Life and Seoul

Monday, October 01, 2007

To the market for burgers ...
U.S. meat has been the source of a lot of controversy here. Korea is a pretty closed country to exports, and US beef has been banned since 2003 out of fears of mad cow disease. Of course, the many cattle farmers here who get the highest prices in the world for their beef haven't been complaining. However, as part of a controversial free trade agreement, U.S. beef is coming back to the market. Slowly. Boneless beef only, at first.
The first day it went on sale, Patty, me, Jack and Anne went to the market to buy some U.S. beef! As we went in, we saw about 500 Korean troops marching out of the store. Patty started to get nervous. We went inside, and found no beef for sale. Protesters had stormed the store about two hours earlier, trashed the place and forced the store to agree not to sell any beef.
Here's a link with a photo of a protester throwing manure at the beef counter
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2878042

Happily, however, US beef is now sold at stores all across the country and the protests have faded away ...

1 Comments:

At 5:56 AM, Blogger Steve said...

And what's with all the beef over beef? After all people are just wondering "Where's the beef?" haha

 

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