Another Violent Torch Relay, This Time in South Korea

Reporters without Borders informs that thousands of Chinese students clashed with the 8,300 South Korean policemen who were deployed for the Olympic torch relay in Seoul yesterday.

Some threw bottles, pieces of wood and soft drink cans at opponents of the Olympic Games and North Korean demonstrators.

The main altercation came shortly after the first relay runner left Seoul’s Olympic Stadium, which hosted the 1988 games. Chinese students attacked members of a group of about 150 South Korean demonstrators and North Korean refugees who were chanting “No human rights, no Olympic Games.” A photographer working for a South Korean newspaper had to be taken to hospital after a stone struck him on the head, the Korea Times reported.

South Korean deputy foreign minister Lee Yong-joon sent a message to the Chinese ambassador in Seoul, Ning Fukui, expressing the government’s “deep regret at the radical actions of certain young Chinese during the torch relay.”