Anti-U.S. protesters set off for Washington

South Korean activists took their protests on the road yesterday, vowing to tell the White House in Washington of their anger that two American soldiers were found not responsible for the June road deaths of two local girls.

Seven members of the Pan National Committee, an alliance of civic groups that has staged protests ever since the accident, flew to the United States yesterday. "Public anger has reached its peak," Kim Jong-il, head of the group, said in a news conference at Incheon International Airport. "We will visit the White House, the Department of State and the United Nations headquarters to lodge our protest."

The group said it would demand that the U.S. president apologize again in person, that the soldiers' acquittal be voided and that they be tried again in a South Korean court. President George W. Bush last week relayed his apology through the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

The protesters also demand that the Status of Force Agreement between South Korea and the United States be revised. The pact governing U.S. military personnel here was revised just two years ago, but has been hotly denounced as unfair, in part because it gives the U.S. military primary jurisdiction over incidents arising in the course of military duty.

At the airport, the Pan National Committee encountered South Korea's Defense Minister Lee Jun, who was also leaving for Washington to attend the annual South Korea-U.S. security meeting. The activists urged Mr. Lee to address the matter in the bilateral talks, and the minister promised his best effort.

Politicians joined in the call for SOFA revision. A group of 27 lawmakers agreed yesterday to send a resolution on the issue to the National Assembly.

The U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, reportedly told South Korean lawmakers yesterday that he is willing to discuss procedural and operational questions regarding improvement of U.S. military operations here.

North Korea swiped at both the United States and the South Korean Grand National Party. The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland assailed Mr. Bush's apology as a gesture full of deceit, and added, "By calling the apology an appropriate action, the Grand National Party revealed its true color of unpatriotic traitorous pro-Americanism."

In response to repeated trespasses onto U.S. military bases by the protesters, the United States Forces Korea warned yesterday that it would not "condone illegal entry into U.S. government facilities or violent demonstrations."

by Ser Myo-ja