Seoul is a city of contrasts.
On one hand, you get kawaii teeny girls like Miss Loi shopping away in Myeong-dong with their favourite K-pop songs blasting away in the background, seemingly oblivious to events that had happened elsewhere.
On the other hand, just a couple of metro stations down the line, Miss Loi came face-to-face with battalions of riot police in full gear.
Miss Loi’s initial impression that this was some GI-Joe/Gundam-like performance for tourists was quickly dispelled when the situation became a little tense …
… and developed into what was a stand-off with a group of boisterous demonstrators (apparently something against South Korea’s ‘weak’ response to the North’s shelling of Yeongpyeong Island – NOT the romantic Yongpyong Ski Resort where a Harry Potter-like Bae Yong Joon met Choi Ji-woo in Winter Sonata – don’t think the North Koreans are that sacrilegious!)
And then things got a little out of hand.
Miss Loi thinks it’s really time for her to go home now. *rubs teary eyes*
2 Comments
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Nice, you managed to capture that. I was inside the war memorial when this happened, probably. 😛 But it does look quite orderly and not too dangerous.
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@Sheylara: For some reason, the demonstrators were trying to smash the plastic (surprise, surprise!) door of that restaurant before the police gassed them.
But yes, all of us tourists-turned-Reuters photographers never really felt threatened from where we were filming.
And to think that we missed each other by a mere whisker 😉