10,000 Koreans showed up at the Chonggyechon last night to hold a candlelight rally against the importation of US beef. (Image below from the KT)
On a side note, an online movement to gain signatures for the impeachment of LMB has so far gained 600,000 signatures, while his popularity rating has dropped to 35.1 percent.
Sphere: Related Content
130 Comments
This photo needs to be shown to every member of Congress so that they may understand why the FTA is a bad idea for the US. In fact, I think I am going to email my senators and representative.
10000 people, all of the remaining Noh Moo Hyun’s supporters.
How could people be so dumb? So gullible? I mean, seriously, do they think the US needs to get of bad beef and the only place they can get rid of them is to Korea? Korea finally gets a competent president, who in the long run, can restore Korea’s image, and what do the citizens do, fucking ruin it.
I meant, get “rid” of…
I wish someone from the anti-us beef side can explain why they are so against the importation of US beef. Don’t they have a choice to buy “safer” beef? Because the US beef will be cheaper doesn’t mean you have to buy US beef if you are concerned about the health of yourself and family. And I would bet at least one person at the rally has been to the US and tried beef without any hesitation.
Sorry for rambling but this just pisses me off. Sometimes, as childish as it may be, I wish the US would give Koreans a taste of its own medicine. I mean, what if people in the States held a rally against a Korean product being unsafe? Which reminds me, if Koreans are so concerned about the health, in essence their lively being, then hold a rally to change the traffic laws.
Like I said… it’s not a health issue, it’s an economic one. The health issue is just an emotional red herring.
I say LMB just do it. Dump the market full of American beef. After a few months, when no one’s brain melts, it will be a non-issue and people will just go on with their lives and LMB’s approval ratings will go back up.
They shouldn’t worry about the economic impact, unless they are cattle ranchers. US beef will only benefit the people’s pocket book and yet, they prefer to pay extra. I mean, you would think one would worry more about spams but no, spams are treated like food from the royal court.
“This photo needs to be shown to every member of Congress so that they may understand why the FTA is a bad idea for the US.”
Without FTA, they don’t buy beef.
With FTA, they buy beef. How is this a bad idea for the US?
Let them protest and pray to their purple cone god. Pass the FTA, watch the demonstrators go apeshit for a while, and when the dust settles the average Korean will buy what they want and there won’t be protests over beef, rice, and cars every other month.
“spams are treated like food from the royal court.”
That’s because no one’s got mad cow disease from eating pork shoulder…
10,000 people at a rally in downtown Seoul is nothing special. Many of them are, without a doubt, the same people who show up at all the other anti-American or anti-Japanese rallies. Most regular Koreans will be delighted to once again have the option of buying cheap American beef at EMart.
‘10,000 people at a rally in downtown Seoul is nothing special. Many of them are, without a doubt, the same people who show up at all the other anti-American or anti-Japanese rallies. Most regular Koreans will be delighted to once again have the option of buying cheap American beef at EMart.’
smartly said
Didn’t online petitions and surveys have Ron Paul winning the Republican primary by 300 million votes or so?
Anyhow, thank goodness that Korea has people with candles and netizens to protect it from imperialist American cows. After all, the candlelight vigil protesting the foreign students running riot through Korean cities was just a smashing success.
#4,
Well, I was talking about this with one of my friends yesterday. He had asked me if I thought American beef is safe. I told him that he’s got a better chance of being run over by a car or choking on his food than getting sick from it but that he shouldn’t eat it if he was really concerned about it (I really don’t think that the current level of testing for BSE (110 tests per day only) in the US isn’t sufficient to detect all infected cows (they should test all of them, which would take care of the problem once and for all)). He replied that it wouldn’t work since the prions would move from the infected meat to the butchers’ cutlery and on to the meat of healthy cows. But, he says he doesn’t eat beef because he can’t justify paying such a high price, there are better and cheaper protein sources. He’s mostly concerned about all the products that use beef as an ingredient since not eating those would force him to change his whole diet.
Kim Min-seon, 29, also blamed the government for importing alleged “germ-filled” U.S. beef.
“I would gulp poison rather than eat U.S. beef,” she said on her homepage.
Kim Min Seon just went down a couple notches. Too bad. I would recommend she eat a lot of Korean chicken instead of US beef perhaps she will get bird flu.
So let them protest. It’s all moot point. There will be US beef flooding in and all this will go away in few weeks.
“I mean, seriously, do they think the US needs to get of bad beef and the only place they can get rid of them is to Korea?”
Before 2003, Japan and South Korea were two of the top three importers of American beef. Japan still has a major ban, and Korea lifting its ban is being used to pressure Japan to do the same.
http://www.newsday.com/news/he.....6980.story
Is American beef still banned in Europe over hormone usage?
I don’t understand why so many people here get so excited about the prospect of eating American beef.
American beef is crapolla and Korean beef is mega crapolla.
In both cases the animals are dosed with antibiotics, and fed unnatural foods.
