CINA

At least 117 police officers and 93 protesters were injured, according to the South Korean authorities, in the clash that highlighted efforts by Seoul to juggle two forces: the U.S. military with 30,000 troops here and a domestic populace that is increasingly disenchanted with the American military presence.

The clash at the rice-farming village of Daechuri near the U.S. base Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers, or 40 miles, south of Seoul, was the most violent anti-American demonstration here in recent years.

Armed with clubs and backed by water cannons, 11,500 police officers stormed the village at dawn. More than 1,000 students, unionists and villagers fought back with rocks and long bamboo sticks, according to witnesses, TV footage and local news reports.

The outnumbered protesters scattered, but about 300 made a last stand in the upper floor of an abandoned two-story school building, erecting barricades with furniture and hurling down stones and shouting slogans against the U.S. military. After a standoff that lasted several hours, the police smashed their way in and hauled out protesters for questioning.

Several bleeding students were carried out on stretchers. The protest organizers said the casualty toll was larger than what was cited by the police, but did not give a specific figure.

The last people to leave the building were several Roman Catholic priests and two lawmakers who had been encamped on the roof. They said they opposed the U.S. military's relocation because it deprived the villagers of their farmland and increased the possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula.

The removal of the villagers, who had occupied the middle of about 1,100 hectares, or 2,700 acres, of government- purchased land, will allow the Pentagon to go ahead with its plan to close most of the U.S. bases in Seoul and near the border with North Korea. Those bases would be replaced by the expanded base at Pyeongtaek by 2008.

"The relocation project is the inevitable choice for us, aimed at strengthening the South Korea-U.S. alliance and deterring a war on the Korean Peninsula," the South Korean defense minister, Yoon Kwang Ung, said Thursday. "We can no longer delay it; unless it progresses normally, it will hurt our diplomatic credibility."

The police and about 3,000 soldiers erected a 29-kilometer razor wire fence around the government land, which will triple the size of Camp Humphreys.

The South Korean Parliament has approved an agreement signed in 2004 to withdraw U.S. bases from the front line with the North for the first time since the end of the Korean War. Under the multibillion-dollar project, the Pentagon will close its sprawling Dragon Hill headquarters in the center of Seoul.

In the past century, Dragon Hill has been occupied by Chinese troops, Japanese Imperial Army units and American soldiers, who came during the Korean War and stayed. For decades, the base symbolized the American sacrifices during the war and the security that helped make the rapid South Korean economic growth possible.

But younger generations consider Dragon Hill a daily reminder of foreign military influence and a slight to their national pride.

"In the past 50 years, we have been much indebted to others, especially the United States. We thank them and the two countries will remain friends forever," President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea said Wednesday. "But it's one thing to rely on someone and it's quite another for us to live independently and become friends."

With a history of being frequently invaded by China and Japan, Roh said his country was wary of the growing military influence of China and of a joint front by the United States and Japan to check the Chinese rise.

Seeking greater military independence, Roh's government is negotiating to persuade the U.S. military to give up the wartime control of South Korean troops, which Seoul handed over to the Americans during the Korean War.

But Roh also has demonstrated his sensitivity to U.S. interests by sending South Korean troops to help the Americans in Iraq, and by embracing a U.S. military realignment that calls on South Korea to spend more on its military while giving U.S. forces in Korea the flexibility to join missions elsewhere in the region.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon struck a similar deal with Japan under a global strategy of regrouping U.S. troops into mobile, faster-moving units to respond to new threats like terrorism. The Pyeongtaek hub, with its own airfield and located near a port, is crucial to the Pentagon's scheme.

Activists criticized the "strategic flexibility" agreement, citing fears that South Korea might be dragged into conflicts that do not directly involve the Korean Peninsula.

"We must stop Pyeongtaek from turning into the U.S. military's supply base for war," Lee Tae Ho, a civic group leader, said in a recent lecture. Lee noted that after the relocation, the U.S. military would be positioned along the Korean west coast, facing China.

Officials in Washington and Seoul say that the U.S. military's role in South Korea remains defensive. Seoul maintains that Washington agreed to seek its consent before redeploying U.S. troops out of the country.

In the past months, the confrontation at Pyeongtaek has drawn headlines as activists turned up to help 200 villagers resist their eviction, for which they had been offered compensation by the government.