Do you live in America? Do you eat beef a few times a week (I know you do, because Koreans have informed me that Americans eat cheeseburgers every day)? Did you know that you're taking an awful risk?
Well, you are. American beef is dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that ever since President Lee Myung Bak lifted the S Korean ban on it the threat to the Korean people has been the number one story on the news. Not, you know, surging oil prices, or the sinking Korean economy, or the Chinese shenanigans surrounding the Olympics, but rather the dire and deadly threat posed by American beef. So dangerous that hundreds of people held a candlelight vigil in downtown Seoul the other night, not for some recently-tragically departed young person or some moral social agenda, but because Koreans now have the option of eating American beef again.
Maybe I'm in a bad mood. Maybe it's that one of my students blurted out "fucking USA" in class the other day. Maybe it's the succession of anti-American sentiment I encountered at the Jeonju Film Festival (see a later post). But it seems to me the media in this country will seize any opportunity they get to try and whip up anti-American hysteria, and I'm a little sick of it.
Some other US/Korea beef stories:
No government officials likely to eat US beef on TV
One million Korean netizens favor impeachment because of beef controversy
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