Seoul

The United States and North Korea agreed to resume preliminary talks in New York later this month aimed at forging a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. The agreement was reached during a meeting between the two sides in Beijing, according to a North Korean news agency and a U.S. official in Seoul. Stanley Roth, an assistant secretary of State, said in Seoul that North Korea had agreed not to link the defection of two senior diplomats with the talks.

The American television rights to the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games were awarded to NBC Thursday for a minimum payment of $300 million. NBC will pay more if the network's advertising receipts rise above a specified figure that was not announced. The award to NBC broke ABC's recent stranglehold on Olympic television coverage and also, in effect, ended the escalation of payments for Olympic TV rights.

Thousands of students throughout the country chanted "Down with dictatorship!" and fought police today in protest of President Chun Doo Hwan's decision to stop debate on constitutional change. News reports said the demonstrations involved 13,000 students at 24 universities in Seoul and other cities. Anti-American feeling was strong at Korea University in Seoul, where students flung stones and eggs at Park Bo Hi, a confidant of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the U.S.-based Unification

Former President Gerald R. Ford arrived in Seoul on Saturday for a four-day visit to South Korea. Ford will give a lecture on relations between the two countries at a private political study institute and meet President Chun Doo Hwan, ruling party presidential candidate Roh Tae Woo and opposition leader Kim Young Sam.

Dissident Moon Ik Hwan returned Thursday from an illegal trip to North Korea and was immediately arrested on charges of violating South Korea's tough anti-communist laws. The 71-year-old clergyman's arrest aboard a plane at Seoul airport by about 40 plainclothes police provoked immediate protests by nearly 10,000 radical students around the country. Riot police fired tear gas at 2,000 students at Yonsei University in Seoul to keep them from marching off campus, and scores were arrested when they tried to hold a sit-down protest outside the gates, witnesses said.

Ben Johnson would be welcome to compete in the 1992 Olympics even though he was caught using steroids at the Games in Seoul last summer, the head of the International Olympic Committee said Sunday. IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said Johnson must be treated like any other athlete, despite being involved in the biggest drug scandal in Olympic history. "Why not?" Samaranch said when asked if he would like to see Johnson competing for a gold medal again. "Johnson was treated like any other athlete in Seoul when we suspended him. Now, we have to do the same.

South Korea must act quickly to protect foreign patents, trademarks and copyrights if it wants to avoid being cited for unfair trade practices, says a senior U.S. trade official. Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier, speaking to reporters after a week of meetings between U.S. and South Korean officials, said Seoul's enforcement of intellectual property rights laws was woefully inadequate. Washington in May put South Korea on a "priority watch list" along with Brazil, India, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and Thailand.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean minister says a torpedo was the likely cause of an explosion that sank a warship near the tense border with North Korea last month. Defense Minister Kim Tae-young told reporters Sunday that he believes "the bubble jet effect caused by a heavy torpedo is the most likely" cause of the incident. Seoul has not directly blamed North Korea for the blast but suspicion remains given the country's history of provocation and attacks on the South.