North or even praising North Korea.
Groups demanding contact with the North have called for its immediate repeal. Another group demanding the end of the law started a sit-in at Seoul's Myondong Cathedral.
The president's political opponents urged him to get tough with the North following a dispute over the head of the South Korean Red Cross.
North Korea had threatened to boycott the family reunions over a magazine interview in which Red Cross chief Chang Choong-Shik said there was no freedom in the North. The threat was only dropped after Chang apologized.
But the official flew unexpectedly to Tokyo on Wednesday evening, the eve of the get-togethers, in which 100 South Koreans flew to Pyongyang and 100 North Koreans were brought to Seoul. The main opposition Grand National Party accused the government of forcing Chang to go, when normally he would have been the main organizer.
The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said North Korea's delegation had reportedly threatened to boycott an official dinner if Chang was present.
"It is disgusting to see how the government has dealt with the North over the Chang issue," the country's biggest newspaper said.
"We should seriously consider whether the family reunion program is worth abandoning our prestige and principles for." The political battles threatened to overshadow the second reunions since the historic summit in June between President Kim and the North's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il.
But most of the families, meeting for the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War, were unaware of the disputes.
North Korea gave special permission for two renowned artist brothers -- one from the North and the other from the South -- to hold their reunion in a Seoul hospital.
Kim Ki-Man, 71, could only stroke the face of his elder brother, Kim Ki-Chang, 88, who cannot speak and is close to death fighting heart disease and septicemia.
Differing ideologies forced the two to separate in 1950. The younger one was a communist, the elder one stayed in the capitalist South.
South Korean authorities negotiated special dispensation for the meeting away from one of the officially designated venues. Kim Yong-Hwan, the 70-year-old chief editor of the North's Yang Kang Daily News, put on a patriotic display as he sat with his 67-year-old brother and two sisters from the South.
"Yesterday we met for the first time in 50 years. I'm so glad," he said. "I'm not crying because it is all thanks to our Great Leaders Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung providing the opportunity to meet relatives in the South."
He added that he was also not sad about the death of his parents. "I have other parents in North Korea -- Great Leaders Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung."
In all, the families will be allowed to spend just over eight hours with their long-lost relatives. The two delegations will return to their respective capitals on Saturday morning after a final farewell.