By Park Si-soo
No violent demonstration were reported during the G20 Seoul Summit, which ended Friday, allowing police who have been on high alert for weeks to heave a sigh of relief.
The only large-scale rally, led by the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Union, held at Seoul Station Plaza, Thursday, ended without major clashes. Around 100 anti-G20 activists from 80 civic groups from around the world took part in the protest.
Hundreds of riot police in protective gear surrounded the crowd to keep them from marching toward the summit venue, with water cannons and tear gas at the ready in case violence broke out.
Rally organizers said anti-G20 rallies don’t have to be violent.
“The purpose of our activities is to make world leaders recognize that the summit is not always welcomed,” a spokesman for the G20 Collective Move, an anti-G20 civic group. “We believe the participating leaders are now well aware of it. So we succeeded.”
Many of the planned rallies were cancelled voluntarily and hundreds of rallies were banned by police for fear they could turn violent.
At the same time, experts said that civic group members also refrained from staging violent rallies.
Such a peaceful atmosphere outside the G20 summit venue during the meetings is rare, experts said.
The previous G20 summit in Toronto in June was mired by a series of violent rallies led by labor and environment activists. Vandalism was rampant.
Protesters set fire to police cars and attacked stores, and hundreds of them were arrested and charged. A major bloody clash during the summit in London in April last year left one police officer dead and dozens injured.
Police said the denial of entry to “notorious” activists overseas was helpful in taking the steam out of local protesters. They said adverse weather conditions during the meeting was another factor — yellow dust from China blanketed Seoul and the mercury dipped to near freezing temperatures.