Protest by Day; Peace by Night

I come to my last day in Seoul. It was a day of dichotomy.

I arrived @ work this morning to a building surrounded by an outer layer of peaceful (but LOUD!) protest and an inner layer of guardsmen & security for the building owners' Shareholder Meeting. Every single person had to show some form of ID as all doors but one were blocked off. But... um... they let me just walk right on in! Come on! Don't I look scary? Just a little bit suspicious? I suppose they assumed (correctly) that I wouldn't have been able to understand their request for identification, but would have been secretly pleased to have whipped out my badge nonetheless.

Inside the building, we endured 4+ hours of "concerns" broadcast to shareholders and heard as if the conversation was a cube away. POSCO should have built themselves a building with better windows! If I were a shareholder, you can bet that's what I'd bring up next year! Double-pane windows! Hello! For every 15-minute rant, the entire crowd would then sing along to a national anthem of some sort and dance & cheer. Seriously, if I hadn't heard the angry shouting, I would have sworn it was some sort of celebration, like the Fourth of July or Liberation Day Parade. And of course, I had to stick my camera out the window to capture the scene!

Tonight, my evening has been filled with down time in the hotel as I glow at the Huskies big Pac-10 win, prepare to leave in the morning for Hong Kong, and try to beat this nasty-whatever-it-is that's trying to take hold. I've enjoyed watching the 14-lane interesection below resolve itself for the past couple of hours (it hasn't). And for some strange reason, it feels like Christmas. Pretty lights. I'm content.

Farewell, Seoul.