Why Koreans have a beef with free trade
By Wol-san Liem

Since last March, the United States and South Korea have been straining to complete the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Both governments claim it will yield more jobs and cheaper goods, but South Koreans are highly suspicious.

Half the South Korean population is against the FTA, especially workers and farmers who have seen trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement lead to job flight, decaying communities, and increased social polarization. But what really



unites Koreans against the FTA is the undemocratic nature of the negotiation process and the threat to South Korea's national sovereignty.

As the FTA talks recently entered their sixth round, protests in the capital Seoul have been intense. Despite a government ban, thousands took to the streets to demonstrate for an entire week.

Many of the protesters donned cow costumes to protest a key provision of the proposed agreement: increased US beef exports to the South Korean market.

Beef has been central to Korean disdain for the FTA. The issue here has been less about protecting Korean cattle ranchers than preserving public-health regulations and the democratic rights of South Korean citizens. South Korea, like Japan, banned US beef three years ago after an outbreak of mad-cow disease in the United States. To reopen the South Korean market to US beef, Washington made lifting the ban a precondition to even beginning trade talks. Seoul conceded, allowing boneless meat imports. Since that time, however, it has returned three beef shipments containing bone fragments. The US beef industry, backed by influential members of Congress, reacted by demanding that South Korea's market be fully reopened before talks end.

Korean opposition is widespread. According to Yonhap News, a recent survey found that more than 70% of South Korean housewives don't want to buy US beef. The Korean public believes that because of lax US regulations, diseased meat will make its way on to their tables. US officials say Koreans are overreacting, but Koreans say only a small percentage of US farms and meat are inspected.

Despite public protest, trade representatives from both sides met secretly in Washington to reach a "technical solution". Beef-industry leaders have called the proposal "encouraging". But it still calls on South Korea to lower its standards for accepting US beef.

Government officials have been calling the FTA an opportunity to strengthen the US-Korea alliance, which has weakened during the administrations of presidents George W Bush and Roh Moo-hyun. The FTA may indeed strengthen ties - between big businesses. The cost will be heightened anti-American sentiment among South Koreans who see the FTA as an affront to their public health, democracy, and national sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Yonhap news service reported that the United States on Tuesday asked South Korea to ease its safety regulations and allow full US beef imports, as the two countries prepared to hold "technical" talks on resolving the beef row.

"The US will seek to apply American safety standards on US beef to be sold in South Korea," Andrew Quinn, a minister-counselor at the US Embassy in Seoul, said in a Korean-language live Internet forum called "Cafe USA".

Quinn decline to elaborate, saying only that any discussions about the difference in safety regulations between the two nations "aren't productive".

The two sides haven't set a date for the beef talks, but South Korean Deputy Agriculture Minister Min Dong-seok told reporters that the meeting is expected to take place in Seoul in early February.

A seventh round of free-trade talks is scheduled for February 11-14 in Washington.

Wol-san Liem is a doctoral candidate in history at New York University and a member of Korean Americans for Fair Trade.

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus; additional reporting by Yonhap/Asia Pulse)