How We Got Where We Are   2008-06-01 23:24

This will be a rather long post, because this blog has been started rather late, and I have to give a detailed summary of what's been going on.

To a lot of casual observers, the current turmoil in the Republic of Korea is all and only about the proposed import of U.S. beef, which many Koreans believe carry a significantly higher risk of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) -- a.k.a. mad-cow disease -- than Korean or Australian beef. Now, this is true, but only partly so. It is argued that the U.S. has done virtually nothing to prevent BSE since the last outbreak in 2003, when the Republic of Korea closed its doors to U.S. beef. As Korea had been one of the largest markets for U.S. beef outside of the U.S. itself, Americans have repeatedly demanded that trades resume. But the Korean government, until this April, has refused to heed to the Americans' demand. Some U.S. beef did trickle in through a few experimental allowances, but these allowances had been closed quickly. Even when the two governments signed a Free Trade Agreement late last year, the issue of beef was left out of the agreement.

All of that changed in April 2008 when, during President Lee Myung-Bak's visit to the U.S., the Korean government announced that it would resume the import of all U.S. beef. This sudden U-turn caught everyone by surprise, and not only by surprise. The Korean People were shocked and astonished. It was not as if some new piece of scientific evidence spoke in favor of the safety of U.S. beef. Nor was it the case that the government had some new regulations up its sleeve to ensure the safety of imported foodstuff. The government just made the announcement. All the while President Lee was enjoying his time in Camp David with U.S. President George W. Bush. Maybe MAFF wanted to give the two presidents a surprise gift?

As can be expected, a lot of People were upset about the government's decision. Come to think of it, there's nothing to be surprised about the fact that People were upset. Nobody likes it when the government messes with food. Everyone wants to make dead certain that what they eat and what they give to their children is as clean as it can be -- or at least as clean as one can afford to buy. Needless to say, some People began to protest the government's decision. We all know how these things work in a democracy. Protests and demonstrations are a normal part of democratic politics. The Republic of Korea has had some sort of democracy for the last 20 years. Nobody expected things to go out of the ordinary this time.

But it did. The recent protests have grown out of the ordinary, and now the issue is not just U.S. beef but the whole attitude with which Lee Myung-Bak's government is treating its People, i.e. its Masters.

To begin with, the government remained totally unresponsive to the protester's demands. Perhaps the government made the right decision by lifting the ban on U.S. beef. Who knows. Perhaps everyone in Korea is mistaken about the risk of BSE/vCJD. Perhaps we should be concerned more about avian influenza than about BSE/vCJD. I can grant that if you wish. But that's not the problem. For three long weeks, the Korean government simply pretended that the protests did not exist, that there could be absolutely no question about the validity of its decision. Not even a "We are still investigating" or a "Please wait and see".

The People grew impatient. In early May, we began to gather in downtown Seoul with candles in our hands. Candlelight vigils have been a popular form of protest in the Republic of Korea since the turn of the millennium. As the bloody conflicts of the democratization era subsided, quiet and peaceful candlelight vigils took over. Every evening, thousands of People gathered in public squares. A platform was raised and whoever wanted to voice their concerns were invited to take the microphone. Political activists were notably absent from all of it; instead, the gatherings were organized by ordinary citizens through online clubs and forums, most notably Daum Agora. High school students and concerned mothers formed a large part of the gatherings. A few pop artists also popped in to hold small concerts and express their sympathy with the People's cause. The candlelight vigils were more like a festival than a demonstration. They were a uniquely Korean way of celebrating the freedom of opinion.

Still, the government remained unresponsive. In fact, the only response it made was to reaffirm its commitment to importing U.S. beef. In the meantime, several other issues crept up, all related to President Lee's rather personal, lofty projects. He has been bulldozing through his plans for a Great Canal, which he claims will help transport goods but which critics fear will bring about a massive destruction to Korea's mountainous landscape. He has been pursuing the privatization of a lot of public amenities; and most importantly, he wants to "reform" the universal health care system in favor of a U.S.-like system. Those who have seen Michael Moore's Sicko knows what I mean. The U.S. is the only developed country in the world that doesn't have universal health care, and the issue of health care is surely going to be a very important factor in the upcoming election. Yet the Korean government wants to benchmark the U.S. example!

I'm not saying that these policies are so obviously wrong that any government that pursues them must be brain-dead. What I'm saying, and what many Koreans want to say, is that these policies aren't obviously right. These are dangerous and controversial policies. If they are to be pursued, they must be pursued with extreme caution; the government must always be ready to pull out. But President "Bulldozer" Lee shows no intention of proceeding with the requisite caution, and the People is angry about that. Am I reading too much into the slogans written by individuals citizens on their own home-made pickets? I think not. The fact that the ratio of Koreans supporting Lee Myung-Bak has dropped from 50% to a mere 20% in two months, and the reasonable assumption that few people would have changed their party allegiances in the meantime, show that the issue is as much about the way in which President Lee is doing his job, as about what he is doing.

Back to the story. As the month of May went on, People grew even more impatient. We realized that the government would never listen to our tiny voices. Indeed, it is rumored that when the President heard about the candlelight vigils, he asked sarcastically, "So who's going to pay for all those candlesticks?" There was still no response from the government. Not even a pretense of proceeding with caution. The Bulldozer continued to rev its engines, so the People thought that we needed to do something more.

On May 24, after the usual candlelight vigil, the People began to march towards the Blue House, the President's office and residence. As there were many thousands of us, we flooded the broad streets and sidewalks of downtown Seoul. The festival had turned into a massive demonstration. Except that high school students, the disabled, and mothers with young children comprised a large part of the crowd. Except that we held candles rather than Molotov cocktails. Except that the old ideological slogans had disappeared.

And the government responded this time. With a show of remarkable mobility, squadrons upon squadrons of police personnel surrounded the midnight protesters. The People remained mostly peaceful, but the police did not. The first drops of blood stained the cold asphalt.

And so we got where we got.

(If you want a more technical introduction to the issue of U.S. beef, take a look at this website.)

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