hankyoreh

On March 25, a day before scheduled ministerial-level negotiations on the proposed South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA), protesters staged a massive rally in front of Seoul City Hall against the signing of the deal. The police had banned the demonstration when the rally's organizers had applied earlier, as is the law in South Korea, but the protest was held as planned, without the police forcibly blocking the rally.

The minor opposition Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Korean Alliance Against the Korea-U.S. FTA organized the event, and an estimated 7,500 citizens participated.

During the demonstration, DLP members shouted, "If the government signs the FTA on March 30 despite popular objections, we will start a fight to topple the Roh Moo-hyun administration."

DLP Chairman Moon Sung-hyun, who has been holding a hunger strike for 18 consecutive days while calling for the president to hold a public referendum on the FTA, said, "President Roh is acting like a dictator. Our history proves how dictators come to a miserable end, so we will certainly win the fight."

During the rally, the alliance burned the effigy of a cow afflicted by mad cow disease, a protest aimed at U.S. demands for Korea to fully open its beef market after a three-year ban due to a mad cow disease outbreak in the U.S. The ban has so far been only partially lifted.

A statement issued by the alliance appealed to the public to take part in a major candlelight vigil against the FTA on March 28, saying that the nation is about to sign a ruinous agreement.

After that, demonstrators marched through the streets in downtown Seoul and then held a rally on the road in front of the U.S. embassy.

There were no serious clashes between riot police and demonstrators, the first time since November last year that the alliance has held a demonstration in front of city hall without a violent crackdown by riot police. Indeed, unlike several previous rallies organized by the alliance, the police did not surround the announced rally sites with vehicles beforehand in order to block the protesters from gathering there, even though the police had not approved the assembly.

Moreover, there was no ban on demonstrators traveling in from other provinces. Only traffic police surrounded the venue of the rally, rather than the usual riot police.

When the demonstrators started to march through the streets, the police tried to stop the march by blocking the road, but there were no serious clashes.

An umbrella human rights group formed by 37 human rights organizations across the nation said in a statement it would campaign against the law that requires assembly organizers to have their major public events approved by the police beforehand. "We will wage a campaign against the police measure next month by holding assemblies and demonstrations not reported to the police beforehand," the statement said.

"The police are violating the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution by arbitrarily placing bans on rallies that are against government policy," the statement continued.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]