arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

About 2,400 demonstrators belonging to a South Korean labor umbrella group and other progressive non-governmental organizations (NGO) clashed with riot police in the morning at a road intersection, about three kilometers from the COEX conference center, where 26 Asian and European heads of state and government began their summit.

During a rally organized to oppose the ASEM conference, the protesters demanded that laborers' work hours be shortened and discriminatory practices against irregular workers be dismantled.

``ASEM, which was established to overcome American supremacy, has been following in U.S. footsteps only for the sake of capitalistic gains, destroying the lives of laborers and people in third-world countries,'' the protesters said in a statement.

After the rally, the demonstrators, some armed with makeshift batons, marched through the streets in southern Seoul toward the nearby Kangnam subway station.

At one point, 400 students affiliated with Hanchongnyon, a radical group of university students, broke away from the procession and scuffled with riot police on the streets. At least two protesters were reportedly injured during the tussle.

Two police helicopters flew overhead monitoring the clashes.

There was severe traffic jam in southern Seoul as demonstrators confronted riot police on the streets near the subway station.

Earlier in the morning, Dan Byung-ho, head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, and several other NGO leaders tried taking a bus at a subway station to get closer to the ASEM conference venue to hand out a ``letter of protest'' to participating foreign heads of state. But the attempt was forestalled in the face of obstruction by riot police.

The NGO leaders, after being blocked, read the letter, calling for opposition to the ASEM which they said threatened national economies and the lives of people.

About 150 students also staged running demonstrations in subway stations, shouting such slogans as ``We oppose ASEM''and ``We oppose neo-liberalism and globalization.''

In the meantime, more than 20,000 people, including foreign NGO leaders, congregated at Olympic Park, about two kilometers from the conference center, at 2 p.m. at a rally organized by an alliance of NGOs, the ASEM 2000 People's Forum. The protesters staged a 3.7-kilometer march from Olympic Park to the Chamsil Main Stadium.

Protesters marched peacefully in general as riot police forced them to walk under a security cordon. Thousands of police with riot shields and batons surrounded the marching protesters to deter them from gaining proximity to the conference center.

The South Korean authorities mobilized a police force of nearly 30,000 to prot ct the ASEM summit, the biggest international event ever in Seoul, to prevent a repeat of the violence that erupted at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, last November and the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Prague, last month.