What’s wrong with the beef from Australia? The cows walk around (get exercise), eat grass, say moo moo, and live the way cows are meant to.
If people get excited about frankenbeef from the USA merely because those same people are US citizens, then aren’t those people being illogical Nationalists, just like the illogical Korean Nationalists.
Personally I wouldn’t touch Korean beef, nor American beef from a feedlot.
Better eating beef sourced from happy cows. Well happy until they get a huge bolt smashing their skull.
Let it blow over, LMB has brains and balls.
Not a peep was said about the FTA during the election. LMB got his majority and can get can stuff done in office. He is going to take all the heat for a short time on this and then get the FTA passed. He can’t run for a second term so he could care less about 10,000 at the gates of City Hall.
It is depressing to see so much ignorance but it won’t last long.
The saddest thing about all this is the standard of education these people have received.
Damn, and I was feeling quite upbeat lately . . . (Climbs onto soap box)
What a bunch of gutless fools!
One week ago a mob of foreign protesters in their homeland attack and beat those who oppose their views. Result: Lots of hand-wringing but no huge gathering or candlelight vigils.
US beef back on shelves despite a long, drawn out effort using every measure and tactic under the sun to keep it out using Mad Cow Disease as a convenient excuse. Result: 100,000 attend candlelight vigil opposing poor quality, imperialist Yankee beef!
The reason:
US = Benevolent big brother, who we can sabotage, abuse and create a whole lot of ill-will towards but they’ll still be there to help us out.
China= Belligerent big brother, who we despise but are genuinely fearful of as they are powerful and vindicative, and can use their power to hurt us as they’ve done in the past.
China must be loving this. It seems the old adage is true - ‘Koreans greatest enemy are themselves’.
(Gets off soap box)
Edit: 10,000 showed up for the vigil not 100,000.
#16 - The Japanese lifted the beef ban in 2006 (well, it was reinstated for a few months, then lifted for good in July 2006). However, sales are way down due to “finicky Japanese consumers” (i.e. Japanese who are exposed only to the “high-quality” Japanese media and don’t have Wikipedia access: there have been far more BSE cases detected in Japan than in the U.S.).
http://www.tulsaworld.com/busi.....ancl274790
I find it hilarious that even B-list celebs feel the need to state their position on this “issue of importance.” Beef is usually marked by provenance in Korea, correct? If so, it can easily be avoided. And the superior safety of Korea beef is highly questionable: in the U.S., the areas of the cow that transmit the BSE prion - skull, brain, etc. - are removed by law, while there is no such law in Korea (that I know of).
‘(Gets off soap box)’ ese chico con la boca grande
thank god you got off, expat! geeting off is yo specialty, no?
and it was ten thousand not a hundred, ok?
‘in the U.S., the areas of the cow that transmit the BSE prion - skull, brain, etc. - are removed by law, while there is no such law in Korea (that I know of).’
yet another example of an expat not knowing what he’s talking about. do koreans feed cows meat?
Uh oh, pawi is here. There must be sea gulls circling the water and sharks splashing around the bleeding straw man that is the expat’s favorate target.
Don’t worry about poor ol’ pawi.
He’s a kyopo who’s lived in Orange County all his life and knows bugger all about contemporary Korea or the mood on the street in Korea.
But, since Mummy and Daddy came from Korea he feels the nationalistic urge to fight any perceived slight, criticism or inconvenient truth about Korea as a personal affront.
The young fellas’s as American as apple pie but just can’t resolve this and feels the need to prop up his identity issues online.
I don’t see Kim Min Seon not eating U.S. beef. She’s just saying that to get attention. Besides she, being a B-grade actress, will marry some Kyopo businessman or dentist, which means she is on the way to becoming a certified U.S. beef consumer. Unless her future Kyopo husband is a veggie.
“He’s a kyopo who’s lived in Orange County…”
Hey that’s me!
Actually, he described pawi, but yeah the particular kyopo could be you, bumfromkorea, JK, NK, etc.
let me ask this again:
do the koreans feed their cows meat? do they feed them spinal cords from sheeps? what would say to a korean who got bse from us beef? ‘too bad’?
i try to avoid beef as much as possible though i am sucker for tung/an shim and beef noodle pho. the beef here has got shit in it. now, korea will have beef with shit in it.
‘Actually, he described pawi, but yeah the particular kyopo could be you, bumfromkorea, JK, NK, etc.’
i always like to see guys from australia thinking themselves more american than a ‘kyopo’. and yet, they’ll whine day and night about korean racism.
Actually, I’m in Korea, but you wouldn’t know that, would you?
Last night, I accidentally ran into this crowd of late adolescent students and a smattering of distracted Leftists. With all the candles about me, I was tempted to sing “Happy Beef Day to You!”
My impression was the crowd seemed a lot less determined and more confused than those of the past. Right now I would not be too worried.
The leaders of this nonsense have been largely discredited and its only a matter of time when their larger, past follies are exposed.
