Evictees from SKorea’s 1st Olympics recall harsh clearings

BUCHEON, South Korea (AP) — When South Korea previously held the Olympics in 1988, Kim Paolo and some 150 other poor urban residents spent months that year hiding in huge graves of their own making.

They were the last among thousands ousted from host city Seoul after losing years-long, pre-Olympic battles against officials, police, construction workers and hired thugs. A massive effort to beautify the capital had razed hundreds of poor neighborhoods to make way for new high-rise buildings. In violent clashes between residents and police, several died and hundreds were injured.

Just west of Seoul a trio of long pits in the ground was all the living space Kim and others could wrestle out of officials

Three decades later, the thousands of people displaced from their homes in Seoul live scattered around the country.

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