South Korea's government yesterday pardoned nearly 3,000 convicts, including the son of former president Mr Kim Young-Sam.
The amnesty marks tomorrow's anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule. In all, 2,864 people were pardoned, ranging from murderers to traffic offenders, including 56 political prisoners. Rights groups also demanded the release of a further 241 prisoners of conscience.
"President Kim Dae-Jung decided to grant this amnesty to make a fresh start through forgiveness and reconciliation on the last Liberation Day of the 20th century," the Justice Minister, Mr Kim Jung-Kil said.
Another seven prisoners, five of them on death row, will see their sentences commuted, while three leading figures in the last government - including Kim YoungSam's son, Kim Hyun-Chul - will "get a fresh start".
Kim Hyun-Chul's fresh start is a partial clemency which will allow him to escape serving the remaining 1 1/2 years of a two-year jail term for graft and tax evasion.
Also in Seoul, more than 10,000 radical students massed yesterday for a huge pro-North Korean rally as the government launched a tough crackdown on alleged communist sympathisers.
Student leaders claimed the rally was the biggest in three years and would last at least three days.
The students crept onto the hillside campus of Seoul National University along mountain roads to avoid arrest by thousands of riot police deployed to prevent last night's rally, witnesses said.
"With a police helicopter hovering overhead, scuffles immediately erupted at the school's main front gates to block riot police moving in," a student said.
Kazakhstan is asking North Korea to return the MiG-21 fighters it has sold to the Stalinist state amid growing international protests at the deal, a Japanese foreign ministry official said yesterday. Kazakhastan's ambassador in Tokyo, Mr Tlevkhan Kabdrakhmanov, disclosed the move when he was summoned to the Japanese foreign ministry, the official said.