A 69-year-old farmer, Baek Nam Gi, remained unconscious at a hospital after he fell and injured his head as police doused him with water cannons near City Hall, said Cho Byung Ok, secretary general of the Korea Peasants League.
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But footage from the protests shows an unarmed farmer being bowled over by a powerful blast from a police hose.
While protestors criticized police for the violent crackdown in which water cannons were used with spray containing capsaicin, police claim the measure was necessary because protestors attempted to topple police buses and attack officers with metal pipes and sharpened bamboo sticks.
The demonstrations were sparked by frustration with the South Korean government, led by President Park Geun-hye, over issues ranging from state-issued history textbooks to labor reform, from unemployment among the young to the soaring cost of rice, clashes occurred in various parts of Seoul as the police cracked down on the demonstrations.
Demonstrators, many of whom wore masks and carried banners, took over a major street and marched between tight perimeters outlined by police buses.
Baek, who formerly headed the South Jeolla chapter of the Catholic Farmer Association, underwent surgery late Saturday night but has yet to regain consciousness. Some of the protesters attached ropes to the police buses to pull them away, rocked the buses back and forth, and broke windows, and a few of the buses were dragged into the middle of the road.
The spokesperson accused police of shooting their cannons “indiscriminately”.
According to Reuters, 51 people were arrested on Saturday “on various charges including illegal protest, assaulting police officers and destroying public equipment”. “According to reports I have received, the use of water cannons was in line with the regulations”, said Gu Eun-su, commissioner of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, on November 15.
Officials also tried, unsuccessfully, to arrest KCTU president Han Sang-goon during a news conference.
It was not clear how numerous 22,000 police officers at the scene were injured, but 29 protesters were said to have been hospitalized.
The helpless protester was later rescued by two demonstrators.
“The government must immediately cease worsening labour conditions”, Han demanded.
The proposed labor laws would allow companies to keep wages low and fire workers and activists, according to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).
Critics say that the state-issued history textbooks, which have not been written yet, would be politically driven and might attempt to whitewash the brutal dictatorships that preceded South Korea’s bloody transition toward democracy in the 1980s.
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South Korea was ruled by Park Geun-hye’s father, military dictator Park Chung-hee, in the 1960s and 1970s.
