Shallow Tricks   2008-06-05 13:46

Some may think that the government is finally yielding to the People's voice. This Tuesday, as I noted in another post, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food (MAFF) announced that it would reconsider the Korea-U.S. deal regarding the trade of beef. In particular, the announcement made it sound as if the government would ban the import of certain beef products which are thought to carry a high risk of mad-cow disease (BSE). A few other announcements arrived over the last couple of days, including the statement that the privatization of the public water system would be withheld. In addition, recent statements by public officials make it sound as if the controversial Grand Canal Project is also being scaled down. Combined with the fact that "law enforcement" (though I'm not sure if what they're trying to enforce is "law") has become a little less aggressive since Monday, these gestures are all supposed to sooth the public's harsh feelings.

The problem is that all these announcements and changes, which at first glance seem to be concessions to what the People have been demanding, turn out upon closer inspection to be nothing but dirty tricks. It doesn't take a lot of insight, actually, to see through the lies. Government officials are contradicting their own official statements at every opportunity!

It has been revealed that MAFF has absolutely no intention of going back to the drawing board over the issue of beef trade. Multiple sources confirm that the only "plan" it has is to try and convince Korean importers and U.S. exporters to voluntarily stay away from high-risk beef products. Now, it may or may not be true that U.S. beef carries a higher risk of BSE than Korean or Australian beef. But that is not what's at issue. The problem is that MAFF's new policy is exactly the same as the old one, and that MAFF has tried to deceive the People by making it look as if the policy had changed. If they thought the trick would work, they have terribly underestimated our level of intelligence. We can do logic. We can see through the lies.

The issue of privatization is still rather murky, so I won't comment on it. On Daum Agora, however, people are already debating what exactly the "withholding" is supposed to mean. The Grand Canal, on the other hand, has been shown to be a classic case of trying to mislead the People. A few weeks ago, it was announced that President Lee Myung-Bak's ambitious construction project -- a large canal right across the country -- would be dramatically scaled down. Now the government would only focus on maintaining and improving major rivers and waterways. As a lot of People had been concerned about the environmental implications of canal-building, this announcement was perceived as good news. However, since then, evidence has been mounting that the Grand Canal hasn't been scaled down at all. According to the testimonials of several researchers who had been involved in the planning of the "maintenance and improvement" of major rivers, "maintenance and improvement" actually means connecting all those rivers with an artificial waterway, a.k.a. the Grand Canal. In addition, the fact that this is what the government has been planning all along is classified. The fact that most of the construction is to be carried out in the name of a consortium of private corporations (including the one which President Lee had been working for until a few years ago) so that the government doesn't need to do anything visible, is also classified. If not for those brave scientists whose conscience led them to break their NDA, the People of Korea would never have known about these facts until it was too late. Again, President Lee's government has been deliberately trying to deceive the People. There had never been any change of policy.

Hence we continue to protest with candles in our hands. We will keep protesting until the government actually does something. We are not idiots. We can tell when the same policies get wrapped in different words. We, the People, will not suffer any more deception by our servant, the government. Starting tomorrow, there will be massive protests once again, this time not only about beef trade but also about all the ways in which Lee Myung-Bak (2MB) has been treating us as idiots.

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