UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, February 14, 1997
North Korean figure defects to South
Official says he hopes to gain peace for rivals
The Associated Press
BEIJING — China, North Korea and South Korea maneuvered frantically yesterday trying to decide what to do about a high-ranking North Korean — a former tutor to the country's leader — who defected to South Korea.
South Korea pressed China to let them whisk Hwang Jang Yop immediately out of the country and find out everything he knows about North Korea's secretive government.
North Korea refused to believe the defecation, insisted he must have been kidnapped and tried to get past Chinese police protecting the consulate where he asked for asylum.
Chinese officials pleaded for calm and wondered how they were going to get out of the explosive incident between the North, a longtime ally, and the South, an important new trading partner.
but there was no way to avoid the ques.
uon — Beijing must decide whether to turn the 72-year-old party stalwart back to North Korea or agree to Seoul's request to let Hwang fulfill his wish to go to South Korea.
Hwang, a Central Committee member of the ruling Workers' Party and confidant of North Korean leader Kim Jong II, walked into the South Korean consulate in Beijing and asked for asylum on Wednesday.
By late yesterday, however, no negotiations on the issue had begun, a South Korean official said.
After a long period of agonizing deliberation, Hwang said he decided to defect to help reconcile the two Korea rivals and to discuss with Seoul how to save his nation from misery.
Hwang said his family and others would think him crazy, but added: "Is it the action of sane people to call each other enemies and talk of turning the other into a sea of fire?
"Can we call people sane when they talk of having built a utopia for the workers and the farmers when the workers and farmers are starving?"
Two years of floods have devastated North Korea's food supply. This week, the U.N. World Food Program issued an appeal for 110,000 tons of emergency food aid for North Korea.
After warily watching the building for hours, a dozen North Koreans walked up to police lines last night and were turned away when they tried to go past, witnesses said. They stood face to face with police before walking away and returning to their cars.
After being challenged by North Koreans yesterday, Chinese police widened the
security zone around the South Korean consulate, fearing the defector would be kidnapped.
Chinese police then ordered reporters and North Koreans to move a block away from the building.
Up to 10 North Koreans had tried to enter the building Wednesday night, and others tried to chase South Korean diplomats driving home.
Earlier, North Korean officials expressed disbelief at the news.
"He's a secretary in the Central Committee. He's worked his whole life for our country. Now he's given everything up. That's why I say it's not possible. I don't believe it," said one who gave his Chinese name, Zhao Riqing.
Kim Ha-joong, a special adviser to South Korean Foreign Minister Yoo Chong-ha, arrived yesterday to try to resolve the problem of how to get Hwang out. Yoo also planned to discuss the issue with Chinese Foreign Minister Qlan Qichen at an Asia-Europe meeting in Singapore.
North Korea urged China to take approa
Can we call people sane when they talk of having built a utopia for the workers and farmers when the workers and farmers are starving?"
Hwang Jang Yop defected from North Korea
pride measures and threatened unspecified retaliation if Hwang had been kidnapped. South Korea responded by putting its entire 650,000-member military on higher alert.
The 37,000-strong American force in South Korea was not affected.
China's state-run news media did not cover the story, reporting only the Foreign Ministry's brief statement yesterday calling for calm.
"We hope all parties concerned ... will adopt a calm approach and handle matters appropriately in order to protect peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," it said.
Hwang is ranked 24th in North Korea's power hierarchy, South Korean officials said.
He was traveling home through Beijing from a North Korean-sponsored international seminar in Japan when he defected with Kim Duk Hong, 59, identified as the president of a North Korean trading firm in Beijing.
Under a 1978 treaty, China is required to return North Koreans found without visas or other valid travel documents, but that presumably would not apply to Hwang or Kim.
Hwang's defection would be a huge embarrassment for North Korea, particularly as it prepares for festivities Sunday celebrating the 55th birthday of Kim Jong Il, who became the country's de facto leader when his father, Kim Il Sung, died almost three years ago.
Hwang is believed to be a cousin of the late senior Kim and is known as a key theoretician behind the country's ideology of self-reliance.
Hwang studied communist ideology in Moscow in 1948 to 1952, taught philosophy at Kim II Sung University and later served as the university's president.
Building halted in West Bank
Government orders stop, angering Jewish settlers
The Associated Press
HEBRON, West Bank — Israel ordered Jewish settlers yesterday to stop building apartments in downtown Hebron, angering settlers who accuse the government of betraying a pledge to let them expand.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in Washington for a summit with President Clinton, faces increasing hostility from supporters critical of the slow pace of settlement activity in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
"We feel betrayed," Hebron settler spokesman Noam Armon said after yesterday's order barring construction at the city's Avraham Avinu settler enclave. "The Arabs are getting more and more rights, and they are taking rights away from us."
Palestinians and settlers scuffed earner yesterday,throwing eggs, tomatoes and oranges at each other in a dispute over the reopening of an Arab vegetable market near the settler compound.
Israel allowed nine stalls to open Wednesday, with the remaining 24 to open gradually in coming weeks. The market was closed three years ago to reduce fric-
29 Muslim worshipers in a Hebron mosque. Reopening it was part of last month's Hebron agreement.
The market remained under Israeli control after troops withdrew from 80 percent of the city of 130,000 Palestinians and 500 settlers in mid-January.
Yesterday's dispute began after Israeli troops closed four stalls that about a dozen Jewish protesters complained had been opened ahead of schedule.
The protesters and Palestinians scuffled, with the Palestinians throwing eggs and the settlers hurling back tomatoes and oranges. "This is our land, not yours!" some of the Palestinians yelled at the settlers.
