hankyoreh

Gyeonggi Province

Despite growing criticism that the South Korean government’s “additional agreement” with the United States failed to ease fears about the safety of American beef and protect Seoul’s quarantine sovereignty, the South’s Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plans to issue a public notice of the new sanitary conditions between May 23 and 26 to resume imports of U.S. beef.

On May 21, an Agriculture Ministry official said, “We have been in consultation with the Trade Ministry to reflect the additional agreement in the new import quarantine rules. As scheduled, public announcement of new sanitary conditions will be made this weekend or early next week.” He added, “We plan to send individual responses to 334 opinions from the general public (submitted about the U.S. beef import agreement), but are undecided on whether to reflect the opinions in the public announcement.”

However, it was uncertain whether the ministry would go ahead with making the public announcement if a motion to dismiss Agriculture Minister Chung Woon-chun, submitted by the three opposition parties, the United Democratic Party, the Liberty Forward Party and the Democratic Labor Party, is passed during the National Assembly’s regular session on May 22-23.

Along with this, a move to thwart shipments of U.S. beef was gaining momentum. On the same day, the Korean Transport Workers’ Union held demonstrations at several cargo terminals in Busan, where tons of frozen U.S. beef are in reserve, and at a tollgate in Giheung, Gyeonggi Province, to persuade people to join the movement. The umbrella union of truckers distributed some 20,000 leaflets that read “Let’s make contact with the union when a cargo truck believed to be carrying U.S. beef is found.”

Union members also held one-on-one meetings with truckers to persuade them to refuse shipments of U.S. beef. “If U.S. beef is sent for shipment after the government’s public announcement is made, we plan to block (the shipments) with physical force,” said a union official. On the day before the public announcement, union members in South Gyeongsang Province plan to hold an overnight protest at the cargo terminals.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the nation’s two largest umbrella labor groups, also plans to block shipments of U.S. beef in alliance with the truckers’ union and other industrial unions.

In the meantime, a nationwide coalition of civic groups against the resumption of U.S. beef imports, called the “People’s Countermeasure Council against Full Imports of U.S. Beef,” will hold its 15th candlelight protest at of 7:00 p.m. on May 22 at Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon Plaza and other sites. Some 10,000 members of the National Alliance of Poor People and the Korea Peasants League also plan to join the candlelight protest after holding separate demonstrations at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun and on Yeouido.

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