JEJU-DO—Restrictions on importing American beef into South Korea were set to be lifted this week—as of my writing this post, the government has delayed lifting the restrictions, but given no details on how long the delay will last—and from the shitstorm the move has caused, you’d think they were about to start selling American-made heroin cakes or child prostitutes from Miami. The Korean media is filled with beefy editorials, stories about beef-related protests, beef-laced apologies from politicians, warnings about killer beef diseases, and celebrations of pork as a nationalistic, non-insanity causing alternative (due to an outbreak of H5N1, chicken is also out).

The uproar is ostensibly a public health issue, spurred by the spectre of a frothy-mouthed demon cow bent on infecting the whole Korean population. Critics cite the potential dangers of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) , which most of us know as mad cow disease, as reason to uphold restrictions on US beef imports, especially high-risk material like spinal cords and brains (yum!). Last week, Kim Jong-yul of the opposition United Democratic Party argued that safety inspections promised by the conservative Lee Myung-bak government were inadequate, and that Koreans were at higher risk because of their relatively enthusiastic consumption of beef by-products like intestine. On Friday, the UDP and five other opposition parties accused the government of “triggering the raging beef turmoil,” demanded the resignation of the whole Cabinet and filed a petition with South Korea’s Constitutional Court aimed at stopping the imports.

The ire hasn’t been limited to politicians, either—not by a long shot. This past weekend saw major public protests in several Korean cities, including a 40,000-strong candlelight vigil in front of City Hall in Seoul. Protesters have been brandishing signs calling for the Lee to step down. Skirmishes with police have reached violent levels; after the cops used water cannons on a crowd headed for the president’s office, they faced accusations of having shot out a woman’s eyeball. So far, more than 200 people have been arrested. The Korea Times reports that the Lee government has started investigating opposition politicians they suspect of instigating the public outrage.

South Koreans, especially students, are notoriously fond of public protest, but the scale of the reaction on both sides of the beef issue seems absurd—half bizarrely funny, given that it’s all just about some hamburger and a few tenderloins (which, in the end, no one is forcing anyone to buy) and half unsettling, in how the protests resemble those from Korea’s recent past, when issues like democracy and the end of military rule were at stake, and government reaction often took the form of outright supression.

Then again, meat is a major commodity, and its movement has to do not only with health, but also with money and pride. South Korea was the world’s third-largest buyer of American beef until 2003, when the Roh Moo-hyun government suspended imports after a case of mad cow was discovered in U.S. cattle, costing U.S. beef industry as much as $4 billion in the years since. Limited imports of boneless meat from young cows were resumed last year, but public outcry combined with political confusion moved the government to once again halt imports in October.

The current beef issue has to do with the so-called KORUS FTA, the free-trade deal between the U.S. and South Korea that hinges on SK opening its markets to good ol’ American red meat. The States says it won’t put the deal into action unless beef is on the table, which means a lot of Lee Myung-bak’s plans for the Korean economy—plans on which he based his successful candidacy last fall—rest on removing the restrictions. Ironically, although many voters cited the rejuvenation of the economy as a major issue and it obviously played a big role in swaying people’s votes, the president’s approval rating has taken a massive whupping over the beef issue, sinking to twenty percent in recent polls. Lee even issued a formal apology to the public, which came off as both pathetic and utterly hollow, given that it had everything to do with image management and nothing to do with policy change.

The background suggests that public health is really only a red herring (and, admittedly, a pretty fishy one) in a debate that has more to do with Korea’s historically complicated relationship to the US, and with how Korea views its leaders—many of whom have been tainted with, or at least accused of, corruption of some variety. There have been US soldiers stationed in South Korea since the Korean war in 1950, and while many older Koreans will tell you they remember and appreciate the efforts the US put into defending their country in that conflict, a lot of younger people have formed their opinions based on the States’ less-than-perfect track record in Korea since.