"The Arabs are getting more and more rights,and they are taking rights away from us."
Two dozen Israeli soldiers tried to keep the sides apart and confiscated the identity cards of the four shopkeepers. However, when it became apparent their shops were among the nine with permission to operate, soldiers let the vendors open their businesses and guarded the shops.
Despite the pullout, the settlers hope to expand their community by building and renovating homes in downtown Hebron.
Israel agreed to reopen the market as part of last month's agreement on withdrawing troops from Hebron, the first peace accord between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and a right-wing Israeli government.
Noam Arnon
Hebron settler spokesman
Australian billionaire Joseph Gutnick has offered large sums for the effort and said recently he believed Netanyahu supported it.
Peter Lerner, a spokesman for Israel's military government in the West Bank, said the settlers were handed the stopwork order because they began erecting wooden scaffolding and bringing in cement yesterday, even though they didn't have a building permit.
Lerner said the settlers' request for a building permit was still under review.
Egyptian militants attack church, kill 9
The Associated Press
MINYA, Egypt — Police stationed armored vehicles around churches in southern Egypt yesterday after assailants stormed a church charity meeting and killed nine people.
Police blamed Muslim militants for the attack. At least 79 people were arrested by nightfall yesterday.
Gunmen burst into the Mar Girgis Church in El-Fiqriya on Wednesday and opened fire, killing eight people. A ninth person died yesterday of his injuries. Five people were wounded.
El-Fiqriya is in Minya province, about 145 miles south of Cairo. The region long has been a site of strife between the government and Muslim militants seeking to install Islamic rule.
Christian clergymen and activists have accused Egyptian authorities of failing to adequately guard Christian establishments, despite repeated attacks by Muslim militants in the past five years. Christians have been killed as suspected police informers, in land disputes or in attacks on Christian-owned shops.
Among the militants' targets are Coptic Christians, who make up just 10 percent of Egypt's 60 million people but are a large minority in southern Egyptian provinces including Minya.
Militants have burned churches in Cairo and elsewhere. But Wednesday's assault inside a church is the first in recent memory and the worst against Christians since 1992, when 12 villagers in the southern Egyptian city of Assiut were gunned down after a rumor spread that a Christian was pressuring a Muslim to sell his land.
Police placed Abu Qurqs, in the El-Fiqriya area, under curfew yesterday, sealed off main streets leading to the church and searched Minya province for suspects, police officials in Cairo and Minya said.
Dozens of armored vehicles were stationed around churches and on roads leading to them.
The government ordered heightened security around churches in other southern provinces as well. police in Cairo said.
Dozens of shells littered the floor of the church attacked Wednesday, and bullets were wedged in its walls, police said. The meeting was organized to provide food and money to poor Christians in the village.
"Too many attacks have occurred and police failed to provide adequate protection," said Maurice Sadik, a Coptic lawyer and activist in Cairo. "There is a clear security failure."
Yugoslavian media wants freedom
The deaths in El-Fiqriya raised to more than 1,050 the number of people killed since the strife began in 1992. Most of the victims have been police or militants killed in southern Egypt.
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Serbia's president warned yesterday that he would act swiftly against protesters, but opposition to his autocratic rule appeared to be spreading — even to the loyal mouthpiece, state television.
Slobodan Milosevic's admonishments calme amid reports from inside Serbian Television that 110 employees have signed a petition demanding media freedom and the ouster of their director.
Several reporters of the TV's third channel — focusing on art, music and sports — recently were fired for participating in opposition protests.
in addition, Independent Index Radio
reported that many employees at Politika TV — private but also pro-Milosevic — were balking at working for the pro-Milosevic management.
Control over the media has been a pillar of Milosevic's decade-long rule. The opposition has announced that the next step in its struggle to topple Milosevic in elections later this year will be to free the media.
Washington's top human rights official, John Shattuck, plans to visit Belgrade next week to encourage democratic reforms and an independent media.
More than 10,000 students marched over a Sava River bridge yesterday to New Beilgrade to protest state-run TV's biased, pro-Milosevic reporting.
Milosevic alluded to the opposition during
a meeting yesterday of his new government. He and his neo-Communist wife, Mirana Markovic, have branded the opposition traitors, criminals and foreign spies.
"Energetic action of the state institutions and the whole society is needed to counter crime, corruption and all other illegal actions," Milosevic told the 13 newly elected ministers, seven of whom belong to his wife's party.
"in order to carry out (economic) reform, we need stability," he said. "The government is fully responsible for the protection of tae legal order."
The United States has been one of Milosevic's strongest foreign critics. Several visiting congressmen have spoken to anti-Milosevic demonstrators in the past few weeks.
Hong Kong leader moves despite bad luck warnings
The Associated Press
HONG KONG — Ignoring a stargazer's warning that yesterday was an unlucky day to open his new office, Hong Kong's future leader moved in anyway.
Danny Wong, a feng shui expert, warned the day was unlucky for Tung Chee-hwa because it was not in harmony with Tung's birthday, the daily Hong Kong Standard said.
To make up for that, Wong advised Tung to move in before 11 a.m. Tung ignored that
advice and moved into the two-floor, 10,000 square-foot space overlooking a park in Hong Kong's central business district at noon.
Feng shui, the ancient Chinese art of bringing humankind into harmony with the heavens and landscape, traditionally dictates the timing of marriages, job changes and the positioning of buildings and furniture.
Tung's assistant, Elin Wong, said the timing of the move was dictated by his schedule, not feng shui.
The office in the Asia Pacific Finance Center will be Tung's headquarters as he prepares to take over from the British governor when Hong Kong becomes a semiautonomous enclave of China on July 1.