One pro-unification civic group told police it will hold a rally in front of the MacArthur statue from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday. The gathering, which it expects to attract 100 people, will call for the expulsion of the U.S. military and the toppling of the statue.

The group’s chairman Kim Su-nam said rectifying “the vestiges of colonialism and our distorted history must begin with removing the MacArthur statue, which is a symbol of imperialism." He said the group would form a coalition with other groups to from Incheon to bring down the statue.

The group has held vigils in front of the statue from May 10 to 30. On the last day, the conservative Hwanghae Province Residents Association told police they, too, would hold a demonstration and camped out under the bronze general. Since then, the progressive group has held sit-ins at Incheon City Hall and the Jung-gu office.

The Hwanghae Province Residents Association plans to gather about 200 people at Inseong Girls' High School, no more than 300 meters from the statue, at the same time on Sunday to show its implacable resolve to defend the monument from its enemies.

Some 1,000 members of Incheon veterans groups also plan to protest on Sunday against any attempts to dislodge the general. Hwalbindan and other conservative civic groups have come together in their own coalition to protect the monument and announced their Sunday protest at a press conference in front of the statue on Friday.

Two other conservative groups released a statement that said President Roh Moo-hyun's administration and Incheon Mayor Ahn Sang-soo should be charged under the national Security Law, saying some 100 of their members would take part in the counter-protest.

“If it hadn’t been for the Incheon Landing, the Republic of Korea would have become a communist society,” Lee Cheol-seung, the chairman of one of the groups, said in the statement. “President Roh Moo-hyun, who has been watching with arms folded as those forces call for the toppling of the statue, is about to encounter the resistance of the entire nation,” he warned. “Taking down the statue, which was built with the citizens’ agreement, would rupture Korea-U.S. ties and be a victory for Kim Jong-il’s unification propaganda strategy.”

The Hwanghae Province Residents Association said but for General MacArthur’s audacious landing of two divisions behind enemy lines at Incheon in September 1950 and driving North Korean forces back to the North, “the country would not be thriving as it is today.” The group vowed it would never permit the monument to be moved.

In view of the advanced age of most of the demonstrators in both the progressive and conservative camps, police will keep ambulances in attendance at the site, and could deploy as many as 500 policemen to prevent clashes.

The 5 m tall MacArthur statue was erected in Incheon’s Freedom Park in 1957 to commemorate the Incheon Landing, a milestone in the Korean War that returned the offensive to UN and South Korean forces and prompted MacArthur to make his famous career-ending prediction that the war would be “over by Christmas.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )