Left Flank

According to a Gallup poll, 81% of South Koreans support renegotiation of the April 18 Bush-Lee Beef Protocol (although I can't find these findings on the Gallup site). Yet ask Korea expert Michael Breen, and he's certain South Koreans are hysterical.

This situation would not be so confusing if the diplomats, journalists and other foreign residents who know Korea did their jobs properly. But either they don't understand the dynamic themselves or out of love for Koreans they moderate their language. Thus the foreign press, for example, refers to "anger against resumed beef imports," rather than public hysteria, which is what it really is. Believe me. As a European, I know hysteria when I see it. We murdered 200,000 people as witches in the 15th century and 6 million Jews, and large numbers of Gypsies and homosexuals, in the 20th, for reasons that we don't know.

Believe me, as the spouse of a Korean national, and a member of an extended Korean clan, I know what bloated rhetoric is. Breen has stepped all over that line, even worse than the drunkest karaoke singer. Breen is snookered by the extreme behavior of multiple coalitions of political titans battling for–as yet very slim global media pickings–the hearts and emotions of the slimmest of South Korean undecideds wedged between a nearly evenly split electorate of stubborn progressives and fossilized conservatives. All this, mind you, when there's a food crisis on. How myopic can South Koreans and Michael and his fans be?

The problem starts at the top, with the Lee administration.

Mr Lee has only himself to blame for his abrupt fall from grace. Since his landslide victory in December, he has adopted an imperial style of leadership reminiscent of his days as chief executive of various arms of Hyundai, a conglomerate. Ignoring calls from many in South Korea for a more conciliatory style, he has pushed a controversial scheme to construct a system of canals. He has alienated civil servants by publicly berating them and threatening to cull their numbers in the interests of efficiency. And he has told state-run corporations they will be privatised, replacing many of their bosses with his loyalists.

In an effort to repair frayed ties with America, Mr Lee agreed in April to lift a ban on imports of American beef, which were suspended in 2003 after the discovery of mad-cow disease among cattle. South Koreans reacted furiously to the move. Housewives, pensioners, businessmen and students took to the streets in protest. Mr Lee was initially dismissive. His police chief warned protesters they needed a permit and would be arrested. That served only to fuel public anger.

This week a contrite Mr Lee said he would listen to the public's concerns. The Blue House has dropped hints of a cabinet shuffle. Among those expected to be replaced is the agriculture minister. Even Mr Lee's own party wants his decision-making to become more transparent. But none of South Korea's political parties seems to be trusted by a public concerned about rising prices and the uncertain economic outlook. The main opposition United Democratic Party has yet to recover electoral support after suffering devastating losses in April's parliamentary elections. Even a UDP spokesman puts the party's approval rating at less than 20%.

But the problem goes beyond incompetence, to political culture. Lee Myung-bak is a throwback to a past South Korean era best left far behind. South Korean progressives are displaying the signs, too. Lee's "imperiousness" is the same kind of symptom of the clannishness, that facilitates union and student participation in the protests, even though their respective clashing agendas don't always match. Lee's conservatives devised a pathetic strategy merely to forget the 10 years of progressive misrule under Presidents Kim and Roh by a little golf cart diplomacy with President Bush. Yet, for all the excesses, a younger generation is politically energized, and, unlike their parents, they will just not obey a fossil like Lee. Certainly, the electorate is ill-and-un-informed, but Lee will never command attention. Expat conservatives pundits are wiser to put their hopes with an American–since when has the Bush administration been sensitive to anyone but its donors–diplomatic campaign and media reform in ROK.

But, a refurbished President Lee, with people skills, is at best not good enough and is at worst not what ROK needs. South Koreans need a real conservative alternative to the progressives, which is not composed of fossils, crooks, and fascists in all but name. At best, South Koreans need a conservative politician without ties to corrupt corporations, and South Korean history before 1980.

