If you think protesting US beef is stupid in Korea, then this group has to be the stupidest protesters of all protesting in Paris:
Does anyone know if US beef is imported to France? If so that would be hilarious if these people have been eating US beef all along in France.
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10:00 am on June 3rd, 2008 1
I think you mistakely wrote “imported” to France instead of “exported” to France.
You certainly don’t have to look as far as to France to determine whether Koreans abroad consume US beef. The Korean community in America eat US beef daily, and there has not been a single confirmed fatality due to MDC.
There are plenty of objective information about MDC available, espeically online. But in Youtube alone you find Korean netizens who claim “European” studies established that MDC (CJD or VJCD in humans) is contagious among humans. Wrong. You also can’t get MDC from cosmetics / makeups because the lipids will likely kill the prions that trigger the disease. Dairy products have also been proven safe from MDC infection. I can go on and on.
Korean netizens in Youtube post gibberish that range from “Eating US beef kills our freedom” and “.00000000001 probability of infection means you can still get sick”. I’m aghast.
10:01 am on June 3rd, 2008 2
I’ve met quite a few Koreans who have spent time in Paris, and I found them a special breed of stupid.
11:31 am on June 3rd, 2008 3
The only smart Korean is Hines Ward and he is a half-breed
11:42 am on June 3rd, 2008 4
Research the US record of forcing it’s beef abroad and you’ll see the EU began enforcing strict non-GMO food importation guidelines in the late 90’s in direct answer to the American strong-arm campaign of its overseas beef sales. Americans tried, among other tactics, to shame the EU into abandoning it’s hormone-free-food stance; however, non-GMO food has since become quite fashionable even in the US.
Perhaps the Korean people perfer fish freshly and locally caught to hormone-treated beef that has been frozen and shipped thousands of miles? Cross your fingers the preference for fresh fish doesn’t become standard in the US!
12:23 pm on June 3rd, 2008 5
Korean beef cattle are regularly treated with drugs (clenbuterol) that are banned for use in beef cattle in the USA.
So much for your brilliant theory, late to the party. A day late and a dollar short, I’d say.
1:30 pm on June 3rd, 2008 6
South Koreans purely and simply must stop associating with rude and stpid Americans. Americans are retarded idiots!
1:39 pm on June 3rd, 2008 7
LMFAO.
This is even beyond the usual Korean herd idiocy.
1:40 pm on June 3rd, 2008 8
I agree, US must leave, the USA should leave. Then North Korean will take over, you will lose your PC bangs and Cell phones, hell no worries about beef either after you are reduced to eatting twigs, berrys, maybe even your old children like they do in north Korea.
I am totally for this! it would also force the US to start importing more Quality electronics from Japan rather then there korean wannabe counter parts.
1:40 pm on June 3rd, 2008 9
Koreans love to say that its only a few Koreans at the protests, or its only young people. These are all lies. Koreans from around the world feel the same way. They all hate Ameicans. The worst offenders are Korean Americans.
Those Koreans living in France hate America. Not news to me. Every Korean living in the USA I have met hates America… not news to me. I even heard of this one dishwasher in Brazil who is barely literate, yet he hates the USA too. He has never even met an American.
I wonder if the Koreans living in France are taking orders from the hive?
1:43 pm on June 3rd, 2008 10
Nope it anit just the few. It’s ALL of us who want the freakin GIs and Chinese off the land of South Korea. Move biatch!
1:48 pm on June 3rd, 2008 11
“Nope it anit just the few. It’s ALL of us”
Finally some honesty.
2:02 pm on June 3rd, 2008 12
I was just talking to my friend in Korean
She just told me that
“the big problem is that the USA is going to sell us poor quality Beef that is more then 3 months old, so it has a higher rate of Mad Cow disease infection”
First off, if we are selling old beef, it has to be mega frozen or it wouldn’t be fit for human consumption (3 months for iced meat isn’t a huge deal).
Secondly, the age of the beef has ABSOLUTELY no effect on BSE.
Lastly it still have not be proven that BSE causes CJD…while there is a lot of evidence to support it, a direct, “if you eat BSE meat you get CJD” correlation has YET to be proven.
2:06 pm on June 3rd, 2008 13
You IDIOT, its NOT 3 months, its 30 months! Arrhhh… typical stuoid ass American!
2:15 pm on June 3rd, 2008 14
your right, my friend FROM KOREA was wrong (as I was quoting her, thanks for properly reading my post.) what you are referring to is that they are allowed to sell cattle after 30 months of age, is what you are referring to. Linking to a once again UNPROVEN statement that older cows have a better chance of having BSE then younger ones (which has no grounds sense, as it can effect any cow based on contact, and even most heath researchers in the UK say this is total BS).