Meantime, we have a demo here and there. Since when have Koreans supported open and free markets on the populist level? Of course, never. The tired, old Leftists have a temporary cause celebre, but in time this, too, will be forgotten - unless someone one comes down with Mad Cow Disease that can be factually or falsely attributed to eating American beef.
I like when celebrities get involved in politics. Reminds me of this. http://youtube.com/watch?v=DOM4hTgrF8o
I have a student who’s a dentist. He came into class all upset about US beef and the FTA, ready to head out to the protest. Then I asked him whether this MBC show had a history of fair reporting.
“Well, last year the same show took a hidden camera into a countryside dental clinic, and then used that footage of only one place to make an expose program criticizing dentists’ sanitation practices that was one-sided, totally unfair, frightening to the public, and which damaged dentists’ credibility. We dentists looked carefully at the show and decided the makers of a certain, expensive sanitation tool must have had an influence in having the show made, because every dentist needed to buy one to regain public trust after that show aired.”
“So this show has a history of using one-sided, unfair reports to make the public afraid of things when they don’t need to be afraid of them.”
“Yeah, but you should have seen their hidden camera footage of the American slaughterhouse!”
“Did they show footage from a Korean slaughterhouse to show how Korean slaughterhouses are better? Did they show more than one slaughterhouse? Did they mention how many slaughterhouses they visited to find the disgusting one where they took all this video?”
“. . . ”
By the end of the class, I’d convinced him to ask the question, “Who benefits,” every time he watched that show, and if there’s a clear beneficiary to the scaremongering (especially when there are politics like the FTA at stake), to take the report with a bit of skepticism.
You should have seen the lightbulb go on when I suggested that maybe they gave American beef the same smear-job treatment they gave to dentists last year, in order to benefit Korean beef farmers.
(sigh)
Here’s an old fashioned SAT analogy to express my sentiments.
Pawi:Expats::Andy:Kyopos
It’s getting old. Both of you.
korean slaughterhouses are superior to american ones. the bbc has reports about that and i recommend you yahoos get up and read such though i’m sure it will be a chore to get up before noon. lol!
I’d say that you’re more likely to get struck by lightning while being simultaneously attacked by a great white shark in the Cheonggyecheon Stream than you are of getting BSE from US beef.
So if you’re the kind of bedwetting, irrational dipshit that won’t walk along the Cheonggyecheon for fear of a shark/lightning double attack, then by all means, avoid US beef.
Roboseyo,
It’s wonderful there are people like you slamming your head against the wall of gullibility in the schools. I don’t think I could have the patience.
What’s scary is that many Korean high school teachers are no wiser than their students as they perpetuate a total lack of non-critical thinking as a matter of common discourse in the classroom.
The Government should establish re-education camps for teachers — not to indoctrinate them in some kind of ideology, but simply to teach teachers how to critically think for themselves. And perhaps then, they may teach their students to do the same - in addition on how to pass multiple choice tests that allow only one correct answer per question.
Ditto to that Robo…your result was different than mine each and every time I have tried a similar thing. The usual response I got was “it’s different”.
Virtually all meat has shit in it. The shit gets splattered when the carcasses are opened up. Produce has shit on it, too. Just this week there was a news report about how E-coli prefer to congregate on the inner leaves of lettuce. Proper cooking will kill E-coli and just about any other nasty bugs in food. While Koreans are fretting about US beef, GMO corn is slipping in through the back door as Korean importers can’t get conventional corn from China or Latin America.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/.....index.html
#19 came close to putting his or her finger on what’s really going on. Koreans live in a spectacularly malevalent culture (understantable perhaps after the so-called 5,000 years of being trampled upon and squeezed between their two powerful neighbors), and every Korean harbors strong resentments and hostilities in one form or another (”Han,” as it is known in Korean). Because of deeply ingrained Confucianism and toxic xenophobia, Koreans can’t criticize their elder brothers, the Chinese. So they need someone else to kick around: enter the docile, clueless Yankees. Kiss up, kick down, so to speak. These periodic anti-American candel-light vigils are just excuses. This one really had nothing to do with beef. Remember when the hysteria was over imported rice a few years back? Koreans need someone to kick in order to relieve their pent-up frustrations. Koreans need Americans.
My english is not so good.
maybe, not ten thousands but one hundred thousands.
There were not fewer than seventeen thousand people !!!
this fact is worthy of notice.
he’s a holy terror when everyday,everytime,every second… .
and we americans needed iraq right after 911.
I had the advantage that 1. this student and I have known each other for a while, so he trusts me, and 2. his father’s was a journalist during the ’70s and ’80s, so he knows how enmeshed political agendas and news reporting can still be in Korea. Old habits die hard.
