Korean anger over more than just American beef

SEOUL, South Korea — When tens of thousands of South Koreans spilled into central Seoul on Tuesday in the country's largest anti-government protest in 20 years, the police built a barricade with shipping containers. They coated them with oil and filled them with sandbags so protesters could not climb or topple them to march on President Lee Myung-bak's office a couple of blocks away.

Faced with the wall, people pasted numerous identical leaflets on it, their message dramatically summarizing Lee's image and alienation from many of his people: "This is a new border for our country. From here starts the U.S. state of South Korea."

In the background, a female voice from a battery of loudspeakers led the crowd to chant: "Lee Myung-bak is Lee Wan-yong!"

Lee Wan-yong is an infamous name every South Korean child knows. A royal court minister at the turn of the 20th century who helped Imperial Japan annex Korea as a colony, he is Korea's No. 1 national traitor.

The protests illuminate the shift in Lee's political fortunes. When he was elected in December, South Koreans hailed him as a long-awaited leader who could salvage their country's alliance with the U.S., which was strained under Lee's left-leaning predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

Only six months later, Lee finds Koreans vilifying him as something Roh famously said he would never become: "a Korean leader kowtowing to the Americans."

"While championing a pragmatic leadership, Lee overlooked Koreans' nationalistic pride," said Choi Jin, director of the Institute of Presidential Leadership in Seoul. "If what troubled Roh's presidency was too much nationalism, Lee's problem is a lack of it."

The chants showed that the demonstration was not merely about the president's unpopular decision to lift a ban on American beef imports. It also tapped into Korean pride.

This is a small country in a strategic location with a deep sense of grievance about being manipulated by the great powers around it. Chinese emperors demanded tribute from Korea; Japanese occupiers forbade Koreans to speak their own language; American, Chinese and Russian Cold War rivalries divided Korea in two. While mostly approving of their alliance with the U.S., South Koreans remain acutely sensitive to any suggestion that they must do America's bidding.

Lee's slumping popularity was sown in his first glorious moment as president.

On April 19, he became the first South Korean leader to be invited to the U.S. presidential retreat of Camp David, Md. Days before the visit, his aides billed the meeting with President Bush as a momentous event — one that never would have been granted to leaders like Roh, who was often accused of being too nationalistic and anti-American.

South Koreans who had fought alongside the Americans during the Korean War in the early 1950s took to the streets in joy. They trusted Lee to save the country from what they called "leftist, anti-U.S. and pro-North Korean elements," such as Roh.

On the eve of the summit meeting, South Korea agreed to lift a ban on American beef imports, first imposed in 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was confirmed in a cow in Washington state. By traveling with a political gift for Bush, Lee demonstrated how eager he was to rebuild ties with the U.S.

Little did he apparently imagine the reaction at home among young South Koreans. "What he did was little different from an old Korean king offering tribute to a Chinese emperor," said Kim Sook-yi, a 35-year-old homemaker who joined the protest Tuesday with her two children. "This time, we give a tribute to Washington? It's humiliating, bad for education for Korean children."

The demonstrations began May 2, when hundreds of teenagers held a candlelight vigil in Seoul, and quickly snowballed. By this week they had become so overpowering that the entire cabinet offered to resign.

To many South Koreans, the beef dispute was not entirely about health concerns or science. It was not entirely about the economy, either — beef from the U.S. is half the price of homegrown meat. To them, it is also the latest symbolic test of whether their leader can resist pressure from superpowers, even if there is good reason for the pressure, as is the case in the beef dispute.

South Korea has built the world's 13th largest economy largely through exports. Nonetheless, historical resentments linger.

South Koreans in their 40s remember a popular childhood song handed down from their fathers and grandfathers: "Don't be cheated by the Soviets. Don't trust the Americans. Or the Japanese will rise again." Koreans still chafe at the fact that the U.S. and the Soviet Union divided Korea after liberating it from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II.

When two South Korean teenage girls were killed by an American military armored vehicle six years ago, it first appeared to be nothing more than a tragic traffic accident. But many young Koreans who had grown to regard the American military presence with humiliation rallied in protest.

Many experts in Seoul draw a careful line between nationalism and anti-Americanism among Koreans. They say the recent series of demonstrations were more an expression of the first than the latter. But the divide gets thin sometimes.

Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador in South Korea, got a taste of the simmering anti-American sentiment when he emphasized the safety of American beef last week. "We hope that Koreans will begin to understand more about the science and about the facts of American beef," he said.

The next day, politicians and protesters called the comment an "insult to all Korean citizens."