How Mad Cows and "Free Trade" Threaten Korean Democracy

By Gavan McCormack, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted July 15, 2008.

Just months after taking office, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak's popularity plunged below 20%. People poured into the streets in unprecedented numbers -- in the largest demonstrations in Korean history -- to protest against him and his government. His cabinet offered to resign en masse, and he had to sack all seven members of the Blue House senior secretariat. He was forced to abandon key policies such as his plan to build a canal across the full length of the country. And he felt compelled to apologize, twice, for his policy blunders and "lack of communication skills."

Having staked much on his visit to Washington in April, and having pledged to reinvigorate and upgrade the alliance with the United States, Lee exposed it instead to greater risk than his predecessor and was reduced to pleading with Washington to help him find a way out of his domestic problems. Instead of advancing his goal of a Free Trade Agreement, he stirred the opposition, including labor and religious groups, to anger, thus making his goal less, rather than more likely. By June, the lion of December had become, according to word on the street in Seoul, an "early duck" (an early bird turned lame duck).

And it all began with beef.

Moos and Boos

The connection between Mad Cow disease in animals and the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans has been known since around 2000. Three cattle in the United States have tested positive for Mad Cow disease since 2003. South Korea first banned imports at that time, as did many countries. When the second case, in 2005, was covered up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for seven months before being made public, consumer confidence further sank. Japan took to testing every single animal, to the great annoyance of the U.S. government. Korea, under intense U.S. pressure, adopted a "voluntary" system of restriction that banned the import of meat from animals older than 30 months as well as animal parts such as bones and internal organs. However, the first three shipments that followed these new restrictions supposedly contained these parts, so the "voluntary" system was plainly unsatisfactory.

As part of the negotiations over a Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. side demanded the lifting of even Korea's limited restrictions. By April, however, with the Korean presidential visit to Washington imminent, negotiations were at a standstill. According to Korean news reports, on the evening of April 17, Assistant Agriculture Minister (and chief negotiator) Min Dong-seok said that the two sides were "far apart" and the gulf was "too deep." By early the following morning, however, a deal was struck. The Korean side capitulated. Lee Myung-bak decided to lift the ban either as the price paid for his invitation to Camp David and drive of the presidential golf-cart or as a quid pro quo to persuade the U.S. side to proceed with the Free Trade Agreement.

South Koreans were outraged at the deal. During May and June, a protest movement sparked by high-school students grew and grew, reaching a peak of a million people out on the streets on June 10. The Korean government tried to defuse the crisis by re-opening negotiations, but the U.S. side insisted on honoring the April agreement. It agreed, however, to return to the system of voluntary restrictions, relying on the compliance of meat exporters until such time as Korean confidence was restored. President Lee explained that he expected the United States to "respect the will of the Korean people." To the suspicious Korean people, however, it seemed that he was bowing to Washington on the one hand while in the streets of Seoul he was turning ruthlessly on the very people to whom he had apologized weeks earlier.

Beef and the Food Crisis

The question is not just about beef but about health, safety, food security, and responsible, democratic governance. Food uncertainty grows around the world, with escalating prices, dwindling reserves, and spreading hunger, and with climate change reducing projections for future harvests in the global grain-basket countries. In the context of this deepening global food crisis, beef consumption is not a fundamental human right but the privilege of a tiny elite. Each kilo of meat they consume is the equivalent of around 8 kilos of grain, and requires a substantial volume of precious water to produce. Naturally, Koreans (or any people) may indulge a passion for beef eating by allocating their own land, water, and labor to do it, but they can have no claim upon the global economy to such an entitlement. And if the global beef market is dominated by a country whose agriculture is so structured that dead animals are recycled as pellets of food for living ones, the very principles of free trade itself must be reconsidered -- as the Koreans are doing.

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Gavan McCormack is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus and an emeritus professor at Australian National University. His latest book is Client State: Japan in the American Embrace.