Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=08/19/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=KOREAS / APOLOGY L-ONLY

NUMBER=2-306611

BYLINE=STEVE HERMAN

DATELINE=TOKYO

CONTENT=

INTRO: South Korea's president has expressed regret for last week's anti-North Korean protests in Seoul. As Steve Herman reports, the conciliatory gesture comes after North Korea canceled plans to participate in college athletic games in the South this week.

TEXT: South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun met with aides at the presidential Blue House Tuesday to discuss the latest suspension of inter-Korean exchanges.

He told his staff that last Friday's anti-North Korean protest by conservatives in Seoul - in which North Korean flags and portraits of the leader Kim Jong Il were burned - was inappropriate.

/// ROH ACT, IN KOREAN, EST. & FADE ///

The president says he hopes such protests will not be repeated and he instructed his cabinet to express regrets to North Korea.

The move comes after North Korea Monday said it was boycotting the World University Games in Taegu in South Korea because the safety of its athletes could not be guaranteed in wake of the August 15th demonstrations.

North Korean state media demanded an official apology for what they called the rowdy-ism displayed by the right-wing demonstrators in the South.

During the protest on Korea's Liberation Day, demonstrators condemned North Korea's plans to build nuclear weapons and called on North Korean leader Kim to resign.

North Korean officials also did not show up for Monday's schedule exchange of economic and investment documents at the border. And they ignored efforts by the South to establish contact at the inter-Korean buffer zone for economic discussions that had been scheduled to start Tuesday.

The two Koreas have carried out a number of cultural and sports exchanges since their leaders held a summit three years ago. The events have continued over the past year, despite the rising tension over North Korean nuclear ambitions.

North Korea's weapons programs violate several international accords, including a pact with the South to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Roh's conciliatory expression of regret is not likely to be well received by the opposition Grand National Party and many older, conservative South Koreans who have accused the president of being too soft on North Korea.

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North and South Korea are technically still at war because hostilities in the Korean War in the early 1950s ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Signed)

NEB/HK/SH/JO/KBK