Protesters from Myanmar's National League for Democracy holding a picture of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi stage a candlelight rally Saturday against Myanmar's military junta in downtown Seoul, South Korea. South Korea expressed grave concern Thursday over Myanmar's crackdown on massive protests and called on the government there to exercise restraint.

Yangon, Myanmar ? Die-hard protesters waved the peacock flag of the crushed pro-democracy movement on a solitary march Saturday through the eerily quiet streets of Myanmar’s largest city, where many dissidents said they were resigned to defeat without international intervention.

Housewives and shop owners taunted troops but quickly disappeared into alleyways. According to diplomats briefed by witnesses, residents of three neighborhoods blocked soldiers from entering the monasteries in a crackdown on Buddhist monks, who led the largest in a month of demonstrations. The soldiers left threatening to return with reinforcements.

The top U.N. envoy on Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, arrived in the country but many protesters said they were nonetheless seeing a repeat of the global reaction to a 1988 pro-democracy uprising, when the world stood by as protesters were gunned down in the streets.

“Gambari is coming, but I don’t think it will make much of a difference,” said one hotel worker, who like other residents asked not to be named, fearing retaliation. “We have to find a solution ourselves.”

Soldiers and police were posted on almost all corners in the cities of Yangon and Mandalay. Shopping malls, grocery stores and public parks were closed and few people dared to venture out of their homes.

A young woman who took part in a massive demonstration in Yangon on Thursday said she didn’t think “we have any more hope to win.” She was separated from her boyfriend when police broke up the protest by firing into crowds and has not seen him since.

“The monks are the ones who give us courage,” she said. Most of the clerics are now besieged in their monasteries behind locked gates and barbed wire.

Gambari was taken immediately to Naypyitaw, the remote, bunker-like capital where the country’s military leaders are based. The White House urged the junta to allow him to have access to Aung San Suu Kyi – the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is under house arrest – and ordinary Myanmar residents.

The demonstrations began last month as people angry over massive fuel price increases took to the streets – then mushroomed into the tens of thousands after the monks began marching.

The junta, which has a long history of snuffing out dissent, started cracking down Wednesday, when the first of at least 10 deaths was reported, and then let loose on Thursday, shooting into a crowd of protesters and clubbing them with batons.

The crackdown triggered an unprecedented verbal flaying of Myanmar’s generals from almost every corner of the world – even some criticism from No. 1 ally China.

But little else that might stay the junta’s heavy hand is seen in the foreseeable future.