May Day Parade in Seoul

Picture this: a couple of major streets in Seoul closed for the "paradeers;" hundreds upon hundreds of banners; posters of all shapes and sizes; flags on several meter long staffs; 'revolutionaries' dressed in uniform t-shirts, vests, pants; bandanas around their sweaty forehads, Ninja-style; bandanas covering lower portion of their faces in - what else - bandidos style; unbearably loud communist-era sounding songs that conjure images of Lenin and October Revolution; unbearably loud sloganeers croaking and chanting, further damaging their strianed vocal chords; ajummas selling everything from paper visors, faux-straw hats, parasoles, kimbap, water, soju, ice-cream, to posters with various revolutionaries frowning on them from Che Guevara whom I know to many Korean famous deads whom I don't know.

Picture this: sweaty people sitting on hot asphalt with a thin layer of numerous leaflets between their bums and the said asphalt. If truth's to be told, leaflets are so huge they couldn't rightfully be called that and they are distributed every 5 seconds or so by young volunteers. They demand better workers' safety, improved health care, more human rights, more freedom, more money, more freedom, more money, and so on. A good number of trees paid dearly for this kind of revolutionary fervour that at the end met the sad destiny of becoming litter on the streets of Seoul.
Picture this: the same sweaty people looking around and looking bored, scratching their heads, ears, noses, or yelling at their kids who are hot and who'd rather be sitting on a dentist's chair than here in this heat and among the maddening crowd; the funniest part of it all is that everyone is automatically waving their fists in the rhytm of loud 'workers' songs, but not as if they really mean it, more in the "everyone does it, so I should do it, too."

What the heck was I doing there? Someone made me an offer to come that I couldn't refuse. I was there with someone who's been trying to be my friend for a long time and I guess in the end I succumbed to her persistence. Don't get me wrong: she's a great lady, a true intellectual, has heaps of degrees from famous schools, very socially conscious, a feminist, an equal opportunity advocate and ... you get the picture. It is thanks to her that I understand how important this day is in Korea. It is less about upholding workers' rights and more about Koreans celebrating the demise of dictatorship and the dawn of democracy. That dawn is still pretty murky, but of course, things are much better than before and big enought to call for big celebration.

What I found strange is that in spite of all the chanting and sloganeering, people really looked rather disinterested. I know that no one forced them to be there, that they were their of their own free will, but they didn't seem into it. Strangely, the May Day parade reminded me of a Korean wedding that imitates a Western-style wedding: all is there - the flowers, the gown, the tux - but the wedding guests are not really paying attention, they are chatting and they wear jeans, oblivious to the solemnity and deeper meaning of the wedding act. The parade was a bit like that: flags, banners, huge Chinese propaganda style posters, bandanas, leaflets - all was there, but the heart of the people seemed to be somewhere else and they didn't really seem to have grasped the real meaning of the May Day.
I am glad I was there, but I am even gladder that I gathered courage to excuse myself 1,5 hours into the several hour parade event and butt out as fast as I could. My legs hurt from the big hike on the previous day, so I wasn't even lying when I said that I can't stand sitting cross-legged on the hot asphalt any longer. I ain't no revolutionary, I suppose.