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- Title
Mad Cow Madness: The U.S. Beef Protests in South Korea in 2008.
- Authors
Sun Woo Lee
- Abstract
In the summer of 2008, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets nationwide to protest the South Korean government's controversial decision to ease restrictions on the importation of United States beef, which had been put into effect five years prior in response to the first reported case of mad cow disease in the United States. The initial response to easing restrictions was not favorable. The media and its sensational presentation of information regarding the disease further exacerbated the issue. In fact, much of the public's negative response can be attributed to a single episode of a renowned investigative reporting program, PD Notebook. However, the scale, frequency, and duration of the ensuing demonstrations, which came to be known as "candlelight vigils," revealed deeper, underlying factors beyond simple disease phobia or public vulnerability to media manipulation. This paper seeks to examine how the combination of media reports and other pre-existing conditions specific to the South Korean context at the time led to the panic and unrest surrounding mad cow disease and U.S. beef imports in 2008. Such forces included the public's already increasing dissatisfaction with neoliberal reforms implemented by the newly elected conservative president, societal changes brought about by the Internet, and even more intrinsic characteristics of the South Korean nation's psyche and ideologies influencing South Korean thinking. All of this contributed to the explosive reaction in 2008.
- Subjects
BOVINE spongiform encephalopathy; BEEF exports &; imports; PUBLIC demonstrations
- Publication
Hemispheres, 2018, Vol 41, p41
- ISSN
0738-9825
- Publication type
Article