A spokesman for the North Headquarters of the National Alliance of Youth and Students for the Country's Reunification (Pomchonghakryon) issued a statement on Oct. 21 denouncing this action.

The statement said: No sooner had the group of traitors come to power than unsheathed the sword of fascism and arrested the chairman of the South Headquarters of Pomchonghakryon on charges of violation of the NSL and persecuted and excruciated him and imposed a heavy penalty upon him in the end. It is keen now to totally eliminate the "south Korean Council of Youth Organizations" which took the lead in the struggle for independence, democracy and reunification in south Korea after labeling it "enemy-benefiting."

The North Headquarters of Pomchonghakryon vehemently denounces the Lee group's evermore brutal suppression as an undemocratic and anti-reunification action to quell the ardent desire and will of youth and students to defend and implement the June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration and bring back the past era of fascist dictatorship to south Korea, the statement noted, and continued:

The Lee group's acts of incriminating those youth and students engaged in the just patriotic struggle for reunification and brutally suppressing them go to prove that it is keen only on the confrontation with the north and fascist dictatorship, negating the said declarations.

The puppet authorities should stop the suppression of the progressive pro-reunification patriotic forces at once and immediately release the unreasonably detained youth, students and patriotic figures, bearing in mind that they will only meet destruction if they keep to the road of confrontation and fascism quite contrary to the fellow countrymen's desire for reunification.