2:52 pm on June 3rd, 2008 15
So last night I wanted to go to an Asian massage parlor. I only had a few bucks. I couldn’t afford a chinese massage parlor. The service is good, but it would cost more than I had. Then I went to a Thai massage parlor. The girls looked fine, but I only had enough for about 15 minutes of service. Not enough time. Since I only had a few bucks, I decided to go to a Korean massage parlor. The place stunk worse than a camel that hasn’t seen water in six months. Since I was looking for a cheap woman, going Korean was my only choice. I picked the least ugly one of the bunch. Her crotch smelled like rotten kimchi. She told me that her parents thought that she was studying in the US, but she much prefered to give pleasure to Americans. She let me go on her face and I threw a few bucks on the ground as a tip. She hurriedly picked up the money and bowed and thanked me. She said that the only thing that a Korean was good for was to service an American. I doubt I will go back. I will save up and buy a quality Chinese woman next time. The Korean stuff is too inferior to the Chinese.
5:45 pm on June 3rd, 2008 16
Whew, the level of discourse is raised, once again.
6:09 pm on June 3rd, 2008 17
His IP address has been added to the spam que so hopefully Akismet will start banning his comments.
10:11 pm on June 3rd, 2008 18
in regards to koreans’ desire for banning imports of cows over 30 months,
what is the problem with this request?
do the US ranchers have difficulty in aging their cows so as to cause logistical difficulties that hinder profit?
rather other countries also enforce this rule which is while koreans desire it. regardless of rationality or scientific facts, the truth of the matter is this issue really isn’t about the the risk of getting mad cow, it’s more about pride and feeling let down by their own gov’t. who lower standards compared to other importing nations, especially the developed ones.
i don’t have the exact details on this but if anyone researched the european import standards for US beef (if they import any) i am pretty confident they don’t allow beef over 30 months regardless of the scientific proof of safety…
anyone who has spent anytime in korea should know the crazy level of “keeping up with the jones” going on in korea.
11:12 pm on June 3rd, 2008 19
“anyone who has spent anytime in korea should know the crazy level of “keeping up with the jones” going on in korea.”
Koreans eat dog meat, and I never met a puppy boiling Jones. I have met a few dog eating Kims. I know this one dog eating Yu, who used to steal neighbors dogs and eat them.
Here is a similar story.
hxxp://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200605/200605090027.html
7:23 am on June 4th, 2008 20
jhaelin, I am looking for info if France imports from the US and what I have found so far is that France imports beef from the UK which is has had more mad cow cases then anywhere else in world.
Not only to do they import the UK beef they import beef from over 30 month old cattle:
http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?id=45153-it-s-over
Reading the article the dispute between the UK and France is nearly identical to the US and Korea. France was trying to protect their domestic cattle ranchers from competition by using the mad cow issue long after the rest of Europe was already allowing in imports of UK beef.
If Europe is allowing imports of UK beef over 30 months they are assuredly allowing imports of over 30 month old American beef. What I have found about American beef in Europe is that the EU has been banning US beef treated with hormones. This is actually a more legitimate concern then the mad cow nonsense.
Also if the US beef issue had anything to do with public food safety then why aren’t the Korean mobs demanding the same safety standards of their own Korean beef industry?
http://rokdrop.com/2008/05/20/korean-beef-less-safe-then-american-beef/
Korean beef farmers are not registered with the world wide body that monitors the safety of the beef industry. What do the Korean beef ranchers have to hide? This is proof that US beef is safer then Korean beef.
Have you seen Korean cattle ranches? I have seen plenty of them and the cows are kept in small cattle pins, receive little exercise, and do not graze and are instead given feed. What they are fed who knows since Korea doesn’t belong to the global watch dog agency.
The only cattle farm I have seen in Korea with large grazing land is the Hyundai farm near Seosan. The cows there looked quite healthy.
But like I said before this issue has nothing to do with beef safety anyway.
7:24 am on June 4th, 2008 21
“Let them eat American Beef!” -French Queen.
7:51 am on June 4th, 2008 22
Thats just a bunch of Koreans, wtf?
9:11 am on June 4th, 2008 23
last time i checked feed with infected sheep leftovers is thought to be the cause of BSE in the first place. You know, the more I think about it, if this whole protest was to just protect domestic farmers, don’t you think they should outright say it? That totally makes more sense to me (and is a valid argument). Protecting ones’ country’s own assets is a totally legitimate argument (as we have done here in the USA about factory jobs, and failed), but spinning it into an unfounded attack on a friendly nation is totally uncalled for.
9:29 am on June 4th, 2008 24
US must leave!
We are in agreement about termination of the alliance. However, I suspect we have very different reasons for this shared sentiment. Btw, Chinese nationals riot in your capital city with impunity. What does that say about Korean honor?
9:47 am on June 4th, 2008 25
If “US must leave!” gets his way I would suggest he learn Chinese and get some recipes for twigs and grass kimchi and perhaps stone soup.
…and they thought the Japanese occupation was brutal, imagine what KimJung Il would do.
I would also respectfully ask for my Uncles leg back, he lost it over here in the early 50’s defending idiots, like “US must leave!”.
