Defector makes dramatic torch protest in Seoul

A Chinese student kicks a South Korean demonstrator in Seoul yesterday as the Beijing Olympic torch began the latest leg of its troubled worldwide relay. PHOTO: AFP

A North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire to halt the Olympic torch relay yesterday in Seoul, where thousands of police guarded the flame from protesters blasting China’s treatment of North Korean refugees.

Hundreds of China supporters wearing red and waving the Chinese flag greeted the torch and threw rocks at demonstrators denouncing the torch run.

Police ran beside the flame and rode horses and bicycles with the relay across the city, which hosted the 1988 Olympics.

On other stops along the torch’s globe-trotting journey, it was China’s crackdown on violent protests against Chinese rule in Tibet that triggered attempts to disrupt the run celebrating the August games. But in South Korea, critics have focused on Beijing’s treatment of defectors who try to escape their lives of hardship in the North.

Thousands of North Koreans have fled across the loosely controlled Chinese border rather than the heavily fortified frontier to the South. Many defectors live in hiding in China, but if caught there, they are deported and likely face imprisonment in life-threatening conditions.

The man who tried to immolate himself, 45-year-old Son Jong-hoon, had led an unsuccessful public campaign to save his brother from execution in the North, where he was accused of spying after the two met secretly in China.

About an hour into the relay, Son poured gasoline on himself and tried to light himself, but police stopped him.

At the start of the relay, a protester rushed toward the Olympic flame and tried to unfurl a banner calling for China to respect the rights of North Korean refugees. Dozens of police surrounding the torch quickly whisked him away. Later as it approached the city center, another North Korean defector tried to impede the run and was arrested.

There were no further attempts to stop the torch on its 24km journey through Seoul to City Hall, where it was met by some 5,000 supporters.

Some 8,000 police were deployed across the South Korean capital to guard the torch.

Scuffles broke out near the relay’s start between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators criticizing Beijing’s policies.

The students threw stones and water bottles as police tried to keep the two sides apart.

Meanwhile the Dalai Lama believes talks with China would be pointless unless Beijing is “serious” about finding a solution to the Tibetan issue, a spokesman for the spiritual leader said yesterday.

China’s Xinhua news agency announced on Friday that Beijing would meet an envoy of the Tibetan leader for talks in the coming days.

“We have had six rounds of talks but nothing happened and this time if China is serious then it is good, but if it wants to show the world that ‘we are talking’ then there is no use in meeting,” the spokesman, Tenzin Takla, said.

The warning came as Lodhi Gyari, a special envoy of the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has headed the previous rounds of inconclusive talks with China since 2002, was slated to arrive in India on Wednesday from the US for “consultations” with the exiled Tibetan leadership, Takla said.