SKorean workers vow to stop US beef imports, police clamp down on protests
28 May 2008
SKorean workers vow to stop US beef imports, police clamp down on protests
(Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters)
SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea’s labour unions on Wednesday vowed to block the planned release of US beef from cold storage this week, as protests sparked by mad cow fears intensified.
More than 200 protestors have been detained since last weekend in Seoul during increasingly volatile protests against US beef imports to South Korea, police said Wednesday.
"If the government pushes through with it (the resumption of import of US beef), we will block the transfer of the beef," Spokesman Park Sung-Shik of the militant Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) told AFP.
He said some 5,300 tons of beef were kept in 14 cold storages, most of them located near Seoul. This shipment will be the first to be released to the market when South Korea lifts a ban on US beef this week.
The agriculture ministry, meanwhile, announced tightened rules for country-of-origin labelling rules, under which restaurants are obliged to notify customers of where the beef they are being served came from.
If caught cheating with the country of origin, violaters will face up to three years in prison or some 30,000 dollars of fines.
The mass arrests came after Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo vowed to clamp down on illegal demonstrations, which he said were becoming violent ahead of the planned resumption of US beef imports.
Police have detained a total of 211 protesters over the past four days and released 69 of them.
Late Tuesday, about 1,500 demonstrators took to the streets, waving banners and chanting slogans. Police detained 113 people overnight, accusing them of staging illegal night time protests and deliberately causing traffic chaos.
Demonstrators numbering up to 10,000 have been staging candle-lit rallies over the past few weeks. Many of them have been in their teens, motivated by rumours spread on the Internet and through mobile text messages.
Police started to intervene late Saturday as protesters broke through police lines and marched through the streets.
Similar protests were also reported on Tuesday in major cities including Busan, Gwangju, Daegu and Chuncheon.
Seoul last month agreed with Washington to lift its intermittent ban on US beef, first suspended in December 2003 over a mad cow scare.
Opening the beef market is an essential precondition for US approval of a separate free trade pact.
But opposition parties are refusing to ratify the free trade agreement with the United States unless Lee’s government renegotiates the beef deal.
They claim the government of President Lee Myung-Bak has not secured safeguards against the dangers posed by the human form of mad cow disease as it was rushing the beef deal ahead of Lee’s first summit with US President George W. Bush next month.
