Pitched battles as S Korean monks try to occupy Buddhism

Pitched battles as S Korean monks try to occupy Buddhism headquarters

SEOUL (AFP): Reformist Buddhist monks fought pitched battles with conservative monks and riot police here yesterday in a bid to occupy the Chogye Temple in downtown Seoul, the headquarters of the Korean Buddhism.

About 2,000 riot police in full riot gear stormed the temple grounds when 50 reformists, cheered on by more than 1,000 others, swarmed up ladders and broke into the lower floors of a building housing the Buddhist secretariat.

The angry reformists, who had rallied from around the country, were trying to reach a senior executive monk they accuse of corruption and who they believed was holed up on the top floor of the five-floor secretariat building.

Supporters of the senior monk, accused of diverting millions of dollars in temple funds, had turned the secretariat building into a fortress, welding the ground floor iron doors and grilled windows closed.

At sunset, the hours-long battle for the secretariat building mounted in intensity. The reformists occupying the lower floors, their gray robes swinging and using martial arts kicks, flying leaps and punches, fought off conservatives from the upper balconies with pieces of furniture, sticks, ropes and hoses, AFP reporters said.

Others formed lines to try to stop phalanxes of riot police from reaching the building, which was littered with broken furniture and windows and resounded with dull thuds as the reformists tried to batter down steel doors separating the top from the lower floors.

The battling monks used wire cutters, crow bars and drills to batten their way through the welded ground floor doors as monks on the upper floors hurled chairs, and empty soft drink bottles at them and sprayed them with fire extinguishers and hoses, the reporters said.

Shortly after dark riot police reinforcements stormed in with ladders. They covered the ground beneath the walls with layers of black foam to prevent anyone crashing onto the courtyard flag stones below in the battle to wrest the building back.

A few minutes later the police scaled the walls, the angry young monks tipping their ladders back before being outnumbered.

Ambulances took away two injured monks, one of whom jumped from the third floor when he thought riot police were going for him. Many others suffered minor scrapes and bruises when beaten to the ground in the battles, AFP reporters said. No arrests were made.

Throughout the battles the gray-clad reformist monks chanted sutra to the toll of wooden bells and screamed slogans urging the scandal-ridden prelate, Reverend Suh Eui-hyun, to resign.

The rallying monks said they had decided to take over the secretariat from Suh and his followers in line with the decision by a meeting of senior monks last week, which virtually impeached Suh.

Suh is suspected of paying 300 gangsters from organized crime rings to oust the reformist monks last month when they first tried to oust Suh by staging a sit-in at the Chogye Temple.

The reformists also charge him with acting in collusion with the police, who are under the command of the president's confidant, Home Minister Choi Hyung-woo.

The senior executive monk, who has been dogged by scandals over his private life and political activities, has been accused by the opposition Democratic Party of acting as a channel for political funds for the ruling party.

The DP said Suh had received US$10 million embezzled by a builder from an army engineering project and funnelled $4 million of it to help finance an election campaign for President Kim Young-sam, then ruling party candidate.

Both the ruling party and Suh's aides have denied the charge of political funding as groundless.