Page 2 of 2 All fired up over Korea-US free
trade By Donald Kirk
or
otherwise alter the agreement as long as members
have 90 days in which to conduct their "review".
It's still possible that Congress will
reject the agreement by a majority No vote, but
the sense among negotiators is that the deal will
sail through by a narrow margin. It's also
expected to win begrudging approval from South
Korea's National Assembly despite inevitable
criticism from the opposition Grand National
Party, a conservative
grouping that has regained much of its traditional
power while Roh's popularity has fallen
precipitously in recent months.
US
Democratic leaders, though, are sure to wage a
non-stop battle against the FTA as it now stands.
They signaled their views in a letter last week to
the US special trade representative, Susan Schwab.
The language of the letter evoked memories
of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet
Union by its use of the term "iron curtain", the
descriptive phrase popularized by British leader
Winston Churchill when he remarked in a speech at
Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March
5, 1946, that "an iron curtain" had descended over
Europe as a result of the Soviet Union's takeover
of Eastern European countries after World War
II.
The agreement, said the letter, is
"completely inadequate in the face of Korea's
long-standing iron curtain to American
manufactured products". The signers, led by Nancy
Pelosi, the San Francisco congresswoman who is now
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was
also signed by two other influential Democratic
members of Congress, Charles Rangel, chairman of
the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sander
Levin, chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee
on Trade.
They singled out for special
criticism the yawning gap between the export of
more than 800,000 Korean motor vehicles to the US
last year compared with 4,000 US vehicles sold in
South Korea. The disparity in motor vehicles
alone, said US legislators, is $11 billion - 82%
of the total US deficit in trade with South Korea.
Schwab vowed that the US side would not
accept any deal that failed to provide
"comprehensive market access to US business",
including the automotive sector, but US
manufacturers have long cited a range of
non-tariff barriers, including difficult
inspections, that make it almost impossible to
compete effectively in the Korean mass market.
If anything, differences were still more
contentious in such areas as textiles, beef and,
above all, rice. Ever since the negotiations began
10 months ago, farmers, spurred on by leftist
students and other activists, have been
demonstrating daily against moves to open up the
$9 billion South Korean rice market, charging that
any deal would strip them of their only means of
survival.
The fact is that the price of
rice in South Korea is pegged at four or five
times its actual value, and the government props
up the market by buying surplus rice, several
hundred thousand tonnes of which is shipped each
year to North Korea, which is suffering from
starvation and disease as a result of poor
harvests and terrible economic policies. The whole
issue of the price of rice, however, is deemed so
"sensitive" in South Korea that the government
more or less ruled it out of any FTA except as a
topic that might be considered "at a future date"
- if ever.
The beef issue hit the
headlines after South Korean customs officials
barred the first three shipments after partially
lifting a ban imposed on US beef in response to
the diagnosis of "mad cow" disease in a US cow
more than three years ago. Inspectors said that
X-rays had discovered tiny bone chips in beef that
was supposed to have been entirely bone-free, and
ordered the beef shipped back to the US. American
negotiators demanded reinstatement of the export
of US beef, bone-free or not, to South Korea, one
of the largest markets for US beef until the ban.
Demonstrators, typically carrying candles
in paper cups, have clashed with police during the
negotiations and marched through central Seoul,
singing songs and shouting slogans denouncing Bush
and the US-Korean alliance.
Farmers'
groups and industrial workers have joined anti-FTA
rallies, while radicals have seized on the FTA as
another reason for opposing the US-Korean military
alliance.
One issue that appeared muted,
however, was that of including products made by
South Korean companies in the special industrial
zone at Kaesong, just across the line inside North
Korea, as manufactured in the South. US
negotiators adamantly rejected that demand.
Demonstrators overlooked that issue while
flaunting placards and banners, in Korean and
English, saying "Stop the Korea-US FTA" - one of
the milder slogans - along with denunciations of
US forces.
Journalist Donald
Kirk has been covering Korea - and the
confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for
more than 30 years. (Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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