Anger amid the tears in Seoul

By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Seoul

Mourners became protesters as they sat down with candles in front of police lines

Tonight in Seoul, there is a stand-off on the wide avenue near city hall.

On one side, there are ranks of riot police in their black uniforms and two mobile water cannon with red flashing lights cutting through the darkness in wide sweeps.

Behind them are more officers, sitting on the ground looking bored. Some are lying flat on their shields. Arranged in various formations, the police stretch back along the road about 200m (200yds) to where there is a barricade of police buses and, behind them, still more police in reserve.

On the other side are the protesters. Earlier, they had been mourners. Now, many hours after the funeral has finished, they are refusing to leave.

They do not look like the type to provoke a confrontation. Some are schoolgirls. Others are on motorised wheelchairs.

Displayed prominently amongst them is a large photograph of Roh Moo-hyun, the country's former leader who took his own life last weekend.

There is much yelling. Some speeches, lots of slogans, but the aggression appears to be mostly rhetorical for now. Whether that will change as the bars in the downtown district empty is not clear.

Shocked and saddened

All day, this part of Seoul has been a sea of yellow - strings of balloons stretched between the trees on the side of the road, posters featuring the former president's familiar features carried aloft by his supporters, many of them wearing yellow sun visors or sporting yellow scarves.

Seoul was a sea of yellow, which was Roh's campaign colour

Yellow was the colour he used in his election campaigns. Today his supporters carried the colour in tribute.

As the formal funeral ceremony got under way at a palace in the city centre, tens of thousands of mourners gathered in the streets outside to follow the events on huge television screens high up above them on the side of the buildings.

There were jeers when the current President, Lee Myung-bak, first appeared. There were more catcalls when he got out of his seat to offer a flower at the altar.

One woman in the crowd explained in broken English that many blamed President Lee for his predecessor's death.

The attempt to prosecute him for a bribery scandal had driven him to suicide, she said. The right, the conservatives, were responsible, she argued.

But in truth the atmosphere, earlier on at least, was more solemn than angry.

People stood in silence watching the funeral rites play out on the screens. Several were wiping away tears.

One young man told me he had not had any intention to come, but his feet had dragged him there.

He said he was neither a supporter nor an opponent of Roh Moo-hyun but, like many of his compatriots, he had been shocked and saddened by the nature of the former president's death.

Eyeball to eyeball

With the formal ceremonial rites over, the car carrying the body of the former leader made its way slowly through the streets as the vast crowd pressed forward, almost as one, to pay their respects.

At times it looked liked the hearse was about to be swallowed by a huge yellow wave that spread across the wide boulevards engulfing everything in its way.

Commentators said Seoul had never seen a funeral like this.

Eventually, after a couple of hours, the office workers returned to their cubicles and the crowds began to melt away.

But a rump of those who seemed to want the government to acknowledge their anger remained.

So the stand-off continues with the police content, it seems, to try to wear out those who remain on the streets, clutching candles, eyeball to eyeball with the weary officers whose huge loudspeaker vans are urging them to go home and share their grief with their families.