Ooops

A Mistake with Scaffolding

I was walking down the main road near my apartment when I saw a number of builders hovering around an almost complete building. That's nothing interesting; Daejeon is a city of construction sites. However, sometime in the near past the scaffolding had fallen over, and the builders were trying to decide what to do.

Security notices as I take pictures of people staring at something they don't see every day.

I took a quick snap, expecting security to ask me to move along, but I didn't expect to be shut down so fast. A man came up and asked me to stop almost before the picture had been taken. Not seeing what grounds he could have for demanding I not take pictures of something on a public street, I walked around the scaffolding to the other side and took a couple more pictures, at which point someone started shouting to the security guard nearest me about a camera. I did a quick about-face, slipped my camera back into its bag and walked around the corner. I like to avoid confrontation.

After walking about 50 meters, three vaguely threatening men caught up with me and asked me if I'd taken pictures, which I admitted. They asked why. I said just because. They asked me what my job was, and I told them I was an English teacher. At that point they said some more things to me that I didn't understand. I shrugged and told them that I didn't speak Korean. In the absence of a better plan, they let me leave. Perhaps they were needed back at the accident site in case a reporter turned up.

These pictures would probably have gone up eventually, but being chased by security has made me feel like a photojournalist, so I walked straight home and posted it within an hour. I guess that makes it breaking news (apologies, pun intended).

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