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| Sunday, 22 December 2002 |
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S.Koreans to form human chain around U.S. embassy SEOUL, Dec 21 (Reuters) South Korean protesters plan to form a human chain around the U.S. Embassy in the capital Seoul on Saturday as part of anti-U.S. demonstrations mourning two schoolgirls killed by U.S. soldiers in a road accident. Tens of thousands of South Koreans have joined in anti-U.S. protests since the girls were killed by a U.S. military vehicle in June. Saturday's demonstration, coinciding with candle-lit protests in the southern cities of Pusan and Kwangju, will be the first since this week's election of president-elect Roh Moo-hyun who has called for changes to South Korea's pact with the United States. The Status of Forces Agreement governs the status of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, a focal point of the protests that followed the June accident. The demonstrators want the pact, which currently requires U.S. soldiers charged with crimes on duty to be tried in U.S. military tribunals, to give South Korean courts wider jurisdiction. The U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter aggression from North Korea which has some 10,000 artillery pieces and much of its 1.1 million-strong army arrayed along the sealed border with the South less than an hour's drive from Seoul. It is the world's most heavily militarised frontier. But the U.S. military presence is also highly visible in this densely populated nation of 48 million people and protests about training exercises disrupting civilian life have mounted in recent years. North and South Korea have stayed technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. |
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