3:03 pm on June 4th, 2008 26
i think in the english-language korean media and expat blogs, the protests are being portrayed solely as an issue of safety from vCJD. but is it not possible that the core issue for the protest is not so simple?
but this is all moot when we consider the old axiom, that “the customer is always right.” these protests contrary to what some may believe is not to ban US beef but to renegotiate BACK to the standards that korea had maintained and which most other importing nations maintain. when the new president unilaterally dismissed all these standards and basically threw out all the regulations, understandably the koreans felt a bit p’d off. furthermore, to point to korean domestic beef industry and its supposed lack of standards as an argument misses the point of these protests. at the core, the protests are not only about the supposed rise in health risks, it’s about a government that lowered the standards to levels unmatched internationally due to its lack there of.
regardless of it all the US exporters can still make a nice profit importing beef under the old regulations but somehow they want the whole cake and the pie too because if the prize that lee gave goes through, the exporters can now export beef that would otherwise have not been sold for human consumption. e.g. milk giving cows over 30 months which would otherwise have become feeders for other livestocks and pets. if koreans, as customers (importers) are now demanding to only consume beef at the standards other nations are following than does that somehow logically lead us to make negative estimations of their intelligence?
we can accuse the korean government for going back on a trade deal but it seems unfair to grossly judge the korean consumer based on a consumption choice that they are making, which is what this is all about….a choice.
3:41 pm on June 4th, 2008 27
jhaelin,
its a good point you make, however i think most of the controversy you have been reading about on this blog isn’t that the Koreans are protesting the importing of beef. It’s that its a direct xenophobic attack on Americans and American Soldiers in Korea.
I doubt Koreans really care about the age of the beef, who’s to say they have to accept Beef that is over 30 months of age? I think that would be the importer’s responsibility rather then the government (they have pets and livestock to feed in korea too right?) However when you get protesters in France (who gets UK beef, you know the one that has actually had mad cow outbreaks) saying that they don’t want tainted beef coming to the homeland…How ludicrous is that? As I said before, this to me seems like some serious politics and fears of country-wide job-loss, however when you dumb down the protest to something as simple and dumb as “Not one Korean death from the US Beef”, if you are an American you have the right to be a little offended by such a statement. American Corporations are no more or less evil then the ones you see in the rest of the world including Korea, and our (American’s) goal is not to send poisoned beef to the country (ask any drug dealer, you don’t make money by killing your clientèle).
If the underlying truth to the protests is what i think it is, then the Korean people could go about a much more constructive way of stating there views, and the ROK’s government could do a much better job of explaining the pros and cons of their proposition.
3:54 pm on June 4th, 2008 28
Are my comment getting ate by the filter.
4:16 pm on June 4th, 2008 29
dan,
well said and i agree at the mass-media-portrayed level this protest is being dumbed down and some political party members are using the situation for personal and party gains rather than for legitimate concerns for korean voters.
but as an american i am not sure i feel this to be a specifically anti-american issue. no doubt there are anti-american factions participating in these protests (as with any nationwide protest in korea).
maybe it’s because of my personal political leanings and view of justice, as well as conception of democracy, but to me these protest and the ability of koreans to make such a fuss that their government has to deal with is a great thing. it’s an amazing thing and regardless of how tainted it may be with some shaky facts less than firm convictions
4:18 pm on June 4th, 2008 30
dan,
well said and i agree at the mass-media-portrayed level this protest is being dumbed down and some political party members are using the situation for personal and party gains rather than for legitimate concerns for korean voters.
but as an american i am not sure i feel this to be a specifically anti-american issue. no doubt there are anti-american factions participating in these protests (as with any nationwide protest in korea).
maybe it’s because of my personal political leanings and view of justice, as well as conception of democracy, but to me these protest and the ability of koreans to make such a fuss that their government has to deal with is a great thing. it’s an amazing thing and regardless of how tainted they may be with shaky facts and less than firm convictions, i wish folks back home had done something similar 5 years back and mainatined the standards set down by the forefathers.
4:20 pm on June 4th, 2008 31
sorry for the double but i hit submit before the finish
5:58 pm on June 4th, 2008 32
jhaelin thanks for thoughtful comments but I disagree this is all about how Lee Myung-bak handled the issue. This is what the DLP, UDP, anti-US groups want people to believe now as they begin to spin the issue as foreign media are beginning to pay more attention to the issue. You ask the average Korean attending these protests why they are there, they claim the US is trying to kill them:
Also is this was only about 2MB then why demand renegotiation of the US beef imports when Americans are eating beef over 30 months old and exporting and importing beef to and from other countries over 30 months old?
http://tinyurl.com/2jonk6
http://tinyurl.com/ccjlj
If people were simply demanding that 2MB fire cabinet members then I think the claim this is all about 2MB would be valid but this is not what the mob is demanding.
Also bringing up domestic Korean beef standards is valid because the mob wants the US to meet safety standards that they are not willing to impose on their own domestic meat industry.
3:58 am on June 5th, 2008 33
shattered is quite wrong… Perhaps the Koreans in America he knows hate America; but there is a vastly different group in Texas…
10:58 pm on June 7th, 2008 34