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but have added a call for the president to resign.

As street rallies and demonstrations against the government’s public announcement of the U.S. beef deal, the final administrative step prior to resumption of U.S. beef imports, have become increasingly vigorous from day to day, the anger of the general public seems to have a new role to play in the nation’s anti-government battle. In the wake of the weekend rallies, which have been the biggest in scale thus far, more slogans calling for President Lee Myung-bak to step down have appeared than calls for the government to withdraw the notice and renegotiate the sanitary conditions for beef imports with the United States. All street marches led to the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae, or the Blue House.

Some 60,000 people participated in a candlelight protest in front of Seoul City Hall Plaza on May 31, the biggest in scale since a series of almost daily overnight rallies began on May 2. The People’s Countermeasure Council against the Full Resumption of Imports of U.S. Beef Endangered with Mad Cow Disease, which organized the rally, estimates that some 100,000 people joined the rally, while police said that the number was closer to 40,000. Some 40,000 other protesters joined similar rallies in about 90 other cities nationwide, calling on the government to scrap the public announcement and for President Lee to resign.

At around 8:40 p.m. on May 31, citizens in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun, Hyojaro and Gyeongbokgung subway stations marched toward the presidential office. As the protesters tried to break through police barricades, riot police fired water canons and sprayed fire extinguishers to disperse crowds for the first time since the rallies began. Police detained 165 people in the wake of the clash, while another 63 demonstrators were taken into custody near the presidential office as they were trying to march toward Cheong Wa Dae with a large banner. Of those detained, six were released. The remaining 222 people have been questioned in 20 police stations in Seoul.

Some 60 protesters were injured, organizers say. One 24-year-old person, who was only identified by the surname Park, was hospitalized after suffering from a facial injury incurred as the result of a blast from the the police’s water canon. Police said 41 police officers sustained fractures and other injuries.

The People’s Countermeasure Council, the rally organizer, held a press conference at an office of the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy at 2:00 p.m. on June 1, during which the civic group denounced the violent police crackdown. “Within less than 100 days of its inauguration, the government is beating people. We can’t help but regard this as an all-out declaration of war against the people,” the group said, adding that it is planning to launch a more powerful anti-government battle. Later that day, at 7:00 p.m., the group held another candlelight rally in front of Seoul City Hall Plaza.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the weekend rallies, the street protests took on a new role in the anti-government battle. “Large-scale demonstrations were held in Busan and Gwangju on May 31 and there are signs that the rallies are spreading across the country, just as with the pro-democracy uprising of June 1987,” the organizer predicted. On June 1, some 1,000 university students in Busan and the Jeolla provinces arrived in Seoul to join the street rallies. The Korea Confederation of Trade Unions also plans to hold an all-out anti-government protest, including a general strike.

Kim Jong-yeop, a professor at Hanshin University who visited a rally on May 31, said, “Among citizens, the slogan ‘Down with Lee Myung-bak’ was gaining more momentum than the slogan ‘Scrap the public notice.’ As the government has turned a deaf ear to the people, citizens themselves have taken on the issue of upholding democracy.”

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