Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yesterday]

All morning I have been watching 100's of people walk past my apartment headed towards Olympic park....

(my apartment is about 1 minutes walk from Olympic park - MongChontoseong Station)

Every second person who walked past had a HUGE red CHINESE flag wrapped around them...

I thought they were silly as it was cold and raining outside and they had no umbrellas...

maybe Chinese people I thought...

Now the shouting and chanting has started....

Very loud I can hear it very clear in English... CHINA! CHINA! CHINA!

anyone know any info about what happening at the Olympic park today?

[Ut videam]

[Yesterday]

Thanks for that -

its over now - all the shouting/chanting has finished

and all the hundreds of people are moving back past my apartment but in the opposite direction (headed back towards Jamsil)...

they still have the HUGE red Chinese flags drapped around them - and they are KOREAN!!

I never thought I would ever see such an impossible thing - as KOREAN people WEARING THE CHINESE FLAG...

what has happened to Korean people?

[maeil]

Are you positive that they are Korean? There are lots of Chinese people working and studying here.

[jvalmer]

It's on CNN right now...

[Yesterday]

well..... I hope they are ALL Chinese...

otherwise I will be confused forever - as the day I ever see a Korean person wearing the flag of another country goes against everything I always thought Korean people believed in.......

well congratulations to the Chinese! such a large gathering in SongPa-gu


and NO umbrellas or jackets in the cold rainy weather - they are obviously a little tougher than Koreans....

(that should have told me immediately that they were Chinese - as Korean people would have been carrying jackets and umbrellas - NOT flags)

[princess]

And an even smarter thing to do would be to sleep in this morning, which is what I did. Someone would have to pay me before I would get up on a Sunday morning and walk around in the park, even with an umbrella and a coat.

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

[Yesterday]

[esetters21]

[DrunkenMaster]

[esetters21]

I expected the worst DM, but that takes the cake . I'm going to go throw up now!

[DrunkenMaster]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/27/oly.torch.relay/index.html

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- The Olympic flame began the 17th leg of its protest-plagued global relay in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday -- with Chinese students vastly outnumbering demonstrators.


The Seoul torch relay was disrupted by an unidentified demonstrator as Chinese students look on.

A North Korean defector tried to set himself on fire but was stopped by police. Sporadic scuffles broke out along the route between demonstrators and Chinese students as police tried to keep the two groups apart.

At least 8,000 riot police were deployed to guard the 15-mile (24 km) route, which started at Olympic Park, built when Seoul hosted the Summer Games in 1988, and winds down at City Hall in central Seoul.

"They will try their best to prevent any kind of intervention," said Gi Hyung Keum, spokesman for the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

South Korea is no stranger to demonstrations. Police have successfully handled large crowds, such as recent protests against the country signing a free trade agreement with the United States.

After Seoul was granted the 1988 Games, massive pro-democracy demonstrations broke out, prompting the then-military government to enact sweeping reforms. Among them was the decision to hold direct presidential elections.

"I respect people's rights to protest, to have their say. But this is not the venue for various people to express their political interests," said Kim Sang-Woo of the Korean Olympic Committee.

An hour before the start of the relay, thousands of Chinese students thronged the park plaza, singing songs and chanting "One China, One World" slogans.

About 30,000 Chinese students study in South Korea.

In other recent Asian legs of the relay, a large number of Chinese students have attended. In Bangkok, Thailand, students told CNN the Chinese Embassy there provided their transportation and gave them shirts to wear.

As in several past stops, demonstrators protesting China's policy toward Tibet turned out at the rally.

They were joined by other demonstrators critical of how China forcefully deports North Korean refugees back to their impoverished country when they escape into China.

Under the North Korean penal code, leaving the country without state permission can be considered an act of treason, punishable by heavy penalties including imprisonment and forced labor, said Kay Seok of Seoul's Human Rights Watch.

"They will be invariably interrogated about what they did in China, why they went to China and who they met there," she said. "And depending on the result of the interrogation, they will be sent to labor camps for a few months or to prison for a few years."

The flame arrived shortly after midnight from another Olympic host city: Nagano, Japan, site of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games. A few sideliners waved Tibetan flags, but those were outnumbered by those holding large Chinese flags. Despite some scuffles, the relay went off uninterrupted. See the torch's arrival in South Korea. �

The torch has been shadowed on its journeys by pro-Tibet demonstrators who troubled the relay in London, England; Paris, France; and San Francisco, California. Stops in those cities attracted tens of thousands of demonstrators and prompted dozens of arrests.

Security concerns prompted Pakistani officials to close the relay to the public and hold it at a stadium in front of invited guests. India truncated the route and kept protesters at bay by lining the route with thousands of police officers and paramilitary troopers.

But stops in some countries, such as Argentina, Tanzania and Oman, have been trouble-free.

From Seoul, the torch heads to Pyongyang, North Korea. On Wednesday, it travels to Hong Kong.

Three human rights activists who planned on protesting the torch relay there said Sunday that they there were barred from entering the Chinese-ruled territory.

"We (were) finally told that we for 'immigration reasons' could not enter HK, and should take the next plane back," wrote Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot on the Web site of his group, Color Orange.

"Although repeatedly asking for the reason of being denied access, they would/could not explain it in more details than 'we do not live up to the requirements of immigration.'"


Galschiot sculpted 'The Pillar of Shame,' which depicts 50 torn and twisted bodies to symbolize those who died in a Chinese crackdown on Tiananmen Square in 1989.