AP (with additional material by Reuters and AFP). 14 December 2002. S
Koreans stage huge anti-US rally.
SEOUL -- Tens of thousands of South Koreans holding candles marched through
Seoul on Saturday to protest the deaths of two South Korean girls who were
hit by a U.S. military vehicle.
A large crowd gathered in downtown Seoul, shouting: "Bring back alive Shin
Hyo-sun and Shim Mi-son." The two 13-year-old girls were on their way to a
friend's birthday party when they were run over and killed in June.
Organizers said about 300,000 people joined the protests in South Korea.
After a two-hour rally in Seoul, protesters with candles marched and sang
the popular Korean folk song "Arirang." Police stopped them a block away
from the U.S. embassy. Some protesters tore apart four large U.S. flags.
In Daegu, a city 200 miles southeast of Seoul, two students broke into a
U.S. military base and climbed onto a 100-foot-high water tank.
Television footage showed the students, draped in South Korean flags,
shouting: "Retry them in our court." They were arrested by South Korean
police two hours later, all-news cable network YTN said.
Protesters in Seoul clapped and roared when speakers demanded a retrial of
the soldiers in a South Korean court, and a revision of an agreement with
Washington in order to give South Korea more jurisdiction over the over the
37,000 U.S. troops stationed here.
Protesters denounced the South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, for
"groveling" to the United States and called him a U.S. "puppet."
Student radicals among the crowd demanded the outright withdrawal of all US
troops.
Some of the protesters, their ranks swelled by university students on
semester break, carried placards calling on the United States to sign a
non-aggression pact with North Korea.
Link: http://www.utopia2000.org