When I taught little kids, I learned how to read in their faces when they were about to start crying, and give them some help or encouragement BEFORE they started. A stitch in time saves nine and all. Now that I teach adults, I use the same face-reading skills as I make my points, to pre-emptively avoid stating ideas too strongly, and edging my students into that lockdown “defend Korea” mode that the Metropolitician discusses in his famous “Why Be Critical” post.
http://metropolitician.blogs.c.....tical.html
I hate when the “defend the motherland against the accusatory critical foreigner” dynamic takes over my class, so I’ve learned to make suggestions instead of statements, and use the Socratic method (teach by asking questions) as much as possible with my higher-level students.
The other reason nobody had vigils and protests against China: China doesn’t give a rip if you protest them: facing criticism, China either detains (if you’re in China) ignores (if you’re not too influential) or counterattacks (cf: Spielberg, Carrefour, Seoul Plaza Hotel lobby). Americans at least pretend to care what people think about them.
(understantable perhaps after the so-called 5,000 years of being trampled upon and squeezed between their two powerful neighbors)
Respectable mainstream historians date Korean civilization back to about 4,300 years. For most of that time, Koreans were NOT fighting either China or Japan. Britain has been invaded more times than Korea.
Thanks for the language tip of the day. Not sure how long you’ve been reading TMH, BFK, but a majority of commenters speak fluent Korean and are familiar with Korean culture either through family ties or through long-term living experience in Korea.
actually, those poor koreans kids are trading one form of indoctrination for another. perhaps, the expat can join the chinese over there at the fith column.
1. LMB does something economically smart for Korea.
2. Koreans protest, many of them not even bothering to veil their pent up resentment towards America.
3. Irony ensues.
4. Pawi blames the American invasion of Iraq.
5. The sun sets.
Repeat.
#17, just as a disclaimer, I am an Australian too. You obviously haven’t visited a feedlot lately.
Thanks, Sonagi, for your input. The 5,000 figure is a rounded-off one almost every Korean insists on (hence the word “so-called”). No, the majority of posters on this website are not fluent in Korean. And third, I’ve lived in Korea almost forty years, which could or could not be relevant. So what was the point of your post? My point was that Koreans characteristically take out their frustrations on the weaker party, the hapless Yankees, an easy target. These vigils have little to do with anti-Americanism.
#38, Tom. No the issue could be resolved by scrapping the ethics classes that perpetuate the myth that Korean=superior/foreign=dangerous. A process of deprogramming/forgetting this dangerous nonsense for those who already learned it might be warranted too.
Re the Kyopo debate, WangKon is quickly becoming one of my favorite commenters here and I would gladly give him a hundred bucks to take that Hanborg Pawi out to an LA galbi joint and give him a stern hyongnim-to-underling talking to.
Minor epiphany here:
The so-called Mad Cow Disease demonstrations are not about Mad Cow Disease. The demonstrations should be called the KTU Demonstrations. The desperately leftist Korea Teachers Union is behind this nonsense. That is why Friday night I saw so many high school students in the company of what appeared to be their teachers.
This is a Children’s Crusade.
With a three-holiday and bored children, we may expect the streets being enthusiastically cheering the nonsense spouted off by speakers. The sheep have taken control of the public spaces yet again. At least, this time the crowds are likely to be dominated by lambs and foolish wolves dressed as the “wise” seong-seng nim.
In other words, this has nothing to do with public health and probably not even to do with protectionism. It is simply a ploy by uber nationalist socialists to reassert themselves by manipulating the voters’ children, after having their noses rubbed into reality during the past two national elections.
Those folks really have no shame. And the sooner they are exposed for who they actually are, the better Korea will be in the future.
So, baduk, what happened to all Koreans becoming pro-American once Roh was out of office?
Looks like they’re just as xenophobic as always.
No cut of American beef has ever, or will ever, kill as many people as Cho Seung-hui.
Agreed.
And that’s why I firmly oppose the importation of Cho-Seung-Huis into Korea. FTA be damned.
@#47:
There are at least seven commenters on this thread who speak fluent Korean. My point was that there aren’t many FOBs in this joint, so it isn’t necessary to provide dictionary definitions of common Korean cultural terms.
Your comments in #40 and #47 give the impression that Koreans are a bunch of jerks. However did you manage to live with them for so long?
“Looks like they’re just as xenophobic as always.”
I wouldn’t be so hypocritical if I were you, considering your’re a long time member of the Stormfront.org. You also posted these (as quoted below) in another site and got banned:
—————————————–
dogbert post Apr 20 2008, 04:00 PM
Question:
While the noble glorious European nations were inventing calculus, discovering the laws of physics which would become the basis of the modernization of the entire world today including the Starcraft game with which you Koreans are obsessed, composing the most glorious beautiful classical symphonies of all history, creating masterpieces of art and music by Rembrandt, Michaelangelo, Mozart, Beethoven, writing philosophies of modern day (Schopenhauer, Freud) that are unsurpassed in terms of influence and impact on modern society even today, what were you Koreans doing?
