News from Oceans day in Ulsan. Today we had the prime minsiter of Korea, the Minister for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries plus a hundred other suits and military big wigs on stage in front of a bussed-in rent-a-crowd of four thousand people; all within a few hundred metres of our embassy on the site of the proposed whale meat factory.

At the 11th hour KFEM organised two powered paragliders to fly over the proceedings, with the canopies reading "Ulsan city of Whale-watching - KFEM" in Korean, and the beautiful blue Greenpeace one reading "No Whaling - Greenpeace" in English. KFEM did an amazing job putting the whole event together. Even though the police stopped the second GP flier from taking off and flying during the prime ministers speech, they both took off soon after, gliding over the proceedings, the embassy and the freshly opened whale museum.

We had prepared ourselves for a humungously busy day in the dome that strangely proved be relatively quiet in terms of public visitors. The rent-a-crowd of OAPs proved to be disintersted in anything but their packed lunches. However we did get loads of press, half a dozen media interviews between GP and KFEM inlcuding a long interview with Yonhap national news agency and one with Japanese Kyodo newspaper. There was a lovely coincidental moment when we were being besieged by several tv crews in the embassy dome asking, 'so what is GP/KFEM planning to do today?' At that precise moment the mechanical buzz of a paraglider soaring directly over the dome, drowning out the conversation and scattering the camera crews outside. Another classic surreal memory was the grand opening of the whale museum by the prime minsiter to the theme tune of Star Wars..

Best,

Jim