A call for justice

Guidebooks always tell tourists to avoid demonstrations. Today I went looking for one. 

There has been a weekly demonstration outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul since 1992 calling for justice and an apology for the survivors of Japan's system of military sexual slavery during WWII. There aren't many survivors (euphemistically called "comfort women") left now; those who remain are in their late 80s or 90s. One survivor was at the demonstration, sitting in the centre in front of a statue of a teenage girl that was erected a few years ago to remember what they went through.

I thought that a demonstration that happens every week would be small but I was wrong. It seems to be somewhere that groups of Korean school children go and they sat on the pavement listening intently to a speaker. The extra photo shows more some of the participants. The yellow papers on the wall at the back are messages of support. I wrote a message for the wall.

The NGO that supports the survivors and organises the campaign has opened a museum. I tried to visit it this afternoon but couldn't find it. I had the address in my guidebook but the only thing not in Korean on google maps is Starbucks and I walked up and down and around and couldn't find the street. I gave up and went to an area with old Hanok (traditional) houses. Turns out the address for the museum in the guidebook was wrong and I must have been within a few hundred meters of it!