Clampdown on the Campus

Students at Seoul National University had just draped the last bits of bunting over decorative arches and buildings when a convoy of uninvited guests arrived to help them celebrate the institution's 25th anniversary last week. Onto the campus poured helmeted, tiger-suited, carbine-packing troops of the country's toughest army unit, the Seoul Garrison Command. At nine other colleges and universities in the capital and the southern city of Kwangju, the scene was duplicated as troops laid down tear gas and broke classroom doors and windows in pursuit of fleeing students. In all, 1,900 students were packed off to jail; all but 92 "hardcore radicals" were released the same day. At the same time, President Chung Hee Park invoked garrison decree--a step just short of martial law--and shut down ten universities indefinitely.

Park's harsh repression was the latest move in a growing conflict between his government and the nation's students. The quarrel started with student complaints about compulsory military training, which soon escalated into demonstrations against high-level corruption in Park's government. Clamping down last week, the President ordered that any student who opposed military training be expelled from school and immediately conscripted.

The students had chosen the wrong time to take issue with the government. Since August, South Korea has been conducting delicate preliminary negotiations with North Korea through Red Cross intermediaries in the border village of Panmunjom. At stake is the return to their homelands of an estimated 10 million people displaced by the Korean War. Park was convinced that internal troubles in the South could give Pyongyang an excuse to launch a propaganda campaign against his government. The flinty President might have been worried about something else too. Eleven years ago, massive student protests against corruption were instrumental in bringing down the government of his predecessor, the late Syngman Rhee.

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