Answer:
Living in mud huts, $hitting in the streets, banging two stones together and calling it music, eating cockroaches and tree bark while smoking opium like lazy Asiatic dimwits they are….screaming about how their country is superior because they were born a day earlier, etc.
Not even a comparison. Puhlease….you Koreans actually think you come close to even 1/100th of the greatness of European/Caucasians?
—————————————
dogbert post Apr 20 2008, 03:28 PM
I see that the Korean custom of eating dog penises seems to have rolled over and affected the brains of many a grey-matter lacking Korean kyopo chimp. As evidenced by this fine Korean-kyopo, the Korean brain seems to develop an unhealthy obsession with discussing sex with animals. Maybe it stems from jealousy that they get after being told by women that their own little rice cocks are smaller than a cocker spaniel’s. That’s probably why Koreans eat them…for revenge. LOL.
This comment keeps getting rejected, so I removed the link.
#13: “I told him that he’s got a better chance of being run over by a car or choking on his food than getting sick from it”
Maybe not.
According to the CDC, an estimated 73,000 cases of E. coli infection and 61 deaths occur in the United States each year and most of the cases have been associated with eating undercooked, contaminated ground beef. (Medical College of Wisconsin)
American beef is not especially safe. Korean and Australian beef may be the same.
“According to the program, Koreans are genetically more susceptible to the human variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy”
I call bullshit without any evidence to back it up. MBC really knows no shame.
@Mia:
I don’t hold a trademark to this ID.
I am not a member of Stormfront.
I did not make those posts.
You are as dumb as a post.
THAT, you can quote me on.
#55 Sonagi. No, Koreans, individually, are NOT jerks. My beloved wife is Korean. But collectively … well, those of us who have lived decades in collectivist cultures such as that of China, Korea, or Japan, know exactly what’s going on with candel-light vigils in Korea, hysterical demonstrations against CNN in China, and in Japan, well, where to start? For starters, read “The Geography of Thought : How Asians and Westerners Think Differently… and Why,” by Richard Nisbett.
Sonagi and BFK are both good posters and are both right in this case: It is okay to supply a definition of “Han” — and it’s probably not necessary given the Marmot’s audience.
You’ve both made good points. May I suggest that now you just bow slightly in each other’s direction and move on, as you would do in “real life.”
‘I don’t hold a trademark to this ID. I am not a member of Stormfront. I did not make those posts.’ dogbert
you don’t know how happy i am to see you deny that filth.
Pawikigori:
You aren’t an American, you are a Korean-Chameleon. You may have citizenship, but you’re not an American. Bum is; you aren’t.
You should serve your country by joining the ROK Marines.
Restaurants aren’t even safe in Korea, but you think slaughter houses are? Come over here and see for yourself instead of being an armchair general.
Americans should demonstrate about low quality Korean cars.
I say so beef, no more Korean cars!
Umm, but Korean cars are HIGH quality these days.
I don’t think definitions of terms such as Han are always necessary. I imagine there are several people around here who are not fluent in Korean while still being versed in Korean cultural terminology.
Now as for an issue that ACTUALLY matters, what is behind LMB’s low approval ratings?
E-coli thrives in the acidic stomachs of grain-fed cattle. The stomachs of cows eating grass like nature intended are inhospitable to E-coli. Korean beef is grain-fed. Australian beef is grass-fed. Draw your own conclusion.
It’s a bit like debating healthy tobacco versus dangerous tobacco. If you’re into beef in the first place, you have a hard time posing as someone especially considered about health issues. This is just pure nationalism.
at least the protests were peaceful
Actually, it looks like they’re protesting the purple pile of pooh.
#68
or, worshipping the purple pile of pooh.
johnT you’re a tool. that’s great that you get to choose who is an american and who’s not. a white guy being an american is not an issue but a korean-american guy has to be of certain way to qualify to be an american? hey bum, johnT says your american!!!
Is it true that Korea is the only country in Asia that allows (or will soon allow) imports of U.S. beef from cattles over 30 months old?
the unsaid assumption on the part of the anti-US beef activists is that once the beef is in the country, restaurants will be buying it and passing it off as korean beef. there is absolutely no accountability in the restaurant business in korea, and people are smart enough to know that once it’s there everyone will be exposed. whether or not anyone will contract mad cow disease is a whole ‘nother question entirely.
^ also, the argument from the anti-US beef side is that once U.S beef is in the country it will be nearly impossible to avoid them, since beef-related products are used in everything from snacks to ramyeon. Also, students and soldiers will almost undoubtedly be fed cheap beef from the U.S.
I don’t really feel strongly about this issue either way, but I don’t think simply saying ‘don’t buy it if you don’t like it’ adequately addresses the concerns of those worried about mad cow disease.
Thank god he approves of my citizenship status. The INS guys visited me the other day and told me they would revoke my status if I didn’t get the official confirmation from JohnT. I was really scared there for a while, because I wouldn’t be able to go to med school without one. Thank you, JohnT!
*sniff* Now I know the true meaning of being a citizen of United States of America.
