Adventures in Beef Protest, or "I Got Seoul And I'm Super-Bad"

After sleeping for a mere 4 hours Wednesday night we left Tokyo for Seoul early in the morning for a performance that Thursday evening. Groggy and tired we finally made it to the hotel in the afternoon only to be told that we had to head directly to the venue where we would stay until the concert was over. Why in the world would we asked to do that?

Well, I'm sure you've all heard about the protests in South Korea regarding the importation of American beef, they started last weekend and as it turns out, the protesters weren't finished protesting and in fact were staging the next demonstration directly in front of our hotel. So for the rest of the day the hotel wouldn't be a place we would want to drive in and out of for obvious reasons.

After the sound check we walk outside of the theater for some air and find riot police gathering outside getting ready for the evening's big to-do. Trippy right? I wanted to take some more pictures but I didn't want to push my luck either. I doubt they would've minded but why risk it?

So we are all wasted, dead-tired. The concert promoter tells us there might not be many people in attendance due to the fact that all of the roads and parking lots are closed because of the demonstration. It was shaping up to be one bad gig, but as is turns out we had the best show of the entire tour. The people who were there were yelling and dancing and so enthusiastic, it felt like a rock show. I had so much fun playing for them, it made the chaos of the day worthwhile.

But things really got interesting once we left. The riot police from above were now in full motion, running to their various spots around the city like platoons of soldiers. All of the roads were barricaded with police buses and cops with shields. Our drivers were getting more and more frustrated and it became apparent that they didn't know how to get us back to the hotel, every time we thought they had found a new path the road was blocked. Eventually they found a road that would take us there but the traffic was gridlocked. In the end a trip that took us 10 minutes before the gig took about 2 hours afterwards. But we arrived safe and sound. I got to my room and saw that the time was nearing 1 AM and there was a 6 AM lobby call in front of me. Yikes.

More pictures from what little I saw of South Korea:




This pic is right in front of our hotel, it was being set up Korea's Memorial Day celebrations in addition to the demonstration.

I'm in Singapore now, almost home!