Yonhap News is reporting that prosecutors have begun an investigation of MBC’s “PD Notebook.”
The investigation was requested by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which claims PD Notebook intentionally distorted facts in its report on US beef and Mad Cow Disease.
Choe Sang-hun frames the story of the anti-US beef protests for a Western audience in the IHT. Choe’s tale includes a modern version of high schooler Yu Kwan-soon’s leading role in the March 1, 1919 movement:
And the police investigating who organized the country’s biggest antigovernment protests in two decades ended up rummaging in cyberspace. [...]
An article in the IHT, gives a bit of a background on the recent issues surrounding US beef.
About 50 countries, including Korea, Taiwan and Japan the last of which accounted for 36 percent of American beef exports closed their doors to American beef after the first confirmed case mad cow disease was found in Moses [...]
According to some school parents and visa proxy businesses, the United States is rejecting a lot more applicants for student visas, leading some to wonder why.
The JoongAng Ilbo cites two examples. One 16-year-old was accepted to a famous private boarding school in Virginia. On May 21, however, his visa was rejected, the US embassy saying [...]
Not sure if this will be filed away as “waving the white flag” by anyone, but the U.S. Beef industry appears to be okay with exporting beef from cattle 30 months or younger. To meet the desires of the Korean customer, three associations representing the U.S. beef industry delivered a letter to Secretary of Agriculture [...]
The New York Times is reporting that South Korean and US trade negotiators are close to reaching a revised agreement in which US beef exporters would voluntarily ship only beef from cows younger than 30 months.
Under the probable agreement, the United States would not, strictly speaking, change its trade rules, according to the officials close [...]
Interesting headline in the Korea Times.
Responding to a column by our own Andy Jackson in the Korea Times, Kim Jin-hyun castigates our friend and colleague for being culturally ignorant:
Now I ask Mr. Jackson how much he knows about Korean culture. I know most Americans eat only steak, but Koreans eat most parts of a cow.
Korean food culture is closely related [...]
At the press conference with DMC from RUN-DMC today, the Korean press corps asked about the mad cow issue, to which DMC, who had no idea what they were talking about, gave a very general and joking reply along the lines of “Well, I guess no one wants mad cow” and “Gotta protect the people, [...]
In the IHT, Philip Bowring writes that while Chinese nationalism gets all the attention, Korean nationalism could prove just as destabilizing:
The two Koreas, even combined, are no match for China’s economic and military might. But the latent intensity of nationalism on both sides of the peninsula’s demilitarized zone is more focused and potent.
For all their [...]
Yes, you are sick about seeing stuff about it. Yes, here it is one more time.
I have a piece on the US beef issue in today’s Korea Times. The first half mainly deals with how the Lee administration was totally unready to deal with the rapid spread of misinformation regarding the issue. The second half [...]
From AgWeb:
If you don’t think you feel, my German grandmother always told me. Well in the case of the frustrating U.S. beef trade impasse with South Korea, it is the failure of the Bush administration to follow suggestions of the U.S. beef trade many months ago that, if followed, would have likely meant a lot [...]
In a nice Chosun Ilbo editorial, the fact that Hyundai Motor’s labor union is considering a sympathy strike against U.S. beef imports is properly derided. Hyundai workers may have the most to gain from an FTA with the U.S. since tariffs on Korean cars will be considerably reduced, a fact that is making the [...]
Mitchell Bard of The Huffington Post acknowledges that the protests regarding American beef imports have a nationalistic root. However, his take away is different than other analysts. Mitchell looks at the protests in Korea and bemoans why there are no similar displays of outrages in the U.S.
Granted, The Huffington Post is a liberal [...]
Sen. Obama rips Korea. Again (OK, he said this last month):
As he campaigns against what he describes as unfair foreign trade deals, Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, often singles out Japan and especially South Korea for criticism. Both countries, he complains, have erected “all kinds of restrictions and barriers” to shut out American [...]
Over at Anti-War.com, Ivan Eland takes note of the beef protests in an argument for pulling US troops out of Korea. I think the headline — Ungrateful Allies — is both unhelpful and irrelevant, and his characterization of the demonstrations as a protest against LMB’s overly deferential attitude towards the United States is simplistic, but [...]
Leave it to the Canucks to write the bleeding heart, conciliatory commentary on the U.S. Beef train wreck.
In today’s Globe and Mail, Marcus Gee asks everyone, to “Give Mr. Lee a Chance.”
Some interesting passages:
South Koreans are awfully hard to please. The four previous presidents have left office in bad odour with voters, a fickle tribe [...]
In terms of allies I’d want, North Korea ranks just below Burma, Zimbabwe and Sudan.
I’ve long felt a major problem with US foreign policy is not our lack of “allies,” but rather our surplus of “allies,” many complete douche bags of marginal strategic value to whom we’ve nonetheless committed ourselves politically and sometimes militarily.
Anyway, respected [...]
Korean portal site Naver.com is now being forced to defend itself against allegations of pro-government bias, manipulating top search word lists and banning protest-related keywords in comments.