Rallies raising awareness of North Korean concentration camps get a couple of hundred people; 10,000 people show up to protest against imperialist american cows.
In Chonggyechon, hate beats compassion hands down.
I heard from somewhere that once the US beef starts flowing in, South Korea will be the United State’s biggest beef export.
Does anyone know what other Asian countries are doing in regards to beef imports from United States?
^ cm, these are what I’ve gathered so far:
Next month, Korea will start importing boneless/bone-in U.S. beef including those from cattle that are over 30 months of age.
Japan only imports boneless U.S. beef from cattle 20 months of age. (source)
Singapore only imports boneless U.S. beef from cattles under 30 months of age. (source)
Vietnam only imports boneless/bone-in U.S. beef from cattles under 30 months of age. (source-pdf warning)
Taiwan only imports boneless U.S. beef from cattles under 30 months of age. (source)
The left wing parties with help from MBC are involved in organizing and fanning the flames. Lot of those protesters are young and naive, and are politically on the left side of the political spectrum.
But not all Koreans are buying it. Read some of the comments in internet forums. They point out food hygene standards in Korea are bad, and for Koreans to be afraid of Mad Cow disease, is really funny.
My two cents: the consensus here seems to be that all the brouhaha over American beef is simply a result of Korean ignorance and xenophobia, but I think it has more to do with Lee MB’s political imprudence.
Had Lee MB managed to get a deal that is at least similar to those that Korea’s neighbors have (look at my comment above), the furor over the beef deal wouldn’t be nearly as big as it is right now. He could simply just point at other countries and say “hey, the Japanese are eating the same beef and they’re healthy.”
But instead, he has agreed to import meat that most other countries (even close U.S. allies such as Japan and UK) deem too dangerous for consumption. This is not only a bad bargain but a PR disaster.
Sorry for posting twice (and this useless post). :s
Hoju Saram - this has little to do with hate or compassion, just economics, or greed, in the form of highly protected Korean cattle industry. If Koreans could make some money from the collapse of North Korean concentration camps, you’d probably get more demonstrators.
I can’t help but notice that the kyopos at first defended pawi, but are now trying to distance themselves from him.
Now, why is that so?
Maybe because they are getting a taste of their own medicine?
Beef is hardly like tobacco. Reseach correlates red meat consumption with a higher risk of colon cancer (that’s bowel cancer for you Brits
); however, correlation is NOT causation, a fact that is so lost when health research is published and read. The problem with most meat correlation studies is that the participants ate factory farm meats. There has never been a study on people who eat pastured meats. I eat small amounts of pastured meat almost every day without worries.
I also eat plenty of fibrous vegetables and resistant starches in the form of cooked but cold potatoes, beans, rice, and other grains. Resistant starches, as their name suggests, resist being digested in the stomach and small intestine (no spike in blood sugar) and are broken down in large intestine by bacteria, creating butyrate acid, a favorite energy source for colon cells and one that protects against colon cancer. Resistant starch is resistant only if it’s unheated. The heating process breaks down the cell walls and makes the starches readily digestible. Think German potato salad or a rice and chickpea (garbanzo bean) salad with a Greek vinaigrette. Keep your colon clean and healthy with insoluble fiber and resistant starches, and red meat isn’t a problem.
And that concludes your health tip for the day.
Thanks for proving my point for me, andy. Jesus, I can play mad libs with your comments and it would be indistinguishable with any of pawi’s expat rant.
Meh. The whole ‘beef products from the US will be impossible to avoid’ argument sounds pretty weak to me. Afraid of eating ramen? Don’t. Afraid of eating at restaurants? Don’t. Or, better yet, read the label, ask for tougher labeling laws, and don’t eat at any restaurant that won’t guarantee that you won’t be fed US beef. Give students sack lunches. And I’m sure the Assembly could pass something along the lines of the Buy American Act for military procurements if they really wanted to. Denying a whole country a lower price for a product some people might deem acceptable just because you have hang-ups about reading labels and being a conscious consumer is pretty selfish, IMO. Especially since just about the only way for a human-to-human transmission of the disease you’re worried about to occur is for you to actually eat someone. Don’t like the risk? Make a conscious effort to avoid the risk factors.
#79/80:
Got it in one.
Besides which, for all those who think the demonstrations are anti-American: well, I was at both, photographing and listening, and I heard the following cussed out: Korean TV stations, all of the major Korean daily newspapers, the current Administration, and Lee Myung Bak (especially him). I did not hear one negative comment about Bush or America, or even hear them mentioned. So how’s this an “anti-American” protest? (My fiancée confirms this, that when we were there, she heard nothing of the sort either.)
Maybe the knee-jerk reaction is going on in the comment thread, not in the streets of Seoul.
By the way, #50 (Tom),
Uh, I saw a lot more college-aged couples and people in their 20s and 30s last night. Some kids, but not anywhere near as many as the young adults that were there. And a lot of kids there today were with their parents, so…
All that said, I have to confess that today was very different from yesterday. A lot more people came, a lot more microphones and bullsh*t. Oh, and tools selling copies of translations of Lenin. Which is no way to get taken seriously in 2008, dammit.
>But not all Koreans are buying it. Read some of the comments in internet forums.
I’d rather read any number of anti-left (or anti-anti-US beef, whatever) comments here, beacuse you guys hardly make any spelling or grammatical errors, in marked contrast to your Korean counterparts.
Those who are not really fluent in Korean wouldn’t know the difference, of course, but I noticed that writing skills demonstrated by many of the pro-government comment posters are way below average. Below middle or high school average, I mean. I might even say those people sound rather uneducated and…well, old.
It is someone’s opinion, not his spelling, that counts, but the observation makes me wonder about the demographics of it all.
If I were a person who was worried about safety of US Beef, I would just choose not to eat it. But the problem that I think locals realise is that this beef would find its way into every Korean’s diet regardless of how hard they tried to avoid it. If it’s cheaper, it will be used by people who only care about the bottom line (more than a few of those no matter where you live) to make things that we consume without even knowing where the beef used comes from. And then there are the unscrupulous who will sell it and purposfully mislabel it to try and look like fine upstanding protectors of Korean beef. How many people who eat chapchae from a restaurant would ask where the beef comes from? How about that savory little changjorim sidedish you are eating? Yukgaejang anyone?
If people could REALLY make a choice not to eat it then it might be less of an issue for the average person. Koreans are not stupid. They know who the protesters really are and they don’t give a cow paddy.
#88 - I didn’t eat any beef in the six years I was in Korea… it’s not that hard.
BSE is not the only reason to oppose American beef but it gets the most discussion. It’s not as if Korea is the only country that has an issue with North American beef.
As others have said, bringing in American beef will make it very hard to avoid for those who prefer not to consume it. Zonath, your solution of just not eating beef may be OK for some people, but not everyone wants to cut beef completely from their diet.
The MBC report sounds goofy, but this issue is not.
So what’s stopping those people from cooking at home or eating at restaurants that guarantee not to use American beef? Again, I fail to see the problem.
Problem 1: Cheaper low-quality goods tend to push out somewhat more expensive but significantly better quality goods. I like Australian beef in my Korean Big Macs, but that will be gone.
Problem 2: If any store puts up a sign guaranteeing not to use American beef, people like Sonagi will write their senators and representatives, and we’ll all hear what racists Koreans are.
I’m not saying that the ban shouldn’t be lifted. What I would like is the U.S. side to take a good hard look at why much of the world is down on American beef, including many Americans. It’s not just economics.
I’m all for choice, yet at the same time, I can see the argument that restaurants would be tempted to pass off cheaper American beef as hanu. Now of course, if hanu is superior to low quality American beef, the finely tuned palate of the Korean consumer shouldn’t be fooled…
If other countries have agreed to accept US beef less than 20 months old, I don’t see why Korea shouldn’t get the same deal.
As pointed out by other commenters, E-coli is more of a threat than vCJD, and Korean cows are no cleaner than American ones since their grain-fed digestive systems are an ideal breeding ground for the bug. It’s not only that grain-fed cows have exponentially larger E-coli populations; it’s that the few alkaline-tolerant bugs that manage to survive in a grass-fed cow’s digestive system are easily killed off by the acids in a human stomach.
I think the government is lessening restrictions to get more beef and eventually even lower prices for beef. Inflation is a huge threat that could wipe out economic gains and kill is 747 plan.
Korea was the 3rd largest importer of US beef.
andy is a tool.
actually, someone explain what andy is implying. i’ve always made comments independently. if my comments ever sounded like they were defending pawi, it was pure coincidence. my views on things are never far off from the majority of commentators here. most of my comments, and i suppose most of the korean-americans, being who we are, have a different perspective on things. not everything is black and white and sometimes we see things from a different angle and we call it as we see it. we are not always right. but we are not always wrong either. seriously, someone explain what he is implying.
Seoulmilk, my friend, just ignore him.
They should show the demonstrations in North Koreans protesting South Korean tainted poultry. Oh wait, they aren’t allowed to protest north of the DMZ. Of course it must be the Americans fault that they can’t protest…
I’m sure there’d be little protest even if it were allowed. Tainted poultry, beef, fish, anything would probably beat what’s actually for dinner.
Sonagi: A rule of thumb is that when medical studies keep showing a strong correlation, causation is going to be proved eventually, though if you can come up with counterveiling examples I’d be interested to see them.
Anyway, a 2005 study by the American Cancer Society (ACS) in which 150,000 adults participated showed, that those who ate the most red meat were 30 to 40 percent more likely to get colon cancer than those who ate the least. That kind of correlation sure looks like causation to me! Of course the same study showed that people who ate the most processed meat, like the spam and sausages and mystery crap that Korean mothers love to peel the plastic off and shove into their children’s mouths, were 50 percent more likely to develop colon cancer and 20 percent more likely to develop rectal cancer than those who ate the least.
What fiber does is clean the crap out of your system. Which doesn’t alter the fact that it is crap. I can wipe something dangerous off my kitchen table. That doesn’t make that something less dangerous in itself.
To go back to my original point: You’d be hard-pressed to find any people in the OECD less interested in healthy eating than the Koreans. Just mention the downsides to eating spicy grilled food every day, or washing it down with soju, etc, and you’ll get - even in educated company - jeering variations on “OK, YOU live forever then.”(This changes after they hit about 50, I find.) They worry about what they put in their mouths only if it comes from overseas.
#17,
Yes, which is why I eat bison when I’m in Canada. These animals are grassfed. Far tastier than the beef.
#36,
Koreans slaughter houses are better? I’ve seen cows in the back of a truck behind a grocery store. I’m sure it wasn’t being kept as a pet.
#56,
Well, with the help of forensic text analysis it would be fairly easy to determine authorship of those texts. I’d start with lexical density…I just couldn’t be bothered. I’ve got better things to do.
One thing, though…anyone can go to a website, use someone else’s id and post nonsense…read bellow.
Hit me with your rhythm stick, hit me, hit me. Je t’addore, ich liebe dich, hit me, hit me, hit me.
(correction, ‘below’)
Actually, I’m just a white guy who needs a new hobby…Oh, and I’m wearing a purpler leotard and a pink tutu at the moment.
See what I mean? That’s why I don’t take anything I read on the internet too seriously.
Well, it looks like someone has been deleting the posts that I made in Mia and Pawi’s names (something about wearing a purple leotard and a pink tutu and the lyrics to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHQItmEunOM
)…But other websites don’t have the luxury of having moderators who care about authorship.
BTW, ‘below’, not ‘bellow’.
Longevity studies often cite the Seventh Day Adventists’ community in Loma Linda, California, noting that many of them are vegetarian and that there is a correlation between the amount of meat consumed and lifespan. The Mormons, however, have a similar lifespan, and they eat meat. What the two groups share in common are abstention from smoking, strong faith, and family and community ties.
Last year a publication was released detailing the largest, most comprehensive examination of research studies on food and cancer. The study provided positive and negative correlations and degree of reliability (some studies contradicted each other) for most commonly consumed animal and plant foods. The tricky thing about interpreting the results is that people who eat a lot of meat also tend to eat a lot of dairy and little fresh produce. They may also tend not to exercise. Vegetarians are by nature health-conscious and tend to exercise and practice other good living habits, so it’s hard to pinpoint the benefits of each factor. There’s a science involved. We know specifically how vegetables help the body with soluble and insoluble fiber and antioxidants. If meat promotes cancer, what is the science behind it?
True, but not all meat is crap. As I said, the meat consumed by participants in these studies is the factory farm stuff, not grass-fed.
Yes, there is a Korea-hater posting under the username rjkoehler in the Asia Finest forum. Robert’s good name hasn’t been tarnished, for no one believes the commenter is actually Robert.
My point is when pawi did his anti-expat comments, none of the kyopos came forward and told him to cut it out. No kyopos made fun of his comments. As a matter of fact, bumfromkorea went as far as to say that the expats were being “too hard on pawi.” Plus the “I understand why pawi is doing this” line from some of the other kyopo commentators. On the other hand,when I started my line of commenting, Sonagi and Maddlew, had criticized my comments.
Now I see bumfrom”let’s give pawi a break” korea making not so flattering comments about pawi comparing him to me, plus the other kyopo commentators also slowly coming forward against pawi.
Why the change in position?
Is it because the kyopos here realized that pawi is more of a liability? It is also interesting to note that this started happening after I started commenting here.
Hey I don’t expect my comments to be taken seriously, but when some of the kyopos react to them in the manner above, well…..
Even Hank Hill doesn’t like factory farmed beef:
“Raise the Steaks”
After buying tough, unsavory steaks at the Mega-Lo-Mart, Hank, at Appleseed’s suggestion, visits the town co-op in search of better meat. After falling in love with the delicious organic food, Hank becomes a co-op volunteer and co-owner. The co-op starts to make money and eventually is bought out by the Mega-Lo-Mart Corporation, which turns it into a “Mega-Lo-Op” that doesn’t live up to the original co-op “fresh” mentality. Motivated to preserve something of the original co-op, Hank convinces Appleseed that they should start their own mini co-op farm in his backyard. Cattle from the farm wander onto Kahn’s property and the plan is no longer Prime.
http://tv.yahoo.com/king-of-th.....ode/153044
#99:
“A rule of thumb is that when medical studies keep showing a strong correlation, causation is going to be proved eventually, though if you can come up with counterveiling examples I’d be interested to see them.”
I’m not sure if this was her point, but what I think she was saying is that the studies showing a strong correlation between high been consumption and colon cancer