We celebrated the New Year's eve 08/09 in Seoul. There was an official New Year programme starting 10 pm, and nearly -10C. We watched the programme on tv in our nicely warm floor-heated hotel room and saw people freezing in thick coats. It was just two metro stations away from the hotel and we left the hotel so that we arrived in good time before the count down.
Here are some videos that I took with my cell phone in the middle of the huge crowds under the guarding eye of lots of police.
Auld lang syne and a demonstration before the count down. It felt a bit scary at times when a big crowd in the middle the crowd celebrating new year was shouting their protests and waving flags - we did not know what it was about. Later on, there were some riots - luckily not this time. No wonder the police was all around.
Time for the count down, balloons and lanterns.
Instead of a big fireworks everyone seemed to have their own pieces and there were sellers along the street where all those tens of thousands of people flowed after the official programme ended.
About 1 km of the broad main street was closed for the pedestrians. Police buses lined the street and cut the access from the street to the pavement as you can see in the video.
The year 2009 is the year of a cow - somebody in the crowd gave us a green cow hat with a logo of a local bank. Did you spot a couple of those hats in the video?
We finally reached the end of the police bus barrier and found a bar that was open. Hot Irish coffee sounded like a good idea, so frozen we were at that point. The bar closed and we headed to the hotel maybe around 2 am via a supermarket.
