Seoul is beginning to smell pretty awful even from Busan. But even worse than the beef itself, are the opinions themselves about the causes for the demonstrations. It's as if the protests were becoming a Rorschach test.

Again, Robert Koehler responds defensively and with partisan pique.

[US Commerce Secretary Carlos] Gutierrez also said that the US would not renegotiate the beef deal. This, I increasingly believe after much discussion with a friend of mine, might — if the protests continue — be a bad idea, since it only hurts our friends (2MB) and helps our, well, less-close-friends (like Sohn Hak-kyu and the UDP). And 30-month-old beef, a product that made up only 2% of total US beef exports to Korea prior to the 2003 ban, just doesn’t seem critical enough to leave 2MB twisting in the wind. If we play this smart, US beef will come in, people will buy it, the FTA might get passed, and 2MB will have a new lease on life that he could use to change his leadership style AND plot revenge on some of the less savory characters in this fiasco (like MBC).

Yes, I know the dangers, not the least of which is giving the impression to the Korean public that Washington will capitulate to Korean wailing and rending of garments, which, given the Korean public’s well demonstrated fondness for wailing and rending of garments, is something akin to feeding an addiction. I guess it’s not impossible that, high on their victory and convinced now of the efficacy of extra-parliamentary politics, the Korean left might be emboldened to continue their “politics by other means” until additional political goals were met. If this were the Roh presidency and the same thing were happening, I’d say let the FTA die and reawaken Super 301. But this ISN’T Roh — it’s a friend of America in a jam (for which, admittedly, he is largely responsible). He wants to import US beef, we want to sell him US beef, so perhaps it would be best to help give him a chance.

So, it's black and white.

Yet, three foreign perspectives written for American audiences agree on the basic problem with the protests—to be blunt, it's bitching, bitching, kvetching! Quoting a "Reader' from a newsletter, "Nightwatch", Tim Johnson found this peculiar:

Feedback from a well-informed and brilliant Reader advised that the protests against US beef imports are driven by an underlying disappointment and hostility to President Lee’s government. Lee won a landslide electoral victory based on his promises of economic prosperity, increased per capita income for all and tougher policies in dealing with North Korea. One hundred days into his administration, South Korea has been buffeted by high prices for food and fuel. South Korea is completely dependent on imported oil.

The demonstrations are more about the increased cost of living, a perception of favoritism for the wealthy and lack of progress in keeping his campaign promises. In their own inimitable fashion, the South Koreans will register their discontent in the streets in huge rallies which always carry the risk of street escalations.

Lee would seem to have few options. He will dismiss some cabinet officials, as scapegoats, but they are not responsible for the problems generating the outbursts. He can buy time by reimposing the ban on US beef imports, but the opposition leaders will shift focus to rising food and fuel costs. Large protests are likely to continue.  In an earlier time, continuation of demonstrations on this scale would lead to a military coup, imposition of a state of emergency or the resignation of the President. The situation is not that grave … yet.

Don Kirk also mentions the 'kitchen-sink' phenomenon.

Protesters accuse Mr. Lee of risking the health of Koreans in his eagerness to please the United States and push through a free trade agreement.

But the size and scope of the protest dramatizes problems that go far beyond that of simply beef.

The protests reflect discontent with "a lot of national issues," including high unemployment, education, and the economy, says Moon Kook Hyun, who campaigned for president on his own minority party and then was elected to the National Assembly. "The people are so disappointed. They have no other way to express themselves."

"Thousands of students are here to protest his educational policy," says a teacher, Kim Haeng Suu, accompanying other teachers and students from a nearby school. "The students say they have no voice in the system, and he only cares about education for the rich people."

South Korea excluded US beef five years ago after the discovery of mad cow disease in a single American cow, and US officials fervently deny any chance of the disease spreading to people. A Korean negotiating team has arrived in Washington, calling on the US to go along with a "voluntary" arrangement that will bar the export of US beef from cows more than 30 months old.

None of the protesters, however, appears willing to trust such a revision of the beef deal. Instead they castigate Lee and his ministers and advisers for the arrogance they perceive in his support of the chaebol, or conglomerates, which dominate the Korean economy and to appointments of rich and sell-connected favorites to high positions.

"These people came here to say something against the policy of mad cow," says Kang Jae Myung, an information technology consultant, joining the protest, he says, as "a spectator," but "the issue grows bigger and bigger."

Basically, "the Korean people are very disappointed with what the Lee Myung Bak regime has done," he says. "The economy is getting worse, and he helps the big corporations, not these people here with less money and less power."

Finally, Choe Sang-Hun offers the fullest account of the current state of the Lee administration (via TMH's R. Elgin's "NY Times on The Mad Korean Protest") and also compares Seoul's action with Japan's.

The beef protests, the culmination of six weeks of popular discontent over trade and economic issues, have dealt a sharp blow to Mr. Lee, who was elected in December championing a new approach to ties with Washington.

Mr. Lee made rebuilding South Korea's political and economic alliance with the United States his top priority, while taking a much harder line on North Korea than his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

Bush administration officials have expressed hopes that Mr. Lee's firm stance on North Korea's nuclear program, which reversed South Korea's previous policy to embrace its neighbor, could persuade the North to end its nuclear program. North Korea promised to dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities under an international accord that has yet to achieve lasting results.

Both Mr. Lee and President Bush also hoped that Mr. Lee's decision in April to end the five-year ban on American beef would help win support in Congress for a free-trade agreement struck between the governments last year, thus improving relations while helping to revive the sluggish South Korean economy. But some South Korean analysts say Mr. Lee may now come under pressure to take a less accommodating line with Washington.

The broad unrest reflects popular worries about sagging growth and rising inflation as well as a reaction against Mr. Lee's attempts to push through new trade and regulatory policies favored by foreign investors and big businesses.

But the most heated issue has been the renewed imports of American beef, which were halted locally after the discovery of a case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003.

Stoked by farm groups and unions, as well as sensational media reports, protesters said they feared that American beef would expose the public to mad cow disease, and they accused the government of allowing new imports without insisting on rigorous inspections. Officials in South Korea and the United States say American beef is safe.

Supporting the protesters in a way to which I'm not unsympathetic, John Eperjesi also rebuts Mike Breen, albeit romanticizing protest culture a little too much. Eperjesi lets the fairy visions in his own head undo his objectivity.

But beyond the very legitimate concerns about the quality of American beef, I think there is also something more going on here, at least for the university students.

I get the sense that young people are bored, bored with pop culture, bored with plastic surgery, bored with consumerism and the fetishization of luxury goods.

They are also angry that they have spent their entire lives studying, only to leave university and enter a jobless future. Korea was convulsed by political revolution in the 1980s, but never really went through an equivalent cultural revolution.

The protests are about mad cow disease today, but social movements have a way of accumulating new meanings and directions over time. Who could have predicted that opening the Korean market to U.S. beef would have sparked such massive protests. And who knows where this thing will end up. That's the exciting thing about history.

It's exactly the part, creating social movements from these fatty protests, about which I worry most. It's one thing to be disagreeable, but another entirely to disrupt traffic. Voting down the deal in the legislature would have sufficed, but weeks of this escalating confusion is overkill. And, it's hard to miss the salient fact, that students are protesting, because they can spend the time in the streets. The summer union protest season is also around the calendar corner. I can discern no informed concern for the global food crisis, global food production, or even for something deeper than a thin xenophobic nationalism, merely a spoiled consumerism and indignant sense of entitlement.

It's just a very ugly cut of South Korean beef.