The June struggle 20 years on, part three: Violence
The Guardian and Times correspondents report from the scene as the violence on the streets of Seoul begins. I think David Watts’ piece for the Times is particularly interesting and I’ve highlighted some of the sentences that caught my eye. Does anyone have confirmation of the assertion that Korea University was not thought of as radical, because I had thought it was the opposite? Maybe Korea Uni was only radical after June 1987.
There are also some interesting differences between the two reports which may reflect a difference in the time they were filed. Becker for example talks of a soldier being killed, although it is not clear that there were any soldiers on the streets and he may have mistaken riot police for soldiers. Watts, on the other hand, presumably describing the same incident, only says that “a policeman was severely injured when a police detail ran out of tear gas”.
Protests mar gala for Chun’s successor: Police injured and 2,000 students detained during South Korean violence
David Watts
The Times, June 11 1987
Thousands of students were detained across South Korea last night when anti-government rallies turned to violence as President Chun named Mr Roh Tae Woo as his party’s next presidential candidate.
In the early hours students were occupying a cathedral in central Seoul, surrounding themselves with burning barricades while riot police fended off a barrage of stones.
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