In the weeks preceding President Ford’s visit to South Korea, scheduled for November 22, opponents of Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship intensified their protests.

More than 2,000 Catholics attended a protest mass in Seoul’s Myongdong Cathedral November 6, although riot police tried to bar entrance to the church. A strongly worded statement calling for the release of political prisoners and the scrapping of Park’s constitution was read aloud. The statement, drawn up by a group representing about half of South Korea’s 600 Catholic priests, also called for “reconsideration” of Ford’s visit.

Striking journalists on South Korea’s largest and most influential daily newspaper, Dong A Ilbo, forced the publishers to print a front-page statement October 25 demanding freedom of the press, withdrawal of police agents from newspaper offices, and an end to arbitrary arrests. Five of the six other major dailies also carried the statement, as did three commercial radio stations. The statement expressed “shame that we have not been reporting facts.” The papers also published accounts of the antigovernment Catholic rally in Seoul the previous day.

The 180 reporters and editors of Dong A Ilbo, which has a national circulation of about 600,000, unanimously voted on October 24 to sit in and refuse to put out a paper until their demands were met. The reporters of Hankook Ilbo, a major morning paper, also voted to suspend publication until the censorship was eased.

Confrontation between the press and the Park regime has been growing. The recent protests were sparked by the arrest and interrogation of editors from Dong A Ilbo and Hankook Ilbo by the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). The newspapers apparently violated a government directive banning stories on four topics.

One of the topics was the agitation in South Vietnam against President Thieu, including burning of newspapers by Vietnamese journalists. Park feared that South Koreans might draw inspiration from these protests. The other three prohibited topics were student demonstrations, demonstrations by religious groups, and a scandal concerning charcoal.

Half of South Korea’s universities were shut down for up to two weeks in October in an attempt to curb growing student protests against the regime. Threatening direct intervention, the government ordered university administrations to take full responsibility for stopping demonstrations and disciplining dissenters. When twenty-six universities reopened October 28, ending their self-imposed recess, student protests flared up immediately.

A demonstration by 1,500 students from Korea University was blocked at the school gates by riot police. The students denounced “one-man dictator ship” and demanded greater freedom on and off campus. At Ehwa Women’s University, riot police used tear gas to turn back 2,000 demonstrators. Many of the students wore black ribbons symbolizing the “death of democracy.” Protesters carried signs and handed out leaflets condemning Park’s martial-law constitution of 1972. Both universities were promptly shut down again by their administrations.

Students calling for an end to “dictatorial government” and the restoration of democracy demonstrated at Yonsei University on October 31 for the second day in a row. Police fired tear gas at nearly 2,000 students at tempting to march on the campus. According to the November 1 Washington Post, four more colleges and universities were shut down in an attempt to thwart the latest wave of protests.

Stirrings of opposition to the Park dictatorship also surfaced at the annual convention of the 650,000-member Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU). On October 19, presidents of ten of the seventeen unions that make up the federation demanded the resignation of the FKTU chairman, Park stooge Pae Sang Ho. In the past, the FKTU has obediently supported the Park regime and gone along with the outlawing of strikes and the denial of workers’ rights to bargain collectively.

Under permanent intimidation by the ubiquitous KCIA, delegates to the normally docile FKTU convention broke loose and moved a motion of no confidence in Pae. Before the assembly was abruptly closed, supporters of the motion extracted a vague promise from Pae that he would resign in the near future.

The role of the FKTU as a pliant tool of Park is not likely to change overnight. But as one delegate, quoted by the November 1 Far Eastern Economic Review, said after the convention: “Ten of the seventeen presidents at least stood up to the Government on the issue of Pae. It’s not much, but it’s ten more than spoke out last year.”

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1974/IP1241.pdf#page=8&view=FitV,35