Hundreds of people voice opposition to FTA talks
Yonhap News, Korea
Hundreds of people voice opposition to FTA talks
8 March 2007
SEOUL, March 8 (Yonhap) — A group of about 870 people, including 23 lawmakers, voiced their opposition Thursday to the free trade talks between South Korea and the United States underway here, said organizers, witnesses and police.
The two countries have just launched their eighth round of free trade agreement (FTA) talks for a five-day run in a hotel in downtown Seoul.
U.S. negotiators have until April 2 to submit a free trade deal with South Korea, which can be approved by the U.S. Congress by a simple yea-or-nay vote without amendments after a 90-day congressional review, under U.S. President George W. Bush’s "fast-track" trade promotion authority, which expires on July 1.
"The two governments are trying to close the deal hurriedly through clandestine high-level talks while totally unprepared and lacking substantial materials," they said in a statement released in a news conference here.
The participants included a non-partisan group of lawmakers, heads of two major umbrella labor unions, farming union representatives, anti-globalization scholars and activists, organizers said.
About 100 of them marched toward the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, after the conference, demanding the government immediately suspend the negotiations and disclose details, but were stopped short by riot police, witnesses said.
Another group of 33 lawmakers, some of whom had been at the earlier conference, gathered in the National Assembly to oppose the trade deal, organizers said.
"We should stop the ’big deal’ idea harbored by the high-level negotiators behind locked doors," they said in a statement, referring to Washington’s intention to link U.S. beef, a non-FTA item, to the deal.
"The government should not concede to the U.S. demand to have American beef imported to South Korea in exchange for an FTA deal," the statement said.
While the beef is not technically part of the ongoing FTA negotiation between the two countries, Washington officials have said an FTA deal won’t be approved by U.S. Congress unless Seoul fully reopens its market to American beef.
Last year, South Korea resumed imports of American beef, lifting a three-year ban prompted by a mad cow disease scare, but has since turned back three shipments totaling some 20 tons of meat after small bone chips were found.
Moon Sung-hyun, chief of the minor Democratic Labor Party (DLP), began a demonstration of his own by starting a hunger strike in front of Cheong Wa Dae, demanding the talks stop immediately, witnesses said.
In addition, a group of 20 farmers briefly caused a row in central Seoul when they staged a demonstration using a cow and a pair of goats, they said.
The farmers released the animals onto the streets while marching toward Cheong Wa Dae, but soon put them back into their trucks after police warnings, they said.
Past anti-FTA protests have often flared into violence. Police said they have deployed about 3,000 riot police against potentially vigorous demonstrations.
The Korean Alliance Against the Korea-U.S. FTA, a leading opposition group, pledged to hold daily protests until the trade promotion authority expires, saying about 1,000 farmers, workers and activists will go on a tentative hunger strike on March 25 to oppose the FTA.
South Korean officials have hinted that the two countries would hold one more round of talks during the week of March 19 before concluding the negotiations.
After making "significant" progress in the 10-month-old FTA talks, the two countries hope to wrap up the negotiations by the end of this month.
Stakes are high for the two economies, which did US$74 billion in two-way trade in 2006. Some studies show that an FTA would increase trade volume by 20 percent.
But South Korean farmers and workers strenuously oppose the talks, contending the proposed deal would destroy their livelihoods by exposing them to harsher working conditions and lower wages.
The free trade deal, if made, is subject to approval by South Korea’s 299-seat National Assembly, where supporters outnumber opponents.
