US beef row steers Seoul into chaos
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The issue 21 years ago was the cruelty of a venal dictator who had
rammed through his own version of a constitution that would legitimize his
power and that of a successor while suppressing a democratic movement that had
captured the hearts and minds of a majority of the citizenry.
The date was June 10, 1987, when the dictatorial Chun Doo-hwan and his top
collaborator, Roh Tae-woo, both former generals, announced plans for a phony
presidential election even as protesters opened three weeks of demonstrations
that would transform the style and nature of Korean governance.
The issue on this June 10, at what might have been a simple commemoration of
that momentous month, is rather different - with eerily similar overtones. In
the name of democracy, tens of
thousands of protesters are taking to the streets of central Seoul to shout
down what they see as an attempt to shove poisoned American beef down the
throats of downtrodden South Koreans.
The anti-beef, anti-American protest has mushroomed from relatively small
outpourings six weeks ago to daily demonstrations complete with cartoon images
of American cows beside caricatures of President Lee Myong-bak dressed in the
uniform of a German Gestapo figure. The message is that he is not only a
dictator in the tradition of Chun and Chun's long-ruling predecessor, Park
Chung-hee, assassinated by his intelligence chief in October 1979, but also a
stubborn fool with less intellect than the cows whose beef he wants to import
from the US.
Lee's cabinet on Tuesday went through a dramatic routine of showing it had got
the message by offering an en-masse resignation. Even if Lee reorganizes the
cabinet, jettisoning some if not all his ministers, it's not likely he'll
recover soon if ever from the nosedive in popularity that he's suffered since
his landslide election as president over a left-leaning opponent in December's
presidential election.
Right now, the fear is that the demonstrations will explode into a revolution
on the streets reminiscent of the democracy protests of more than two decades
ago. The government "has to prioritize the safety of the people in dealing with
tonight's massive candlelight street rallies", said a spokesman quoted by
Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. "It has to take all possible measures to
ensure that not a single unfortunate accident occurs during the rallies."
That remark reflects the orders given to tens of thousands of policemen
standing by poised for hundreds of arrests, as the protests spread through
central Seoul and other major cities.
In emergency mode, a team of South Korean negotiators from Lee's government and
Grand National Party has arrived in Washington hoping to explain to US
officials and politicians that the deal for reopening South Korea's market to
US beef just won't work. At the very least, they're calling on voluntary
restraints on the export to Korea of beef from cattle more than 30 months old.
That's a significant retreat from entirely opening the market here, as Lee has
promised to do, but won't begin to mollify protesters spurred on by activists
calling for dissolution of the US-Korean military alliance and withdrawal of
America's 28,500 troops from the country..
The demonstrators, ranging from high school students to middle-aged housewives,
are observing today's date with sensational reminders of one of the tragedies
of the June 1987 democracy movement when a Yonsei University student was killed
by a teargas canister. Yonsei students are parading with black-framed portraits
of the student, Lee Han-yeol, calling on Koreans to demonstrate against
American beef with the same fervor with which hundreds of thousands forced
acceptance on June 29, 1987, of the "democracy constitution" that remains in
effect today.
Lee's decision "to resume the imports of American beef runs counter to public
opinion and to democracy", said a typical statement issued by students.
"Citizens' voluntary rallies are the call for democracy."
The violence has yet to reach the level of numerous protests from the late
1980s in which students tossed Molotov cocktails and rocks at rows of policemen
garbed in Darth Vader-type uniforms, holding truncheons and sticks. The police,
however, have fired water cannons and arrested scores of protesters in recent
days - clashes that add still and video images to commentaries spread on the
Internet by thousands of Korean netizens.
Just how American beef came to assume such importance in the democracy movement
is a puzzle that historians, political scientists and psychologists will no
doubt be attempting to sort out for some time, but the simple fact is that
Lee's agriculture minister signed the deal for reopening South Korea's market
to US beef imports in early April as Lee was about to take off for a summit
with President George W Bush in Camp David.
