Hi Seoul Festival: Night time

In Seoul they organize an annual ’Hi Seoul’ festival to promote the city (you might have heard the slogan: Hi Seoul, Soul of Asia). The festival was awesome, I mean there was really a lot going on in the city center during that week. There were music, dance, actors, art, food and so on and so on.

The festival started with an opening event in front of the city hall in the evening. The square in front of city hall is a common place to arrange events, or demonstrations. Basically stuff where lots of people gather together.

We wanted to go to see the event, but it definitely wasn’t easy to get there. Since the event was on a date that was a one-year anniversary for the major demonstrations against imported beef from USA, the police had sealed a huge part of the city center off. There were riot police everywhere. It was just ridiculous, don’t they get that they cause more bad than good by having thousands of riot police around. You could just sense the surrounding unease and alertness among the regular people walking on the street when a squad starts quickly moving to another place.

I could sort of compare the atmosphere to what caged animals feel when they are transported to the place they’re put to death. I'm talking about the not knowing what’s going on. We were surrounded by riot police that was on the move. You know something is going on but have no idea about what’s gonna happen next. Someone told us that you can’t get through there, another one said that the event is cancelled because of demonstrations. The rumors spread like wind.


Some riot police.

A word to the police: don’t create fear on the streets, especially when there is no need for actions in that scale. When the crowds are alert and in unease, violent incidents are much more likely to erupt.

Well, we walked a few blocks to the side and around the police, and got to the event. It was so ridiculous again… The event was for promoting Seoul, but because of the damn police shields it was almost insuperably difficult to even get to the area. Hello, is the kind of picture you want to give about Seoul? Police blocking all the ways even though there is no aggression to be seen anywhere.

In the other hand maybe the police blocked the ways to save people from the horrible show that they had in the event. It was this song playing over and over and over again and these people dancing to it on the stage. I don’t know who it was for…

The city hall plaza.

The show. Notice the semonstrators' flags.

Actually right after this video the demonstrators with the flags made their way to one of the stages and overtook it. In a second all the lights and music (oh thank god…) were off. We wanted to be part of the excitement and went to see it closer. Well, in about 2 minutes the riot police came in and broke the crowd apart. At first I got scared since I hadn’t been in a situation like that before. But we weren’t their target or anything. In a while we got so comfortable with the situation that we were just hanging around…

What concerns me is that the riot police here are not real police with proper training or experience. They are 20-year-old punks doing their military service. The usual duties for them are sitting or standing in lines in the city center or where ever there might be something happening. But when it comes to real action, they are very poorly skilled in using power. The wrong usage of water cannon, or physical power generally, can sometimes have severe consequences.

When the police arrested someone, emphasis on the word one, they had like 30 people moving the arrested person. This describes the power relation in general too. A reporter told us that there were 5 000 police. That is more than the people attending the event. And many many times more than the people demonstrating.

This is a video of an arresting. I had to reduce the quality so it's pretty lousy... but all those riot police are carrying probably one demonstrator.

I wonder what is it… Why aren’t the people given a possibility to raise their voice?

I guess the officials are afraid of the power of the people. So they cut off all the expressions of dissatisfaction instantly. If the French would march and demonstrate their opinion, it would have an effect. But a year ago in Seoul millions of people stood in the city center for months holding candles in their hands making no fucking difference what so ever.

The riot police emptied the area pretty quickly. Even the people peacefully playing guitar were recklessly carried into buses. I have to admit that the squads were excellently organized though. Even after there was no soul left on the field without a uniform, they kept moving from one shape into another.

General atmosphere after the actual action. Police moving around, surrounding us, whatever...

At one point a squad with only women in it came. We were talking to a reporter at that time so she explained us about that. Men in the riot police are only allowed to capture men. And if there is a woman that needs to be captured, it must be done by a woman. The women in the “girl squad” didn’t have helmets or any other sort of armor though. Instead they had pretty buns in their hair. You know that makes perfect sense. Female riot police are there just to capture women. And as we all know, girls don’t fight back. Why would they even need any armors…

But a few words about the demonstrations in Korea generally. It seems to be part of Korean mentality to oppose and demonstrate. Most demonstrations are poorly organized without a clear message. People feel bad and just whine about stuff. I think one reason for this is that they don’t have a channel to get their message through. And if there’s no way to be heard they just stop trying to do it sensibly.