This weekend President is leaving South Korea to participate in G20 and a series of regional summits President Park Geun-hye called on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on November 13 to “make a decision to attend to the wounds from the past and heal them” on the issue of “comfort women” drafted into sexual slavery for the Japanese military.
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About 70,000 people marched from various locations in Seoul to an area near City Hall, according to police.
Police used water canons to disperse the crowd and sprayed liquid laced with an irritant found in chilli pepper to fight off protesters swinging metal pipes and sharpened bamboo sticks. An official at Seoul National College hospital stated she could not remark on Baek’s condition “cause of privacy guidelines”.
Video footage showed Baek lying motionless as other demonstrators struggled to drag him away and police continued to fire water cannons from atop police buses.
Protesters tried to move a few of the buses by pulling ropes they had tied to the vehicles, and police, wearing helmets and body armour, responded by firing tear gas and water cannons.
Police said it was likely a few people had been injured, but could not give a figure.
During a news conference, Han Sang-gyun, the leader of the main labor group, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, warned against a widening gap between the rich and the poor in South Korea, saying that the conglomerates were “wallowing in cash” while an increasing number of workers were forced to work on poorly paid temporary contracts.
Han is wanted for organizing a similar protest in May that turned violent with clashes between authorities and demonstrators.
Saturday’s rally was the largest South Korea has seen since 2008 when the country was hit by waves of protest against the import of U.S. beef.
Conservative critics argue that now the authors are too left-wing, but liberal opponents accuse the government of reverting to a policy used by past authoritarian regimes in South Korea including that of late president Park Chung Hee, father of the current president.
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Eight men who had been held as slaves at South Korean salt farms for several years took the government to court on Friday for alleged negligence and police inaction they say largely caused and prolonged their ordeal.
