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Pitched battles returned to the streets of Seoul on June 26th as the students and opposition rejected the somewhat vague peace offerings of Chun Doo-hwan over the previous days. Jasper Becker describes the scenes on the streets of Seoul while The Times gives us the lowdown on South Korea’s super tear gas, apparently “a formidable cocktail of 12 secret ingredients” (sounds a bit like KFC).

Battle for Seoul at new pitch: Opposition calls for ‘democracy now’ as Chun muzzles its leaders
From Jasper Becker
The Guardian, June 27, 1987

Seoul yesterday became a battlefleld between tens of thousands of demonstrators wreathed in clouds of tear-gas and massed ranks of riot police as the Democracy Movement returned to the streets after the failure of peace talks here earlier this week.

The demonstrators, calling for ‘democracy now,’ were responding to the call of Mr Kim Young Sam, leader of the main opposition party, to wage ‘an all-out campaign to meet the people’s demands. ‘

But 10 minutes after Mr Kim appeared outside his party headquarters, preparing to march behind a large South Korean flag towards City Hall, he was roughly manhandled into a waiting police van. Police drove him to the airport, where he was later released.

With considerable brusqueness, President Chun Doo Hwan ordered the return to house arrest of the other main opposition leader, Mr Kim Dae Jung, less than two days after it had been lifted.

After a week of calm the demonstrations were probably the largest this year but less violent than those of June 10, when the present wave of unrest began.

Anarchy reigned in sections of the capital as traffic stopped in front of students hurling rocks and firebombs amid exploding teargas canisters. Bus drivers blew their horns in support of the students, while passengers raised clenched fists and leaned out of windows, chanting Pukche [Tokchae?] Tado (down with the military dictatorship).

Similar scenes were repeated across the country and the television news showed pictures of burning buses in Pusan and other big cities. Police seized hundreds of demonstrators bundling them on to buses, kicking and punching.

President Chun’s peace gesture on Wednesday when he met Mr Kim Young Sam and seemed to yield ground on his April 13 decision postponing constitutional talks has clearly achieved little.

A deafening 20-minute cacophony of car and bus horns in response to a call from the organisers of yesterday’s grand peace march showed the extent of the President’s failure to appease public anger. Egged on by demonstrators, chanting and waving flags, motorists continued honking their horns whenever they passed opposition party headquarters.

No march, as such, took place. Instead, demonstrators gathered at strategic points around the city such as Yungdongpo railway station. Television news reported that 20,000 assembled at the station and 10,000 at Dongdaenun. At Namdaemun, police were outnumbered by the demonstrators and forced to retreat. Squads of riot police stamped their feet to intimidate the demonstrators as they marched down the capital’s main boulevard before firing showers of teargas grenades and canisters. Demonstrators and bystanders would scatter in panic before reassembling somewhere else. At times the police called up black armoured vans which pumped out suffocating clouds of gas. Demonstrators and bystanders took refuge in the luxury Koreana Hotel and Hilton. Tear gas forced the management of one hotel to close the ground-floor coffee shop, and the doormen put on gas masks.

Most bystanders, caught on their way home, donned polythene bags while others were seen in swimming goggles.

The Roman Catholic cathedral in the capital’s centre, which was the setting for a six-day seige earlier this month, again became a student stronghold. Police recognised the cathedral as a no-go area and from there demonstrators sallied forth to hurl Molotov cocktails at the police.

The tear gas, which effectively disperses most protesters, yesterday left a hard core of thousands of students who appeared unmoved by its effects.

At the capital’s railway station students peacefully sat down on the road and linked arms and sang the ‘Democracy song. ‘

Others were cheered by hundreds of onlookers as they set police buses alight and broke up paving stones to use as missiles. Later, streets were littered with rubble.

In more than two weeks of demonstrations in 20 cities - often involving up to 70,000 people - only one policeman and a bystander have been killed, while a student is brain-dead.

Nursing a bruised hand, Mr Kim Young Sam blamed the police for any violence. ‘Many people are hurt because of the brutal militaristic approach to this peaceful demonstration.’

The vicious cocktail in Chun’s tear gas
From Our Own Correspondent
The Times, June 27 1987, Saturday

The tear gas used by the South Korean Government is a formidable cocktail of 12 different ingredients, the exact composition of which is military secret.

It apparently contains some of the elements of such gases used in Western countries - but in heavier concentrations and in different combinations.

Students and foreign journalists subjected to repeated doses of the gas have come out in blisters akin to second-degree burns. Some people gasp for air, others retch; and all are temporarily blinded if caught without a gas mask.

There are several different types of gas, some more powerful than others, and the South Korean Army is known to have four different grades. Grade one is used against rallies; grade two against riots; grade three by police facing armed and dangerous criminals; and grade four in war only.

The Government claims that it has used only up to grade two in the last 17 days of unrest. Several times a night in recent days tear gas barrages have brought The Times’ news-gathering activities to a tearful, gasping halt.

The gas is so vicious and its side-effects cause such fear among South Koreans that an anti-tear gas day was held last week. The Government responded - with tear gas.

According to opposition sources, a government report on the effects of the gas showed it so dangerous to humans, bringing a risk not only of cancer but of male infertility, that it was kept secret.

The Rev Lee Choong Bok, a priest from Taejon, said: ‘We don’t know what the effects of the gas are, but we’re afraid that in the future our children will have two heads, five arms of three legs. ‘ But President Chun swears by it.

The gas grenades are thrown, or fired from launchers - either singly or in barrages of 64.