By Kwon Mee-yoo
The G20 Summit is taking place at the Coex in southern Seoul and while the heads of states are busy with their discussions, small and even large protests are also taking place throughout the capital city against the international summit.
The Korean People’s G20 Response Action, a confederation of some 80 progressive civic groups such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, held a protest against the summit in front of Seoul Station, Thursday afternoon.
The protesters denounced the G20 for shifting the consequences of the economic crisis onto laborers.
They urged the Korean government to introduce a financial transactions tax to control capital flows, the root cause of the recent global financial crisis that cut jobs and deflated the values of properties.
International activists including Alejandra Angriman of Argentina and Dani Setiawan of Indonesia also participated in the rally.
An organizer of the anti-G20 rally said more than 10,000 people took part in the demonstration, while the police claimed that about 3,500 participated in the rally.
There were no major clashes between demonstrators and police. While large-scale rallies were held across the Han River, people decided to go individually near the summit venue.
Starting at 9:30 a.m., a man in his 30s held a one-man demonstration in front of the east entrance to the Coex with a banner bearing a message protesting the four river restoration project. He was forced to move outside the security perimeter by police.
A Caucasian man held a picket which read, “Recession is the medicine” at the same place at around 10:50 a.m., and he was also relocated by the police.
Another woman was taken to Gangnam Police Station after saturating herself with flammable paint thinners.
“One-man protests could disturb the summit and all of them are supposed to move out to the safety zone under the Special Law on G20 Security,” a police officer said.
However, Jonathan Lee, a 13-year-old Korean-American activist, promoting peace and reunification on the Korean peninsula across the street from the Coex was not restrained by the police. “We did not stop Lee because we did not think he was threatening security and he said he would move to Seoul Forest in the afternoon,” a police officer said.