GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

For a few months in 1988, the Seoul government urged South Koreans to refrain from shouldering their way through crowds, spitting in public and even eating dogs. But after the nation finished playing host to the summer Olympics, the rigorous campaign slacked off, and government officials have noticed that many citizens went back to their old antisocial ways. To combat the problem, a new month-long crackdown has been launched against expectorating, smoking in restricted areas, urinating in public and "behaving obnoxiously while intoxicated." On the first day of the program, police officials announced that exactly 57,294 people had been reprimanded nationwide, primarily for spitting and littering.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart