Left Flank

FB Friend and fellow Busan-crawler, Jason Hugh McDermott, posted this photo album a few hours ago. The photos were snapped at Children's Park, a popular urban spot for families. I was visiting my sister-in-law and niece in the hospital and also ran into some riot police still guarding the ruling party's headquarters near Bukgyung National University.

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TMH is not the comments section one needs to go, to learn about anti-US beef protests in ROK. But, to the proprietor's credit, two contributors have come forward with political and economic opinions on the protests that aren't just crowd-pleasing brickbats.

I'm relieved Drambuie Man came out of his coma to talk about culture and economics.

So really the real beef of the protest is the beef, not the demand for MB head on a platter (now if the goal was a change to the Korean constitution, I would be much more amenable to the whole thing).

Commenter-turned-contributor mins0306 takes the opposite route to get to the same conclusion.

The common perception here in the Hole is that Koreans hate US beef and that Koreans think Hanwoo is superior. A diehard Korean nationalist will give you that answer and yes you will get that answer from some ordinary Koreans. Now if one were to ask a Korean about their preference, and prod them further some will admit that US beef is tastier, has better texture, and cheaper to boot. So then why all this anti-US beef rhetoric? And why this I rather buy more expensive Hanwoo thingy? Well the answer is simple. Nationalism and preference for things Korean, aside BSE. But, some if not most Koreans(protestors included) aren't rejecting the US beef altogether. What they are rejecting is the beef they believe to be risky. Namely 30 month or older , brain, spine, you get the idea.

Now some Koreans(protestors included) know that you won't drop like flies when one eats US beef, that there is no scientific evidence to prove conclusively that you get your brain melted by eating US beef, and that the OEI has concluded that US beef meets the standards. But the Koreans are asking when it comes to US beef that is 30 months or older, how do I know for sure it is safe? And this is where the whole thing begins.

Yet, why did these protests in Busan lead to the Grand National party's local branch office in Namcheon-dong?

In an ugly debate between the worst nationalists and the worst opportunists, both GI Korea and Metropolitician contribute some crack analysis and links about how the April 18 Korea Beef Protocol. In what I think might be the first stretch of graphs with which I actually agree, "culture" takes a beating.

These are reasonable people? These are government officials? These people are the nation's media?

If it wasn't true before, it's definitely true now -- the Koreans who matter the most: from government suits, media fools, and disaffected left-wing activists and cattle growers who are pulling out students from class now and citizens who really have more of a beef with an old-fashioned, unresponsive governance style than American beef -- now, these people have become completely unreasonable.

UnREASONable, as in the word and concept "reason," which Sir Francis Bacon expounded upon, and for better or worse, and through a wily combination of both inductive and deductive logic predicated on both reliable information and careful observation of reality, is what Koreans have taken so much offense at being accused of NOT possessing -- now, the government position is that yes, Koreans are NOT a reasonable people. Don't believe me? He said it himself:

"I think the American people, US government and you must understand our unique culture… In order to resolve this, both governments need to work with sincerity." [And I concur with Robert's excellent translation.]

Aaaaargh! As I've always lecture in my American and Korean "culture" classes -- in Korea, when I hear the word "culture," I reach for my gun. The worst deployment of the term is in the obfuscating idea of "cultural differences," a card that usually gets pulled when an Korean and non-Korean have reached an impasse, but no longer have the energy to duke it out anymore.

It's a cop-out, and the result of being too intellectually lazy (or incapable) of getting to the heart of the disagreement, which can generally be defined in concrete terms, rather than the meaningless cop-out of "culture." It's like the smart bomb in Defender -- when the humans have become mutants, the alien ships have morphed and get scary, and when those zingy flying saucers show up, you just freak and hit that special button. Then everything goes away.

Problem is, you only get two smart bombs at the beginning of the level, and they generally only delay the inevitable -- if you suck at Defender, you simply suck at Defender. And once you've started panicking with a smart bomb of any kind -- whether it be of an extremely advanced future technology that can focus amazingly powerful-yet-concentrated blasts of energy at specific targets throughout your field of view, or its a stupefyingly simplistic statement that relies on reductionist notions of cultural essentialism and obviates the use of specific and useful information as a means of shutting down any further discussion -- once you've started that strategy, things ain't gonna be so good.

And telling the US, which hasn't done anything wrong in this case, to "tread lightly" as a meta-response to a TRANSLATION ERROR is certainly a cake taker. And the funny thing is that the mistranslated words that Vershbow was mistakenly said to have used are actually now being borne out in truth: now, it's been said that this is not about science or, I assume the facts, but emotions and the fact that the rest of the world must understand "Korea's unique culture" (because the rest of the world's cultures aren't unique, right?).

Ahh, petty cultural nationalism and irrationality do indeed still rule the day in South Korea. I hate to be the voice of reason -- well, actually, I don't -- but this won't end well.

It didn't. The ruling Grand National party picked up only nine seats in local by-elections, with 23 going to the opposition. And, protests are getting more violent. Still, the fear, mistranslations, and crazy science circulating around Korea (and yesterday I had to listen to a pair of my own students butcher their own English final trying to tell me about the beef protests, when I told them repeatedly not to discuss politics in an ESL setting). I do, however, take issue with GI Korea's mercantilist understanding of FTA, a trait he shares with Robert Koehler at TMH. "So these protests are because of the 'appearance of capitulating to American political interests' even though it is an indisputable fact that the complaints against President Lee are false and the FTA is in the best interests of Korea."

It what reads as eerily prescient now, The Economist takes issue with the ROK-US FTA in April, 2007.

The negotiators can pat themselves on the back as many times as they like, but that doesn't make bilateral trade deals good economic policy. This week's announcement that America and South Korea are to create a free-trade area that will link the world's largest and 12th-largest economies marks the most ambitious trade agreement America has concluded since NAFTA, more than a decade ago. It is being spun by both governments as an historic achievement, and it certainly has its good points. Almost all tariffs are being scrapped within three years of the agreement coming into force, with others to go after that—though as ever the most contentious areas, such as rice, have been left out altogether, or will be handled much more slowly, as with beef and trucks. But the hype ignores the serious side-effects of agreements of this type.

The first malign effect is that this deal is inspired by, and will in turn help to inspire, an ever-thickening alphabet soup of bilateral and narrowly regional trade regimes. Such deals not only shut out less favoured countries from global commerce, but also undermine each other by creating a riot of incompatible regulation. This is particularly true in booming Asia. The perverse result is to hamper, not expedite, globalisation, which relies on the free flow of goods and services between many countries, not just along bilateral channels.

The second problem is that all this bilateral effort saps some of the impetus for genuine multilateral trade negotiation (though there is a counter-argument: if the Doha round were not sinking into the sand, countries like Peru and South Korea would be less keen on bilateral agreements). Either way, stagnation in the multilateral arena is the flip-side of deals like the US-South Korean one.

But, no matter what one thinks of the merits of the Korean deal, the cause of free trade in America is now in serious trouble. Approval of the agreement is by no means certain in a Democratic-controlled Congress that is sceptical of all trade deals—and some of whose members would very much like to rewrite NAFTA. The deal may also have a hard time winning approval in the South Korean parliament.

As far as safe beef goes, I see no reason for promoting American beef, when there's safer beef from Australia and Paraguay on the market.

And, since FTA is worse than none at all, I cringe that the totality of ROK-US relations, including military, would suffer because of tactical decisions in both capitals based on bad economics, politics (ROK-US relations have matured beyond golf cart diplomacy), and translations. The Robert Koehler's strained sarcasm augur ominously for the right side of the equation.

Finally, right across the Straits, TPR joins the anti-Lee movement.

The controversy started a little over a month ago after the South Korean populace figured out that they were quickly becoming one of America's favorite beef customers. After all, many Korean dishes use the parts of the cow that Americans prefer not to eat, and the South Korean government happily signed a deal to import beef from cattle including those past the 30 month age limit that other countries, such as Mexico and Japan, have decided pose too great a risk of carrying Mad Cow Disease (BSE).

Mr. Lee's response to the initial outcry was that people should be happy that he had secured a steady supply of cheap beef, and that if some were put off by the negligible risk of contracting BSE, then, well, they shouldn't eat it. The constant businessman then went on to remark that the South Korean beef industry should be refashioned based on the Japanese, luxury-priced model.

Now, who would beg to differ with such an adept leader as that?!

After reading about Seoul's less than enthusiastic—«did not have enough time»—response to a request from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to complete procedures needed for the OIE's coveted BSE risk assessment, I had to know where the good beef in the world is. As the Chosun Daily article reports, OIE has three ratings. Australia is one country where the beef has a negligible risk for mad cow; the US is a controlled risk;, and Iceland and Paraguay are "provisionally free". How about some Latin steer, or an icy cold steak?

BTW, Seoul is not the only capital with mad cow on the brain.