The idea was simple. US diplomats, notably the American ambassador, Alexander
Vershbow, had been advising Koreans at every chance they got that the free
trade agreement (FTA) worked out by US and Korean negotiators in nearly a year
and a half of talks would never get through the US Congress if South Korea
refused to accept American beef imports. Although beef was not included in the
FTA, US officials, politicians and business people said the agreement was dead
if US beef could not get into Korea as freely as it had for two years before
the discovery of mad cow disease in a cow in Washington State in December 2003.
Vershbow added fuel to the fire of the protests by remarking several days ago
that Koreans "begin to learn more about the science and about the facts of
American beef" and address the issue "constructively".
He no doubt saw his remark as a reminder that no American had contracted "mad
cow" disease and that US officials had promised stern controls. Perhaps most
important, cows have not been fed with feed made from ground beef in the US for
more than a decade after animal feed was found to have been a common
denominator in "mad cow" disease in England.
The beef protest, though, is about much more than mad cow disease. It
represents a renaissance of anti-government protest that died down in the 10
years of leftist leadership under Kim Dae-jung and his unpopular successor, Roh
Moo-hyun, but always simmers near the surface. The conservative Lee has also
antagonized activists by promising to support the interests of the chaebol,
or conglomerates, where he rose to prominence as the hot-shot chairman of
Hyundai Engineering and Construction more than 30 years ago. Hostility toward
US beef also reflects economic concerns.
South Korea had removed non-tariff barriers to US beef imports two years
earlier as a result of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs signed at the
Uruguay round in 1994. Despite tariffs of as high as 40%, US beef sold at less
than one-third of the price of beef from Korean cattle, and exports zoomed to
US$800 million a year. South Korea by the time the exports were halted was the
third-biggest market for US beef.
That success was too much for Korean farmers and merchants of farm products.
The complete ban on US beef revealed not just the fear of "mad cow" disease but
the passions of farmers, who saw the imports as a threat to their livelihoods,
and pressure from commercial interests vying to sell Korean products. Their
opposition to US beef was similar to that of rice farmers, whose fervent
protests have been enough to exclude rice imports totally from anything to do
with any free trade agreement.
The ban on US beef was slightly lifted more than a year ago with a deal for
import of boneless US beef, but those imports were suspended after X-rays found
chips in the initial shipments. Since bone chips will inevitably show up even
in "boneless" beef, US negotiators insisted on the door opening to boned beef,
including T-bones and ribs beloved by Korean beef-eaters.
The only qualification was that all beef shipments be stripped of SRMs -
specified risk materials, including vertebrae and brains - deemed more
vulnerable to "mad cow" disease. Oh yes, the US wanted Korea open to beef from
cattle that were more than 30 months old, the age beyond which the risk of "mad
cow" disease is also believed to be higher.
Koreans refuse to believe US claims that 20% of the beef on American markets -
the beef routinely used in hamburgers - is from cattle more than 30 months old.
The view is widely circulated here that Americans want to force Koreans to eat
stuff they won't eat themselves.
At this stage, no amount of explanations and diplomacy is likely to work. Bush
has talked to Lee on the phone, saying, in effect, "Ok, we won't export beef
more than 30 months old," but no one here is listening.
Christopher Hill, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the
Pacific, in the midst of efforts to get North Korea to abide by terms of last
year's agreements to give up its nuclear weapons, implicitly rebuked Vershbow's
allusion to Koreans' understanding of science. "The best thing for American
diplomats," he said in a speech in Washington, "is to try not to get in the
middle of this but allow the Korean people to deal with this, with their
issues, in the way they choose to deal with it."
The alternative is that the protests could turn against the US bases, as in the
past, and undermine the entire alliance - the goal of the political parties and
labor unions at the forefront of Tuesday's mass outpouring.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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