Posts tagged as:

FTA

Where’s the beef?

by Cat on June 8, 2008

Updated to correct statistics about “mad cows” in the U.S.

David and I were interviewed Wednesday night for this week’s Seoul Podcast and, as I told Joe and Jennifer, I usually avoid writing about political or controversial current events in Korea because, when you write like you know what you’re talking about—and you don’t—you end up looking like an idiot.

I should have kept that in mind when I wrote this earlier post about the FTA beef protests and inadvertently aligned myself with the lunatic fringe.

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Source: AP photo published in the Chosun Ilbo.

Over the past month, thousands of people–including many middle school, high school, and university students— have participated in huge protests against the beef-import agreements in the proposed KORUS free-trade agreement.

18-year old Kim Chae-won stated her opposition. “Even if you don’t eat beef you can get mad cow disease so why in the hell are they importing it?
…

All kinds of stories are growing and spreading. If you eat beef infected with mad cow disease you die instantly, mad cow disease can be spread by air and water, you can get it from a kiss — every sort of false rumor exists.

To clarify: I am no fan of the U.S. beef industry. I think that large-scale cattle farming, feedlots and industrial slaughterhouses engage in inhumane and unsanitary practices. Most beef cattle are fed an inappropriate diet and then pumped full of antibiotics to encourage rapid growth and treat illnesses caused by substandard living conditions and feeding practices.

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However, there has only been one case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) ever found in the United States and that was in a cow that was originally born in Canada have only been three cases of BSE found in the United States. That cow also never made it to the slaughterhouse. None of these cattle were slaughtered and processed for beef. There are strict regulations to prevent diseased cattle from getting into the food supply.

Human cases of “mad cow disease” (the human form is known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) take months, sometimes years, to develop and are believed to be caused by exposure to an infectious agent in the brains, spinal columns and nerve tissue from infected animals. You cannot get mad cow disease by breathing the same air as an infected person.

(The regulations that I belive most need to be strengthened and more stringently enforced govern the handling of meat during processing, but don’t get me started on that …)

Notably, Korea does not have a process in place to detect the presence of BSE in its own cattle, so Koreans could be more at risk from eating homegrown beef.

Really, though, I should just save my breath (and my typing fingers) because the protests really aren’t about food safety. They reflect dissatisfaction with the current president, Lee Myung Bak, adding in a good dose of anti-Americanism for good measure.

I wandered in to a discussion about this with Mrs. H. (She asked what I thought Barack Obama’s chances were against McCain and this led to a discussion of the influence of the media, which led to a discussion about the President Lee’s current approval ratings.)

According to Mrs. H, “most Koreans” know that U.S. beef is safe, but they are unhappy about the way that Lee Myung Bak has negotiated with the U.S., saying that they believe he has not “stood up for the Korean people” enough. She did go on to say that she personally believed that Korea had no choice but to negotiate trade agreements that would, inevitably, harm some Korean interests (small farmers, for example) because the country needed to participate in the global economy or get left behind. I didn’t get the feeling that this last part was a popular opinion.

Heeding the principle expressed in my first paragraph, though, I am going to refrain from speculating on the “Korean take” on the beef issue, except to say that, like Americans, Koreans are not of just one mind on anything. As compelling as thousands of students marching through the streets and fighting with riot police are, it does not mean that they represent the beliefs of the entire country. Even they don’t all agree about why they are protesting.

Given the large number of student protestors, and the ‘facts’ that many cite as influencing their opinion (that you can get “mad cow disease” through the air, that you can die within minutes or hours of consuming U.S. beef), it does make you question the role of the media, the Internet and education system here.

But that’s a post for another day.

Missed connection: Me and a rumble

by Cat on July 14, 2006

Apparently I was pretty lucky to get to work on Wednesday unscathed. Yesterday, a couple of Swiss guys weren’t so fortunate.

Some of the FTA protestors at Gwanghwamun mistook them for Americans and starting shouting insults, almost leading to physical violence.

Walter, the victim, said one of the young men then started abusing him at him in English, to the point where they almost came to blows. But a university student who was passing dissuaded his assailant. He asked if Walter and his friends were American but added, “Even if you tell them that you aren’t, they won’t believe you,” Walter said. The student advised them to cross over to the other side of the street.

Some commenters at the Marmot’s Hole apparently belive the Swiss guys somehow should have known what was going on and just avoided the area. From my perspective, it would have been very easy to wander into an “anti-American protest” and not even realize it until it’s too late.

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Rain and the FTA

by Cat on July 13, 2006

Well, the monsoon season is well and truly here. It’s rained steadily most of every day this week and, yesterday, my coworkers told me that flooding closed parts of the No. 3 subway line in the northwest part of the city.

As for me, the rain hasn’t been much of an impediment, but the FTA protests have. A masssive protest near City Hall downtown closed off two major streets just as I was trying to get to work. Traffic backed up through the Namsan tunnel, stranding my bus in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

After we exited the tunnel, we could see why. The street was closed just after the toll booth and large tour buses full of people wearing red and yellow protest headband things and carrying signs were disembarking. (Of course, this is the day I leave the camera at home to keep it from getting wet!)

(Picture ripped from here.)

The U.S. embassy said they expected around 20,000 participants to protest the free-trade agreement, and I’d say they got that many at least.

As the road was blocked, we all had to get off the bus and walk. Fortunately, at that point, I was within about a quarter mile of the office and could find my way there. I was a little nervous because I had to walk through throngs of the demonstrators as they headed for city hall. I kept practicing a few key French phrases and debated whether I’d try for Canadian, French or German, if confronted. But no one paid me any mind.

The only angry words I saw were between two ajummas arguing in the doorway of a shop, which appeared unrelated to any free trade with the United States. More of a limited immediate trade dispute . . .

I’m sticking with the subway the rest of this week, which is a real bummer because I finally found a bus route that takes half the time. At least on normal days.

Kaesong a sticking point for FTA talks?

by Cat on June 6, 2006

Update: The U.S. and South Korea failed to reach an agreement on Kaesong products in discussions on Monday. The issue has been tabled until next month. Negotiations on the other issues–including car and pharmaceutical imports–are continuing this week.

Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has an interesting post up about friction between the U.S. and South Korea over the products produced at Kaesong Industrial Park.

The U.S. position is that Kaesong products are North Korean, and thus should be excluded from preferential access to U.S. markets. Anything else would undermine U.S. attempts to restrict North Korean access to foreign currency. (As a side benefit, intransigence on the issue covers the U.S. flank against U.S. labor unions that will complain that South Korean capital is exploiting cheap labor to gain an unfair trade advantage. But it will take some chutzpah for U.S. trade negotiators to argue that the South Koreans should be condemned for such a practice when that has been one of the core operating principles for U.S. manufacturers for many decades.)

Leonard points out that the U.S. position ignores the role that the South Korean goverment hopes Kaesong will play in “engaging” North Korea and opening up possibilities for future investment. However, he also notes that the North Korean workers at Kaesong give new meaning to the term “slave labor.”

Not only will North Korean workers be paid a mere $57.50 per month — just 3 percent of the prevailing wage down south — but that money goes directly to the state, which then reimburses the workers. No one really knows how much the workers end up getting, and you sure won’t find out by asking them directly. Press reports say there is no socializing between workers and management, and very little opportunity for the North Koreans to do anything but, uh, work.

The question, as Leonard sees it, is whether the exploitation of these workers will be worth it in the long run.

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