SEOUL (AFP) — South Korea's government insisted Tuesday that Internet-fuelled fears of mad cow disease are groundless, as the opposition and street protesters urged it to scrap an agreement to resume US beef imports.
Opening up the beef market is a key precondition for US legislative approval of a separate and sweeping free trade pact. Opponents say Seoul has not secured enough safeguards against the dangers of mad cow disease.
Seoul agreed last month to lift the ban, on the eve of a Washington summit between Presidents Lee Myung-Bak and George W. Bush.
Seoul and Washington say US beef is totally safe. Newspapers said Internet scare campaigns, and a recent TV programme, were fuelling irrational fears.
"The public frenzy over fears of mad cow disease does not seem to be dying down easily," said the JoongAng Ilbo in an editorial headlined "Mad cow madness."
It added: "Internet rumours and political instigations have stirred up public sentiment to the point where there is no room for scientific truth or reasonable explanations."
Police said they are trying to track down rumour-mongers who use the Internet and text messages.
"We will have to investigate further if someone is masterminding the dissemination of text messages, but we believe at this moment that the masterminds can at least be charged with interference with official acts," said Yang Geun-Won, head of the national police Cyber Terror Response Centre.
One such rumour falsely alleged a huge rise in the number of US Alzheimer's patients due to mad cow disease.
An estimated 10,000 people Friday staged a candelit protest rally against US beef imports, and about 7,500 on Saturday.
A total of about 3,000 people including schoolchildren staged candlelit protests in two locations Tuesday, waving placards reading "Do not sell mad cow" and "Out with Lee Myung-Bak."
Parliament is to hold a hearing Wednesday on the beef import deal. The main opposition party's parliamentary leader reiterated his resolve to renegotiate it.
"At the hearing tomorrow, the UDP will disclose the truth about... the hasty and humiliating negotiations," Kim Hyo-Suk of the liberal United Democratic Party told parliament.
The wider free trade agreement (FTA) signed last year needs ratification by both the US and South Korean legislatures. The Seoul government is seeking approval this month, to press the US Congress also to move quickly.
The state quarantine office said it would send inspectors to check sanitary standards at 31 US slaughterhouses. But the agriculture ministry said it would resume inspections of shipments this month, so they can be cleared for sale.
Private experts and others from the agriculture ministry and the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention held a news conference Tuesday to insist that US beef is safe.
Since countries worldwide started imposing new feed regulations, they said, the number of cases had dramatically declined -- from 37,316 in 1992 to 41 last year.
Communist North Korea Tuesday reported the protests approvingly.
"Struggle of people from different social standings is going on day after day in South Korea against traitor Lee Myung-Bak for totally allowing the import of beef from the US," the Korean Central News Agency said, in its latest attack on the new conservative president.
South Korea banned all US beef in 2003 due to mad cow concerns.
It eased the ban in 2006 but allowed only meat from cattle aged 30 months or less, and excluded bones and other materials deemed to carry a risk of spreading the disease.
Most of those restrictions were eased in April.
South Korea's US beef imports were worth 850 million dollars a year before 2003.
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