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Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Yong-joon on Monday met Chinese ambassador to Seoul Ning Fukui and delivered a message of regret. "Lee expressed strong regret at the violence caused by some Chinese youths during yesterday's Olympic torch relay," a ministry spokesman said.
In response, Ning said he regretted the "extreme behavior" of the Chinese and expressed his condolences to police officers and a journalist injured during the demonstrations.
Apparently stunned by fledgling anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea, the Chinese envoy said Chinese people have "good feeling" about South Koreans. "I will continue efforts not to damage the public sentiment of both nations," Ning was quoted as saying.
Some 6,000 Chinese residents assembled Sunday to defend the beleaguered Olympic torch, seen as a symbol of their country, and took to the streets in central Seoul, waving China's red national flags and shouting slogans such as "Go China, go Olympics!" and "Tibet belongs to China forever."
Scuffles broke out as Chinese supporters, including students studying here, tried to thwart some 300 anti-torch demonstrators, mostly South Korean human rights activists and North Korean defectors.
They broke a police line and threw stones, water bottles and chunks of wood at anti-torch activists, leaving several people injured, including two police officers and a newspaper photographer. Witnesses said Chinese supporters surrounded and violently attacked anti-torch protesters, including an elderly South Korean man. Some Chinese chased anti-torch activists into a Seoul hotel and hit them with sticks.
Anti-Chinese activists tried to disrupt the torch relay to draw attention to China's human rights record and its crackdown on unrest in Tibet. They unfurled pro-Tibet banners, chanting, "No human rights, No Olympic Games!"
North Korean defectors living in South Korea also joined the rally, blasting China's treatment of North Korean refugee-seekers. At Sunday's rally, one defector poured gasoline on himself and tried to light himself on fire, but police quickly stopped him.
China has been accused of catching North Korean refugee-seekers and sending them back to their famine-hit homeland where they face severe punishment. China does not consider the North Korean escapees to be refugees, branding them illegal immigrants.
Defectors in Seoul tried to use the Olympic torch relay to draw attention to the humanitarian plight of North Korean refugee-seekers hiding in China, numbering over 100,000.
South Korea's government deployed more than 8,000 riot police along the 24-kilometer route of the torch relay. Police arrested one Chinese for acts of violence and three North Korean defectors for trying to disrupt the relay.
The massive turnout of the Chinese with their communist flags and their violent rallies has triggered a public backlash from South Koreans, who also have a strong sense of patriotism in the wake of their long history of Japanese and Chinese invasions.
Internet message boards in Web portal sites and government organizations, such as the presidential Blue House and the National Policy Agency, were flooded with comments denouncing the Chinese violence and the police failure to tame the disorderly Chinese crowds. The messages included "Kick all the Chinese out of our country," and "Let's boycott violent Olympics."
"The Chinese should be very ashamed of what they did here. The Chinese government must apologize," said Kim Chang-il, a 41-year-old engineer in Seoul. Jin Joong-kwon, a professor at Seoul's Chung-Ang University, dubbed the Chinese rallies as a "violent show of their nationalism, which hurts the Olympic spirit."
South Korea's mass media, which had called for a safe passage for the Olympic torch, have become critical of the Chinese massive show of patriotism and violent rallies in central Seoul.
"The celebration (of the torch relay) has left some scars on the hearts of South Koreans as Chinese residents, especially young students, turned violent," the Korea Times said in an editorial entitled, "Unchecked Nationalism."
Some news reports criticized the Chinese Embassy in Seoul for encouraging Chinese students here to join the demonstrations to "fight against" anti-torch activists. Seoul-based human rights groups staged a protest rally in front of the Chinese Embassy to protest the violent demonstrators.
The Olympic flame was taken to North Korea on Monday, where it was "warmly welcomed," according to Pyongyang's news reports.
North Korea, which has promised to "astonish the world" with its handling of the relay, mobilized some 400,000 citizens who "enthusiastically cheered the torch," which marked its first journey to the hermit kingdom.
North Korea, which has heavily relied on China for its economic survival, has denounced the protests in Tibet as being staged by "unsavory elements" who try to "scuttle" the Beijing Olympics. China is Pyongyang's only remaining ally and economic lifeline.
