Demo

Today walked home from campus after lunch. At about 2:45 pm I was on the main street that runs from the SNU main gate to the subway station, when I came upon this scene occurring in front of the gu 구 (district) government offices:

It was a demo 데모 (that's the Korean word for a political demonstration). They must have just blocked the road a few seconds earlier, since traffic was only just beginning to back up. (You can see in the photo the #5412 and #5528 buses, which are the two that run from my building to campus.) Korean protests are generally carried out sitting down.

Traffic immediately began to snarl up pretty fiercely. Traffic cops were present and started moving traffic onto side streets. One motorist, stopped right in front of the demonstrators, lost his temper and started screaming at them. (You can see him gesturing angrily beside his silver car, on the left side of the third picture in the sequence below.)

Then, a few seconds later, the demonstrators all stood up and, in orderly fashion, walked off the street, gathering in the plaza in front of the government office building.





The whole thing lasted about 4 minutes; then traffic started flowing again.


With the demonstrators out of the way, I could see that there was a sizeable group of riot police on hand:

So what was the protest about? I'll see if I can figure it out.

On the back of the red vests was written 전노련. A web search reveals that these three syllables, Jeon No Ryeon, are an abbreviation for Jeonguk Nojeomsang Chong Yeonhap Hoe 전국노점상총연합회 "National Federation of Street Vendors". (You may be wondering why Yeon in the full name ends up as Ryeon in the abbreviation. That's one of the things that makes Korean interesting! I'm also pretty sure that Chong Yeonhap will get pronounced as Cheong Nyeonhap. That's another thing that makes Korean interesting! I will explain it all in another post if anyone cares to request an explanation.)

On the back of the black vests was written "주거권쟁취 (Fight for residency rights)" and at the bottom "빈 / 철 / 연". Another web search reveals that those last three syllables, Bin Cheol Yeon, stand for Binmin Haebang Cheolgeo Min Yeonhap 빈민 해방 철거민 연합. This organization seems to be dedicated to preventing the housing of poor people from being dismantled (though I can't quite parse the name).

So I'm guessing that this is a joint protest by advocates for poor city residents and street vendors, most likely in opposition to some planned public construction project that will result in the elimination of housing and street-vending space. (I have heard that there were lots of protests of this type when now-president and then-Seoul mayor Lee Myung-Bak was trying to daylight Cheonggyecheon.)