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South Korea’s beef with the United States
As tens of thousands of South Koreans flooded cities to protest this week, it created a worry for Washington as reflected in a story by the Yonhap News Agency: “Beef protest raises specter of anti-American mood”.
The demonstrations - sparked by a decision to lift a 5-year-old ban on American beef because of mad cow disease - have been driven partly by domestic concerns, particularly a slowing economy.
But South Korea has grown from an agricultural backwater into a world economic power over the last 50 years and the protests also reflect wounded pride: South Koreans don’t want to feel like the United States, which stations tens of thousands of soldiers in their country, is calling the shots.
That anger was on display in Seoul, South Korea’s capital. After the government walled off the center of the city from protesters, some people posted up leaflets calling the wall part of “the U.S. state of South Korea,” according to The New York Times.
I’ve seen that wounded pride on several trips to South Korea. In 2006, I sat with Korean university students and watched their national team beat the United States in the World Baseball Classic. The students erupted with satisfaction when South Korea won. One local newspaper smugly described the victory as a humiliation heaped on “the vaunted U.S. major leaguers”.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak seems to have stoked that nationalism by accepting the U.S. beef, which some Koreans believe is not safe.
Unless Seoul and Washington can find a face-saving way to convince Koreans that their government isn’t kowtowing to the United States, the protests are likely to continue.
President Bush is scheduled to visit South Korea early next month. He’s certain to dig into a few American steaks and argue they are perfectly fine. He’s also likely to hear why South Koreans have a beef with the United States.
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