Thousands march in Seoul

A sea of protesters gathered in central Seoul on Saturday afternoon, as the South Korean capital braced for either a peaceful rally or a repeat of last month's violent demonstration.

With several hundred groups represented under the banner of the so-called Pan-National Committee, it was challenging to pinpoint one particular cause.

But a general anti-government sentiment was highlighted by the widespread wearing of masks -- the ruling party has been moving to ban protesters from hiding their identities after President Park Geun-hye compared masked activists to terrorists.

A Gallup Korea survey this week showed that 60 percent of 1,005 adult respondents backed prohibiting masks during rallies.

Another theme among attendees Saturday was a sense of injustice after a 69-year-old man was left seriously brain damaged after being knocked off his feet by a police water cannon at a previous such event Nov. 14.

The plan was to march from Seoul Plaza towards the hospital where he remained in a critical condition, blocking off ordinarily heavy Seoul traffic in doing so.

As of 5.00 p.m. (0800GMT), police put the attendance at around 13,000.

"With so much criticism about past demonstrations where the emphasis was always on the clashing, civic and social groups are planning to share opinions and think about ways in which the public can make their voices heard while keeping the peace," Pan-National Committee head Yeom Hyeong-cheol was quoted as saying by local newspaper The Hankyoreh.

Religious figures joined the rally to emphasize that message of peace, and to dissuade the authorities from taking last month's hard line approach.

After a Seoul court overturned a police ban on Saturday's demonstration earlier in the week, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn announced that the government must still "root out illegal, violent protests by certain people, which many citizens have been concerned about recently, in order to establish the rule of law".

Dozens of arrests were made after the Nov. 14 rally, but the head of a major labor union umbrella escaped official questioning by taking refuge at a Buddhist temple.

The police planned to identify law-breaking protesters by spraying paint this time around.

It remained to be seen whether peace would turn to violence -- and whether the many causes would be heard, from opposition to labor reforms to rice price drops to state-published history textbooks.