Koreans Foiled in Attempt to Kill Ex-Leader

Thousands of student radicals today failed in their bid to seize and kill former leader Chun Doo Hwan but staged a massive show of strength in the streets of Seoul.

The closest anyone came to Chun’s bunker-like home was when four students threw homemade firebombs at the building from a distance of about 50 yards. No damage was reported, and they were promptly arrested.

The formidable riot police, an estimated 20,000 deployed on city campuses and around Chun’s house, may have won a battle but radicals--better organized and more violent than in any previous demonstration this year--vowed a rematch.

The streets around Sogang University, site of the worst violence, looked like a battleground littered with rocks and shattered glass and hung with broken traffic lights.

Since stepping down last February, Chun has been under pressure to face trial for alleged massive corruption, brutality and abuse of power during his tough rule, which started in 1979 when he led a military coup.

For the first time since anti-Chun riots in June last year, bystanders took the side of radicals and jeered the police.

Witnesses said many people, shopkeepers, shoppers and office workers alike, chanted in unison “Arrest Chun Doo Hwan!”

They taunted the hard-pressed riot squads, many of them youthful conscripts, yelling “Chun’s a thief, how can you protect him?”

The national news agency, Yonhap, estimated that more than 20,000 students demonstrated at 71 campuses in Seoul and cities across the country.