Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bossface]

it was lame, lame i tell you. i went down to Coex before work, walked around the area a bit. police everywhere, as expected. big walls around the Coex convention area. i wasn't really hoping to see carnage or riots or anything like that, i just wanted to see... something. no dice. the only interesting thing i noticed were signs in the 9 line construction area, tons of signs in English (and not in Korean, only English) talking about the line 9 construction.

nothing going on above ground, so i went into Coex. it was dead. at least 2/3 of the stores and restaurants were closed. given that nothing was going on, i hoped to salvage my trip across town by hitting up Bandi and Luni's followed by a decent lunch. fail in both regards, Bandi and Luni's were closed, as were all remotely interesting restaurants. sadly, i ended up eating at the dreaded McD. at least Quarter Pounders haven't lost their new burger smell yet.

if you are thinking of going tomorrow, don't. just go to ICN or any airport at 5 a.m. sometime. same feel. lots of security, no people, nothing open, nothing to do.

[sojusucks]

There were articles and news stories that everything was going to be closed in case of rioting.

[shinramyun]

[crossmr]

Many years ago in Calgary they had an OPEC like conference. That year there had been massive riots in Seattle at the same conference. they cordoned off this huge area of downtown. Fences every where. They had 14000 police and military housed in parking garages inside this area and two security companies.

One day we had 100 people march around the perimeter and then a security guard got into a fight with some girl over something she was drawing with sidewalk chalk.

[SMOE NSET]

Most of the protests are being held at city hall or Seoul station.

[cj1976]

The streets between Seoul Station and Sookmyung Women's Uni were packed with protesters last night. They were shouting about the evils of capitalism while people cheered and took photos with their smart-phones. Awesome stuff.

[AsiaESLbound]

I rode line 9 last Saturday, the line absent from my cell phone's map, and it was super insanely crowded. It was odd that you have to beep through the new style of gate less card control points while making the transfer at Dongjak station.

I wouldn't expect to actually see anything with security as high as it is. I read an article on this, but don't have time to cite it now. They have 50,000 or 1/3 of Korea's police force and 10,000 armed troops there. There was a special law passed to allow police and troops extra powers to control any situation which includes using force if necessary. Basically they declared a state of martial law without putting it so bluntly in a radius of 2km of COEX. You should see cleaner looking taxi drivers as they were instructed by the city to look extra clean until late November or face a fine if caught looking grungy and stinky.

[Xuanzang]

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2928297

[DeLaRed]

[cheolsu]

[AHawk843]

I went to COEX yesterday too, and I was legit creeped out. Security (plain clothes and uniformed) had a beat on me as soon as I walked into the area. Guys were following me. Granted, this is around the same time the Obama / Lee Myung-Bak were speaking ... but it was downright frightening.

[pkang0202]

I remember back in 2002, shortly after 9/11.

I was riding the DC metro. There were police on the subway/trains in full gear with assault rifles. Well, the woman in my subway car had a 5 year old kid and he was eating Mcdonald's French Fries. The armed policeman went up to her and told her to get her child to stop eating the fries because there was no food/drink in the Metro.

The way he did it was pretty messed up. He wasn't pointing his gun at them or anything, but he had his right hand on the grip, and the left one on the Forearm grip, alert and at the ready. I just sat there and shook my head.

Beware the 5 year old white, brown haired terrorist eating french fries on the Metro.

[mstrum]

I took some pics at the protest yesterday around Seoul Station:

http://www.mstrum.com/onmywaytokorea

[brento1138]

[nathanrutledge]