kimchi corner

Last Saturday, Joanna, AJ, Abby and Elizabeth went downtown to walk on palace grounds. AJ loves being able to walk independently, which is not an easy thing to allow in crowded Seoul. However, the palaces often have nice walkways and not too many people. AJ got to walk around, chasing pigeons and attracting Koreans. One interesting thing is that Koreans always want to give him food, usually hard candy, which he can't possibly eat. One lady gave him a banana.

When they exited the palace, they were surprised to see at least 30 riot police buses and lots of riot police everywhere. (Most of the riot police are young men who have recently been released from the 2+ years of required military service.) One group had surrounded the entire area at the palace gate. Every subway exit stairwell was covered as well as the entire Seoul Plaza. We started to wonder what we might run into. Turns out that several groups were planning to protest the Free Trade Agreement meetings and that Seoul was not allowing those demonstrations to take place because of violence last month at similar demonstrations. We did see a small group demonstrating across the street in front of KFC.