Séoul, Korea

The city is really gearing up for the G20. Skyscrapers become giant billboards with the G20 logo. This is the biggest international event in South Korea since the Olympic Games in 1988. People are very proud about hosting the big event and television ads tell people that each and every Korean is an ambassador for the country when meeting foreign visitors.


Some 50.000 police and army are to be deployed in the city to guarantee the safety of VIP visitors and to ease the inconvenience of the event on local people.

Officials talk about the G20 as a chance for South Korea to be on the world stage and to be better known. They say there is much more to Korea than cars, televisions and technology. One big problem is when people outside of Korea hear "Korea" they think of the brutal dictatorship in the north. It seems that South Korea is doing all it can to give a positive image to the world for Korea while the north does everything it can to give Korea a bad name.

With all the security measures, we haven't been bothered by police or soldiers and they don't seem to mind at all that I film them. We have been bothered by commercial security men near the G20 site, but, Sunglim, our minder was able to explain to them what we were doing and we were able to film in the end.