As I’ve written many times on this blog, Korea prizes its independent spirit with zeal. You can see it everywhere, but it’s particularly visible in their marketplace, which still excludes many foreign goods to the advantage of Korean companies (most cars on the road are Hyundais, Daewoos, Kias and so on), and their buying habits—I can’t name you the factor by which soju sales outpace those of foreign beer or spirits, but if I can take the number of empty green bottles of Hallasan and Jinro I see on restaurant tables every single night as evidence, I’m sure it’s astronomical.

The KORUS FTA deal, while trumpeted by the Lee administration as a cure for the lagging economy—perhaps not the best sales pitch, considering the state of US finances these days—picks at the sore of Korean independence, of the ROK’s ability and fierce desire to be its own, self-sustaining entity, far removed from its status, during the first few decades of its existence, as a nation created and shaped by US policy and interests. American beef, and the wave of American products that will follow, stand to replace American soldiers as the spectres of a US presence that has often sat like a shadow over South Korea’s development of its own modern identity. I suspect that even the farmers who have joined the protests, claiming the deal threatens their livelihoods, are just as concerned about the larger ideological implications of the deal as they are about their bottom line: what’s the country coming to when our own food isn’t good enough for our own people?

Which brings us back to Lee, and the unexpectedly ferocious reaction his deal has provoked among an electorate that gave him a landslide victory just six months ago. Even before he won the election, the president was facing accusations of corruption, shady business dealings and nepotism. The media stoked the scandal until a week or so before the vote, then accepted that the polls were not going to change, and, along with the public, gave him a pass, accepting with comparative docility the results an official investigation that cleared him of wrongdoing. Now there’s reason to question his decisions again, and it could be that the beef storm is part of a greater frustration over having a president that escaped disgrace on the eve of his election, but left a nasty taste in the public’s mouth in the process, with many predisposed to dislike him and his projects. Perhaps Koreans’ real beef with Lee is that they think it was a mistake to elect a meat puppet—a leader too eager to jump in bed with America despite the urgent calls of his own citizenry to do otherwise, especially when public health is brought into play.

Yesterday, Lee said he is willing to take steps to mend the rift between him and his electorate, including reshuffling his cabinet and forming some kind of organization to open lines of communication with the public. Now, one day after publicly sticking to his cattle prod on the beef issue, saying through a spokesman that “the official posting of the US beef import deal cannot be postponed or scrapped,” he has delayed lifting the ban for an unspecified amount of time. But I suspect the damage is done, and that the only thing that can salvage Lee’s reputation in the immediate future is a surge in the economy (which is unlikely, at least while oil prices remain in the stratosphere), and a smooth introduction of US beef into the market—i.e. no reports of disease or tainted beef, no sickness, no shit in the meat (which, on the other hand, seems likely, even probable). How Lee and the police dealt with the discord, and what his methods will mean for his long-term approval rating—opposition leaders are already soothsaying his early doom—will be a very meaty story to follow, indeed.

In the meantime, I’m staying safe from both mad cow and rampaging protesters: tonight, it’s bacon for dinner. Fried with kimchi, of course.

By the way, I should note that I’m not in Seoul, so I can’t give an accurate picture of what it’s like on the ground there. Yet even here on the island of Jeju, you can smell the bovine discontent. Last week, we happened on a gathering outside of city hall. When we asked a young man in an organizer’s uniform what it was all about, he thought hard for a moment, then said, decisively, “We don’t like President.” Today, when I asked my class of middle schoolers what they thought of the whole thing, one young girl said, in Korean, “Lee Myung-bak is a stonehead.” When even 11-year-olds are shitting on your policy decisions, you have to be worried.

Update: Just found a link to some rather incriminating pictures of the protests on OhMyNews, a popular South Korean alternative news source. Thanks to this blog, which also offers some thoughtful commentary on the beef situation, for pointing me to the link.

Tags: international, korea

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Posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.