The June struggle 20 years on, part ten: battle resumed
Just a short one this time for Friday 19 June, the day it all started to go really wrong for Chun and his police as the masses joined the students in earnest. Again, I think that David Watts’ reporting gives a really vivid picture of the scene, especially the fighting around the Bank of Korea.
Police take a beating in Korean violence - Countrywide unrest marks ninth day of protests by students
David Watts
The Times, June 19 1987, Friday
Violent protests erupted from one end of South Korea to the other yesterday, involving tens of thousands of students and countless civilians in the ninth day of rioting.
Tens thousand rioted and hundreds of taxi drivers demonstrated in Pusan, where 300 students are occupying a Catholic centre for the fourth day. With 6,000 involved in Kwangju, some 3,000 in Inchon, and more in Taejon, the violence shows no sign of slackening. But yesterday Seoul saw the worst of the clashes as thousands of ordinary Koreans massed to help the students.
The government, which has made no comment since its warning to a week ago, hinted yesterday at a new line that would ‘avoid emergency measures’, according to early editions of today’s newspapers in Seoul. The palliatives being considered include an offer of resumption of negotiations on possible revisions to the constitution which President Chun had postponed until after the 1988 Olympics.
The newspapers quoted Mr Roh Tae Woo, who has been designated President Chun’s successor, as saying: ‘From now on I will take the initiative in coping with political developments regarding the constitution matter. ‘ Whether such manoeuvres will have any real effect on the students remains to be seen.
More universities and colleges have closed early for the summer holidays, postponing indefinitely their final examinations with no noticeable effect on the level of dissent.
Students detect the weakness of the government’s position. They turned central Seoul into a battleground, with two great plumes of thick, black smoke rising over the Bank of Korea to mark the turmoil.
The students, now quite fearless and strengthened by the cheers and applause from the crowds, isolated two groups of 30 policemen. They beat them fiercely and threw their riot shields and tear gas on to a bonfire. Other riot police moved in to try to make a defensive shield, but in vain. The terrified police staggered away, one clutching his head.
Stones, spent tear-gas canisters and the great white smears left by tear gas marred the tarmac in front of the neo-Gothic bank. Around the square men and women huddled against the walls, their eyes streaming from the gas. The women cried or screamed, one bleeding from her ankle; the men roared with rage and frustration.
Traffic was paralysed for more than an hour around Seoul station where students made another pyre of police equipment. Oily smoke and tear gas wreathed the building and no trains moved.
The opposition had declared yesterday ‘anti-tear gas day’. The government’s response was the heaviest barrage of shells Seoul has seen. It started in the afternoon as old women arrived to join the demonstration pleading for an end to use of tear gas at a Seoul Presbyterian church.
T-shirts bearing the slogan ‘No more tear-gas’ in Korean sold fast, and on every balcony of the 10-storey Christian Broadcasting Service building protesters and loud-speakers chanted ‘Down with the constitution’ or ‘No more tear gas’. A hundred yards away thousands of young people sat down to block an entire main street as elsewhere snatch squats of plainclothes police darted into crowds to grab individual protesters.
