The foreign office advice for travelers, while generally erring on the side of caution, has standard advice applicable to most destinations. Things like “observe local customs”. One of these is to “avoid public demonstrations and protests”.

The past few days there have been a few protests in Seoul. This one I had to walk through to get back to my hotel. Behind where I took the photo there was every police man in Seoul. Literally hundreds, some in full riot gear. The speaker was shouting into the mic, meanwhile I’m picking my day through. ” excuse me, sorry, thank you ” etc..

Thankfully it was all peaceful. I asked a few people what it was about. It’s not easy to find English speakers, but from what I can tell the protest was about the sinking of the Sewol. (The Sewol was a passenger ferry that sunk in April, with the loss of 294 lives). I think the people want an inquest, but don’t quote me on that.

The yellow tags you see are all around the city. They are remembrance tags with writing on, presumably names. Most of the victims were school kids, it was a real tragedy. I met up with a couple of people in Incheon last night, which is where the ship sailed from.