What Ranch Country Thinks of Korea’s Beef Protests
Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode.
As Korea heaves a meek “never mind” to a national crisis based on exposed falsehoods and manipulated by an anti-democratic fifth column, American Korea-watchers may be tempted to assume that the episode passed without being noticed by most Americans. That’s not a safe thing to assume for my part of the country, the part that produces most of that beef. If you’re not from that part of the country, you’ve probably never heard of Baxter Black, either, but if you’re from anywhere between the Sierras and the Missouri River, you will instantly recognize him as the best-known of the “cowboy poets.” Here is what Black, who is also a veterinarian, has to say:
Juxtaposed on opposite pages of the BBC International newspaper were two stories: “..thousands of people (in Seoul, South Korea) protesting against resumption of U.S. Beef imports…” and “The U.S. announced that it will send half a million tons of food aid to North Korea.”
How can two so closely connected groups of people hold such strong opposite opinions about the safety of U.S. food exports? Easy. It’s the haves vs. the have-nots. South Korea is a strong democratic nation, our ally, who owes its existence to the U.S. and the United Nations. It has the luxury to be choosey. Its protest against American Beef, as stated, is the fear of mad cow disease, but is really to protect their highly subsidized isolationist agricultural trade policy. That’s not a crime, but they should not hide behind food safety as a reason.
Whereas North Korea, an oppressed country led by a dictator, lost an estimated 1 million people to starvation in the 1990s and is facing another famine. The government has nuclear weapon intentions, a cruel disregard for its own people, and has been threatening invasion against South Korea since we pushed them back in 1951. About 33,000 American soldiers died protecting South Korea. [Amarillo.com]
Read the rest on your own, as Black’s final conclusion should give us all something to talk about. Black’s view is only that of one man, of course, but I suspect he speaks for many.
Koreans probably also assume, with equal parts relief and frustration, that Americans pay very little attention to what happens in Korea. But with 30,000 Americans rotating through Korea each year and Korea’s appearance on the news seldom projecting an image of thoughtful civic democracy, you have to marvel at Korea’s capacity to turn friends into ex-friends without suffering greater consequences for it. Korea’s alienation of America doesn’t manifest itself in polls because while both countries love to poll Koreans on how they view America, both seem to avoid doing the opposite. That makes it impossible for us to track trends in Americans’ views of Korea, or their views of keeping tens of thousands of their sons and daughters in a prosperous country that consistently runs high trade deficits with the United States.
What this means is that neither government will really know just what Americans think of supporting Korea’s defense until Korea calls on us for that support in a crisis.