In S. Korea, Regrets and Assurances On U.S. Beef

President Acknowledges Fear But Does Not Reinstate Ban

TOKYO, May 22 -- U.S. beef is scaring the daylights out of South Korean consumers and triggering a leadership crisis for the country's fledgling government.

In an attempt to contain the damage and salvage a free trade deal with the United States, President Lee Myung-bak apologized to South Koreans on Thursday for his "deeply regrettable" failure to understand what the fuss over beef is all about.

"The government's efforts to listen to and understand public opinions have been insufficient," Lee said in a nationally televised speech. "I humbly accept the point that the government neglected to fathom the people's mind. I feel sorry."

It was a stunning show of contrition for Lee, a multimillionaire former businessman whose nickname is "The Bulldozer." He was elected in a landslide in December, but his popularity has sagged in recent weeks, primarily because of widespread alarm over the purported dangers of eating U.S. beef.

Lee's penitence is a telling measure of how large the importation of U.S. beef now looms in South Korea -- as a consumer, economic and political issue -- and of how ineptly his government has dealt with it. Nevertheless, Lee did not give in to popular pressure to reinstate a ban and called for parliament to approve the free trade agreement.

South Korea, an Asian country with an outsize appetite for meat, was the world's third-largest importer of U.S. beef until December 2003, when a Canadian-born dairy cow slaughtered in Washington state tested positive for mad cow disease, the first case in the United States.

Seoul officials immediately halted all U.S. beef imports. The ban, wildly popular with South Korean cattle producers, remained substantially in place until April 18. That's when Lee -- just hours before he was to meet President Bush in Washington to discuss a much-delayed free trade deal -- lifted it and unwittingly started the populist consumer revolt that led to Thursday's televised mea culpa.

By allowing U.S. beef into his country again, Lee had hoped to remove a major obstacle to congressional approval of the trade agreement, which experts say would increase South Korea-U.S. trade by about $20 billion a year.

Lee's unilateral decision quickly backfired, as South Koreans' long-standing concern about U.S. beef turned into hysteria.

Within a few days, a television news program aired thinly sourced -- and later, scientifically refuted -- claims that nearly all Koreans carry a gene making them far more susceptible to mad cow disease than Americans. Rumors spread that school lunch programs would soon be the dumping ground for cheap and potentially deadly American beef.

By early May, despite repeated attempts by the government to knock down the alarmist reports and rumors, protests against U.S. beef had become a fashionable cause for the young.

By the thousands, they took to the streets for candlelight vigils in Seoul, the capital, and other cities. Internet postings grew increasingly jittery.

As the public's anger grew, Lee's initial reaction was annoyance. "You don't have to eat American beef if you don't like it," he said.

The president also complained that opposition parties, which he had walloped in the Dec. 19 election, were exploiting the issue to weaken his government.

"Parties should not approach this issue from a political perspective, causing social unrest," he said this month.

He assembled government ministers and assorted experts to explain on TV that U.S. beef was now safe, that the chances of contracting mad cow disease were infinitesimal and that the financial benefits of a free trade agreement would put money in the pockets of all South Koreans.

But as Lee conceded Thursday, he and his government did not listen carefully to the public. "Health can't be exchanged for anything," he said.

He promised that his government would upgrade food safety standards and "halt U.S. beef imports if any health-threatening circumstances occur in the United States."