And speaking of the Yeosu Expo.

I hope they knock this off before 2012. An excerpt of a comment to a post on The Marmot's Hole:

I took the ferry from Yeosu to Geomundo. When buying the ticket you fill in a little form which has your ID or passport number, as well as a phone number and your name. My wife tells me that this is so they have some information on hand in case the boat sinks. I have no problem with this. (I’ve taken boats from Yeosu before and not had to do this, so I guess it’s a recent thing, but again, I have no problem with it)

Anyway when boarding time came there was a mad rush to the entranceway. My wife and I got in line with the rest of the crowd and progressed to about 2m away from the door connecting the terminal to the entranceway to the boat. At this point the policeman on duty came and asked me to come with him back to the ticket desk. I asked why and he just said I HAD to. I went in a very annoyed mood; I’d lost my place in line! When I got there I asked why I’d been singled out. He explained that as I was a foreigner they needed to take my details down, and requested my ID or passport number, name, phone number etc. – information I’d already given along with everyone else! When I asked further as to why they wanted this I was told that it was because of the 2012 Yeosu Expo. They wanted to know just how many foreigners were knocking around and their travel habits or some such. This annoyed me so much. They ALREADY HAD my details and there were Asian foreigners in line as well but they hadn’t been visually identified and so weren’t dragged out of the line. It was, at the very least, embarassing to be pulled out of a line by policemen. Everyone else around had a good stare and were wondering what crime I’d committed. I hope Yeosu wises up that ‘foreigners’ don’t like being treated like this before the Expo finally comes around.

Yeosu expects eight million foreign tourists for the 2012 Expo. Roughly 6.9 million foreign tourists came to South Korea in 2008.