Finally, both the Bush administration and Lee administration are displaying the shared family trait of arrogance about global events that is as disgusting as the genocide Breen decries. The sort of bilateral tempest in a tiny tea pot drama occurring on Seoul's streets is a distraction from the broader multinational problems and proposals that circulated in Rome for a 50-state High-Level Conference on World Food Security.

Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Washington-based research group financed by governments, says international action should focus on five things. The Rome summit made progress on a couple of them.

First, food aid. Earlier this year, the World Food Programme (WFP), the main agency for handing out emergency relief, pushed the panic button, saying it was running out of money because of dearer grain. At the summit, it announced an extra $1.2 billion of food aid, thanks partly to Saudi Arabia, which just before the meeting gave the programme $500m. The donation from a country awash with oil money had barely been noticed outside the WFP. But it was still a remarkable one. Most announcements of «new money» turn out to be old promises repackaged. This contribution was genuinely new and made a big difference.

Next, biofuels. The conference could have helped rationalise biofuels policy. Some non-governmental organisations want a moratorium on ethanol output, saying this would cut grain prices by 20%. Parts of the UN bureaucracy and some big food companies say they would support something milder, such as international restrictions on the production of corn-based ethanol. Still others argue that biofuels are fine as an idea but are beset by a tangle of subsidies, tariffs and production targets that needs unravelling. The summit made no headway in doing so. Just before it, America's secretary of agriculture, Ed Schafer, claimed that ethanol accounts for only 2-3% of the increase in world food prices—a contentious view (IFPRI says 30%) but one that left the summit irreparably and paralysingly split over biofuels.

Third, the conference could have come up with some short-term fixes, beyond food aid, to increase farmers' incentives and to cut world prices. The most obvious fix is to reduce export bans. Around 40 food-exporting countries have imposed some sorts of trade restriction of food: taxes, quotas or across-the-board bans. A study by IFPRI calculates that getting rid of these would reduce world cereals prices by an average of 30%. Summits sometimes dissuade leaders from beggaring their neighbours, since the neighbours' complaints may have to be faced in person.

But it is not clear the meeting in Rome achieved this aim. Vietnam, Cambodia and India have all promised to reopen some of their rice exports. Japan, a big importer, says it will release about a fifth of its government-controlled rice stockpile. But Egypt extended its ban on rice trade for another year, so it is hard to see a clear pattern of improvement.

This reflects one of the basic difficulties of getting coherent action in this area: countries' interests simply differ. Most developing countries are net importers, but some are net exporters. In Botswana and South Africa, food accounts for a fifth of the consumer price index; in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh it accounts for two-thirds. And while most poor nations are victims or beneficiaries of food inflation, China and India may be regarded as causes, too. Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate and writer on the politics of famine, says rising demand (for example, from the Asian middle classes) and not failing productivity is the main reason for the current crisis.

It is not surprising that the summit did little about biofuels, export bans or social-safety nets (which it hardly discussed). In any case, as many speakers argued, the value of short-term measures is limited. «The underlying problem», says Lennart Bage, head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, «is the decline in agricultural productivity growth. Unless we reverse that, we'll be back in the same situation in a few years' time.»

International action for the long term goes beyond the scope of any one meeting. It would probably require a deal on world trade in agriculture, for instance—a distant prospect. But the Rome meeting did make a start on the longest of long-term goals: a second green revolution. Mr Ban said food output needs to rise by 50% by 2030. Countries are issuing, or at least preparing, a long list of promises to help finance research into new seeds, build irrigation canals and spread fertiliser use among small farmers (seeds, irrigation and fertilisers were the main components of the first green revolution in the 1960s). These promises could well be the main achievements of the Rome summit. A couple of weeks ago, the words «seeds and «fertilisers» were rarely uttered by rich-country governments. Suddenly, these old obsessions of development wonks have broken through into the domain of public policy.

Compared to the dire necessity for global solutions to intractable problems, the Bush-Lee attempt to turn back time to a halcyon age of sunglasses-bedecked dictators and obsequious South Koreans is pathetically disgusting, but right on cue for reactionaries.