Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition

A few shots of a backlogged shoot I did of a S. Korean street protest. These are to illustrate the juxtaposition of police and protesters. A duty to guard a public, even as they rally against you.

      In the Summer of 2013 there was a rash of street protests in downtown Cheonan, S. Korea (an hour south of Seoul). Most days they were kenneled and diverted to a side street, so I wasn’t always able to find them and unless you were there at the genesis you might not have known about it. Its a complicated issue, and would take a short book to explain the current juxtaposition of society in South Korea right now,  the rapid modernization of an ancient society. 

      Through my broken and beginning Korea, for which immediately became obvious I lacked the vocabulary set to discuss street protests; This particular one was about employees who worked for a company (I’m assuming a manufacturing plant outside of town) and were not paid, or were not paid what they were promised. 

     Another fact to note is that S. Korea has mandatory military service, and some youth join the police force instead of the army. So if you’re noticing that a lot of the police in the pictures look young its because they were essentially “drafted.”

      WordPress’s Weekly Photo Challenge Theme this week is juxtaposition. I like these shots because there are so many in them, besides the obvious police vs. protsetor. The young and the old, the police who are, at 20 years old, just starting their lives verse the middle aged protesters who are entrenched in theirs. A goverment paying to protect protesting workers who cannot be paid, and of course their freedom and right to expression while being blocked off and kenneled by police officers. 

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28 Jan This entry was published on January 28, 2014 at 6:01 pm. It’s filed under Urban, Weekly Photo Challenge and tagged asia, cademartori, challenge, cheonan, digital, endless, frame, frank, juxtaposition, korea, old man, photo, photography, postaday, protest, S. Korea , south korea, street, street protests, weekly photo challenge, WPC. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.