From special apples to limousines, South Korea is embracing the G20, write BOMI LIMand JUNGMIN HONG
CITY officials will leave their desks this week to sweep the streets of Seoul while seven-year-old children study economics, as South Korea mobilises its citizens for the G20 meeting.
Posters hail the summit, and video billboards tower above central Seoul exhorting its 10 million citizens to mind their manners when Barack Obama and Hu Jintao visit on November 11th and 12th.
South Korea’s president Lee Myung-bak, nicknamed “bulldozer” during his days running the nation’s biggest construction company, is deploying up to 60,000 police and troops to avoid the burning cars, smashed windows and 900 arrests that marked the last G20 meeting in Toronto in June.
“I cried tears and Korea’s national anthem echoed in my heart when South Korea was selected to host the G20 summit,” a fourth-grader wrote in a posting on a children’s website hosted by naver.com, South Korea’s most-visited internet portal.
The child, whose name and school are not identified to protect privacy, is among hundreds who have posted questions on the site asking for help with G20 homework projects.
The Chosun Ilbo, the junior edition of the nation's most highly circulated newspaper, published a page-two article last week explaining the currency market and the contents of the communique issued by G20 financial chiefs on October 23rd.
TV advertisements promote the G20 as an occasion to celebrate the nation’s rise from the ruins of the 1950-53 Korean War to Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Demonstrators in Europe and North America have clashed with police at previous G20 meetings in Pittsburgh and London. The International Monetary Fund’s $57 billion bailout of South Korea during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which helped avert the economy’s collapse, also triggered protests in Seoul over bank sales and job losses.
The city of Gyeongju in the south of the country provided a taste of what’s to come this time when it asked local farmers to prepare special apples for the meeting of G20 finance chiefs last month. The farmers ripened parts of each apple’s skin at varying rates to produce the name of a G20 country on each fruit.
Hyundai, the nation’s largest auto-maker, last week delivered 129 vehicles to summit organisers, including Equus limousines, for use in chauffeuring leaders from the airport and around Seoul.
KT Corporation, South Korea’s largest provider of phone and internet services, is providing smartphones and tablet computers for leaders and senior officials.
“We’re ready to make it possible for participants from overseas to watch TV channels from back home,” said Seok Ho-ik, vice chairman of KT Corporation. “We want to go beyond just providing communication support for the meetings – to promote South Korea as the number one country for IT.”
Kim, of the presidential security service, said 20,000 police officers are being mobilised to keep demonstrators away from the Coex conference site in southern Seoul.
“We will deal with violent protests with a level of strictness never before seen,” he said at a briefing on October 8th.
Kim also said South Korea is on alert for possible threats from North Korea, including explosions at “major facilities”, suicide bombings, chemical assaults or cyber attacks. North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Monday labelled such security preparations in the South as “slander”.
South Korea has a history of street protests over labour issues and demonstrations at gatherings of world leaders in the region. At an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Busan in November 2005, attended by then US president George W Bush, riot police used water cannons and batons to disperse 30,000 protesters, some wielding iron bars.
Heavy-handed tactics may not go down well with visiting dignitaries, however.
Singapore was criticised when it deployed 10,000 security personnel and banned outdoor protests in 2006 during World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings.
Then World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz said the city-state suffered “enormous damage” to its reputation.
Lee Dong-hun, a research fellow at Samsung Economic Research Institute, said of the upcoming summit: “The event will help raise global awareness of South Korea, whose image has been predominantly that of a divided nation, or just another fast-developing economy.
“This is a chance for South Korea to elevate its status as a real contributor and lead player in global affairs.” – (Bloomberg)