SKorea bank merger protest continues

Thousands of striking bank staff in South Korea have reinforced their defence lines and armed themselves with clubs and rocks in a tense stand-off with riot police.

About fifteen-thousand union members, who have been joined by about one-thousand managers, are protesting at plans to merge two of the country's largest banks Kookmin and Housing and Commercial.

They shouted anti-government slogans as police helicopters with loudspeakers hovered overhead, urging them to end their sit-in at a training institute in the capital, Seoul.

The protests began on Friday with the closure of some branches after the two banks announced the government-backed merger plan.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service