Defector attempts to self-immolate at torch run

A North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire to halt the Olympic torch relay through Seoul Sunday, while thousands of policeguarded the flame from protesters blasting China's treatment of North Korean refugees.
Hundreds of China supporters waving the Chinese flag greeted the torch, throwing rocks at anti-Beijing demonstrators.

Police ran alongside the flame and rode horses and bicycles on the relay across the city, which hosted the 1988 Olympics.

The torch relay has become a lightning rod for anti-China demonstrations. At other stops, protesters have focused their ire on Beijing's recent crackdown on anti-government riots in Tibet. But in South Korea, China's treatment of North Korean defectors has taken centre stage.

The man who tried to immolate himself, 45-year-old Son Jong Hoon, had led an unsuccessful public campaign to save his brother from execution in the North, where he was accused of spying after the two met secretly in China. About an hour into the relay, Mr. Son poured gasoline on himself and tried to light himself on fire, but police stopped him.

At the start of the relay, a protester rushed toward the Olympic flame and tried to unfurl a banner calling for China to respect the rights of North Korean refugees. Dozens of police surrounding the torch quickly whisked him away. As it approached the city centre, another North Korean defector also tried to impede the run and was arrested.

Some 8,000 officers were deployed across the South Korean capital to guard the torch on its 25-kilometre run from Olympic Park — built to commemorate the 1988 Summer Games here — to City Hall.

The first runner, the South's Korean Olympic Committee head Kim Jung-kil, jogged out of the park surrounded by police on horseback, on bicycles, in buses and on foot.

Hundreds of Chinese also paced the torch. They carried a large red Chinese flag, chanting "Go China, go Olympics!"

Scuffles broke out near the park between a group of 500 Chinese supporters and about 50 demonstrators. The Chinese side threw stones and water bottles at the others as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two groups apart.

A rock hit a journalist in the head, but there were apparently no other injuries.

"The Olympics are not a political issue," said Sun Cheng, 22, a Chinese student studying the Korean language in Seoul. "I can't understand why the Korean activist groups are protesting human rights or other diplomatic issues."

Seoul is one of the last stops on the torch's international tour, which ends when the flame arrives in Hong Kong on Wednesday. On Sunday, three human rights activists who planned to protest the relay in Hong Kong were barred from entering the Chinese-ruled territory, local media and the one of the activists said.

The torch heads next to North Korea for its first-ever run in the communist country on Monday. Disruptions were not expected in the North, an authoritarian state that tolerates no dissent.