A spike in new cases of coronavirus in South Korea prompted authorities to re-use tighter social distance riots in Seoul, but that did not stop thousands of protesters from protesting against President Moon Jae-in on Saturday.
Municipal officials in Seoul have sought to ban the heavy ties that conservative activists and Christian groups are planning for a holiday to celebrate the nation’s 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II.
But a court upheld some of them, citing civil liberties after Protestants challenged the city’s administrative mandate banning the rallies.
The protesters, many of them wearing masks and carrying the South Korean flag, paraded through rain near the presidential palace of Seoul, asking President Moon to step down over what they see as a policy flaw, cowing to nuclear weapons. North Korea and election corruption.
Some protesters clashed with police who closely followed the marchers, but there were no immediate reports of major clashes or injuries.
For the second day in a row in more than four months, South Korea reported a sudden jump in locally transmitted cases, said the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
The KCDC reported 166 new cases Friday, 155 of which were domestic, requiring authorities to reintroduce anti-virus measures because they were concerned about the spectacle of a fresh wave of the disease.
South Korea used invasive tracing and widespread testing to contain its first outbreak of the new coronavirus, but Asia’s fourth largest economy has experienced persistent outbreaks in recent weeks, mostly in the densely populated capital.
The new cases took the number of South Koreans to 15,039 with 305 dead by Friday afternoon. The recent spike in infections appears in multiple clusters, including church meetings and restaurants.
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