Road Less Traveled

By Lee Byong-chul

No South Korean president has ever faced criticism from his people and witnessed division within his own party in just a few months after the start of his government.

When President Lee Myung-bak held the summit with U.S. President George W. Bush at Camp David, he would not have imagined that U.S. beef could be a political poison that would almost paralyze the nation and drive his ``bulldozer'' leadership into a crisis.

In short, the newly loosened quarantine regulations over the import of U.S. beef have become a lightning rod of the Lee government. Even numerous ethnic Koreans in the United States enjoy eating its beef. But the protestors criticize the South Korean government for rushing to end the beef deal with the U.S. before the summit talk at Camp David.

Although the government's frustration over the media's lopsided criticism is understandable, I find it difficult to believe that the fears of mad cow disease are ``baloney.''

As a result President Lee's approval rating plummeted to less than 30 percent. Barraged with criticism from within the governing Grand National Party, Lee was forced to draw a line to possibly stop importing U.S. beef in case of an outbreak of mad cow disease despite the trade friction with the United States.

His strikingly low popularity was clearly a contrast to the 48.7 percent of votes he gleaned in the Dec. 19 presidential election by the largest margin of 5.3 million. From the perspective of the moderate conservative factions, thus, it must be ``unbearable'' to watch the pragmatic center-of-the-right-wing government foundering helplessly.

They consider that the seeds of anti-U.S. beef are nurtured by the leftwing factions, which vehemently oppose the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement per se.

On the contrary, the liberals have long argued that South Korea is the poster child for the globalization trend, where the U.S. continues to grab the world economy to ensconce itself in power. The Roh Moo-hyun government had also been targeted by the liberal-led campaigns of criticism.

It goes without saying that the government's announcement to permit to import over 30-month-old U.S. beef that has high possibility risk elements of mad cow disease tarnished severely the image of the former mayor of metropolitan Seoul, particularly amid the cattish gossips over the disease.

It seems that for the time being there is no finish line regarding the disease matter, since the opposition parties and liberal civic groups will use their strong posture against the issue to force President Lee to negotiate with the United States again ― even though there is less than a 1 percent chance of dealing with the United States.

One of the reasons that the opposition parties are resolved to keep fighting is resentment against the government full of officials talking languages one can't understand.

On that issue, the opposition parties have a stronger point in that from the beginning, the government and the ruling party alike failed to provide the people with any kind of persuasive information and materials concerned. Their fence-sitting, at the initial period of the controversy, is therefore to blame, given that the disease is a matter of the future, not of today.

In every battle or negotiation, there is a winner and a loser. Yet if the chaos over the issue of beef imports continues to spread quickly in a politically calculated and provocative manner prior to making an in-depth research and discussions on the disease, it will certainly complicate the nation.

In that case, there is nothing to gain and much to lose. That said, both the government and the opposition parties may be remembered as the losers of the game led by the United States, unless they strengthen the infrastructure such that the laws and rules concerning the food safety net system avoid conflicts of interest.

Such conflicts should be better policed. Regardless of the tensions that overshadow the future of the battered Lee government, there is no question that the United States stands to benefit from some kind of a deal in terms of national interest.

The decision to import U.S. beef on a large scale, regardless of the age of cattle, already has become a strongly populist policy of polarizing the nation. In a sense, it was a messiah to the leftwing factions that are worried that they might lose their political bases.

In other words, the imports have become a good political prey for the opponents that have successfully positioned the disease as flu like the avian influenza being rampant here in Korea.

That decision turned out a recipe for political crisis, in that the government did not take it seriously that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. With the plummet of Lee's approval rating, the Lee government doesn't have a plausible route to the pragmatic policies.

Further, the government failed to effectively capitalize on the Internet to attract the positive aspects of the U.S. beef imports, not to mention the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. Instead, the Internet served as a graveyard for the Lee government's poor public relations.

Under pressure from significant numbers of housewives and young students taking to the street downtown every night to demonstrate against the government's inconsiderate response to the safety problems, after all, the government hastily declared that it would ban U.S. beef immediately in the event that mad cow disease occurs in the United States.

Nevertheless, delighted with their success in exploiting the danger of mad cow disease, the opposition parties are likely to continue to take their offensive with the government in order to galvanize dissenting voices of echoing the danger. Yet the ruling party charges that it is plain hokum and an old political trick, while seeing it as an act of hypocrisy.

Apparently, they are worried that U.S. beef imports will serve as the anti-American symbol of the fate of the alliance. But I find it pressing that the government formulates its comprehensive food safety systems.

There is one road ahead, which is the one less traveled. They are on the threshold of taking the uncertain road. The impression of the road is a very complicated tapestry woven by a variety of artists.

It is thus only natural that people on the street feel afraid of the new course and some of them strongly refuse to walk it.

If the leader believes that road is the way, we should all take part, and he should have persuaded the people to join him by explaining the inevitability and imperativeness of the deal in a more proactive manner at the risk of the fate of the regime. Leadership is the power to capture the hearts and minds of people in despair.

Lee Byong-chul is senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation, a nonpartisan policy advisory body based in Seoul. He can be reached at bcleebc@gmail.com.