home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=89TT1275>
- <title>
- May 15, 1989: World Notes:South Korea
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- May 15, 1989 Waiting For Washington
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 51
- World Notes
- SOUTH KOREA
- Disaster at Dongeui
- </hdr><body>
- <p> The negotiations had dragged on all night at Pusan's
- Dongeui University, but by dawn the 100 students on the seventh
- floor of the school library still refused to free the five
- policemen they held hostage. When 20 policemen tried to break
- into the room, the captors tossed fire bombs at a hallway
- barricade that they had soaked with kerosene and paint thinner.
- The raiders were not lucky: six policemen died, and ten were
- seriously injured.
- </p>
- <p> The police soon freed their five colleagues and arrested 94
- students, but the incident shocked South Koreans. Despite
- almost daily clashes with student demonstrators, until last week
- only two policemen and two students had died since the country
- announced democratic reforms in 1987. Though the list of student
- grievances has changed over the years, one demand has not: the
- overthrow of the government.
- </p>
- <p> The Dongeui University incident may give new thrust to
- conservative demands for a clampdown on antigovernment
- activities. At the least, the deaths have forced Koreans to
- re-examine how their budding democracy is faring. In a rare
- front-page editorial, the moderate daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo
- exhorted, "We can no longer let things go this way. The current
- disorder in society seems to be accelerating a doomsday for the
- nation."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-