SOUTH KOREA: South Korea protesters demonstrate against North Korea and U.S. policy in series of rallies across Seoul

Record ID: 320297

  • Title: SOUTH KOREA: South Korea protesters demonstrate against North Korea and U.S. policy in series of rallies across Seoul
  • Date: 13th October 2006
  • Summary: (BN04) SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (OCTOBER 13, 2006) (REUTERS) GATE OF SOUTH KOREA DEFENCE MINISTRY / PROTESTERS GATHERED OUTSIDE "INTELLIGENCE DETACHMENT" (HID) AGENTS STANDING IN PROTEST OUTSIDE AGENT DRESSED IN NORTH KOREAN MILITARY UNIFORM AGENTS STANDING IN PROTEST AGENT WEARING MILITARY BOOTS AND NORTH KOREAN UNIFORM CLOSE UP OF NORTH KOREAN STAR ON HAT
  • Embargoed: 28th October 2006 13:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVAE90ZRT9F50WJB71F47G119I61
  • Story Text: South Korean demonstrators burning North Korean flags at the City Hall square in Seoul on Friday (October 13) as protests continued across the capital.
    About 2,000 protesters chanted anti-North Korean slogans as they watched others burn flags with a photo of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000.
    The unprecedented summit was meant to warm ties between the two nations. It also helped kick off South Korea's engagement policy, known as the Sunshine Policy toward the North to extend economic and social cooperation between the two Koreas.
    North Korea's announcement that it successfully conducted a nuclear test on Monday (October 9) has now sparked angry protests over the South Korean government's Sunshine Policy.
    "This is definitely not only a negative effect on peace, but is also against everything that North Korea promised before and we can never allow that," said Lee Kang-bok, a former South Korean delegate and spokesman to high-level inter-Korean talks in 1990-92.
    In another section of the city, a very different protest was also taking place.
    Outside the Defence Ministry South Korean agents, who claim they were trained to infiltrate North Korea, demanded permission from the South to allow them to enter the North to destroy nuclear facilities there.
    About 10 agents wearing North Korean soldier uniforms held a stern and silent demonstration.
    The agents call themselves the Hidden Intelligence Attachment (HID), a group of men who claim that they were trained by the South Korean government in the early 1970's to assassinate then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
    "In the future us HID agents cannot just sit here. We have to infiltrate North Korea and steal all those weapons or explode them. That is our purpose of our rally. There is no other way," said HID leader Chun Min-soo.
    Another small group of citizens placed the blame for the current Korean peninsula nuclear crisis on the United States, saying Washington's policy towards North Korea provoked the communist state to conduct the atomic test.
    "This situation came about because the U.S. forced its policy. Therefore the most basic solution is direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea," said Priest Han Sang-ryul of the Association for Unification.
    The protesters later moved their demonstration to the embassies of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members.
    The Security Council is currently hammering out a draft resolution on what sanctions can be applied to Pyongyang as punishment for its refusal to give up its nuclear ambitions.
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