Chinese students clash with protesters

Thousands defend Olympic torch relay in Seoul

A Chinese student kicked a South Korean protester yesterday in Olympic Park in Seoul. South Korean demonstrators focused on human rights for North Koreans who are hiding in China. (CHOI WON-SUK/AFP/Getty Images)

SEOUL - Thousands of young Chinese who assembled to defend their country's troubled Olympic torch relay pushed through police lines yesterday, some of them hurling rocks, bottled water, and plastic and steel pipes at protesters who were demanding better treatment for North Korean refugees in China.

Two North Korean defectors living in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried to set themselves on fire to protest what they condemned as Beijing's inhumane crackdown on North Korean refugees, but the police stopped them, according to witnesses and officials.

The South Korean police and Chinese students also overpowered at least two other protesters who tried to impede the run along a 15-mile route through Seoul. The route was kept secret until the last minute and was guarded by more than 8,300 police officers.

The globe-trotting relay of the torch leading up to the Beijing Games in August has spurred protests in some cities against China's crackdown on violent protests for independence in Tibet. However, in South Korea, one of the torch's final stops before entering the safety of China, demonstrators focused on human rights for North Koreans who live in hiding in China after fleeing hunger in their homeland.

According to Chinese state news media, the torch arrived late yesterday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, one place where the Chinese authorities can be sure there will be no protests. North Korea, an ally of China, said it was preparing an "amazing" welcome, indicating that the totalitarian government would mobilize hundreds of thousands of flower-waving people.

Hours before the torch run began in Seoul, which hosted the 1988 Summer Games, several thousand Chinese, mostly students studying in South Korea, converged on this city's Olympic Park, singing, chanting and waving signs that read, "We love China," or, "Go, Go China."

When lone protesters demanded that China stop repatriating North Korean refugees, they were quickly surrounded by jeering Chinese. In another scuffle, at the city center where the five-hour torch run ended, Chinese surrounded several Tibetans and South Korean supporters who unfurled pro-Tibet banners, and kicked and punched them, witnesses said.

The largest scuffle erupted shortly after the first torch-bearer left the Olympic Park, surrounded by dozens of police officers on foot or on bicycles and hundreds more in buses and trailed by a water cannon, ambulances and helicopters circling overhead.

Many of the Chinese who had gathered at the park surged toward about 150 protesters, mostly old South Koreans and North Korean defectors, who were shouting, "No human rights, no Olympics," from across a boulevard.

Armed with plastic shields, the police scuffled with the Chinese as they tried to separate the two groups who were hurling objects at each other. At least one Chinese student was hauled away by the police for throwing a rock. In Seoul, several Chinese students, speaking in Korean, said in interviews that they were angered by attempts to politicize the Olympics and that they gathered to "show our defense" of the Games.

"I am so happy that we host the Olympics, so proud that I am a Chinese," said Yu Liping, a student who took a train from his provincial college to Seoul. "I hate those who try to throw cold water on our celebration."

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