I lived in South Korea for 3.5 years up until last August, and I've been following this pretty closely in the Korean papers, as well as on expat blogs and a lot of friends who are still there (Korean and non-Korean). Here's a few personal observations and opinions:
1) Lee Myung-Bak, the current President, was recently elected with the largest margin in Korean history. He replaced a very liberal President, Roh Moo-Hyun. The leftists in Korea are not happy about it, and have found a great opportunity to whip up the public frenzy against him. Lee Myung-Bak can't renegotiate the beef deal and they know it, so they'll just continue this until it either burns itself out or his administration is crippled for the next 5 years.
2) The U.S. and Korea negotiated an FTA last year. Both countries' leaders are trying to get it ratified. The U.S. Congress has made it clear it will not pass unless Korea opens up its market to U.S. beef (and, in fairness, they don't really have a choice. The OIE ruled U.S. beef safe, and Korea doesn't have a legal leg to stand on in trying to keep it banned). The Korean left is opposed to U.S. beef imports and the FTA. If they kill U.S. Beef Imports, they kill the FTA -- and get to seriously damage Lee Myung Bak's presidency as well. It's a win-win-win for them.
3) Last month, MBC (a big Korean TV station) aired a program that claimed, amongst other complete and unscientific BS, that Koreans had a gene that made them more susceptible to Mad Cow Disease (or CJD) than Americans or Europeans. That, more than anything, was the catalyst for the current mass-hysteria. That followed with a huge outcry from Korean "netizens" (many of whom were High School or Middle school students, believe it or not), which included even more ridiculous, BS rumors such as that the U.S. was only exporting beef to Korea that Americans wouldn't eat themselves (and that rumor even went further and later became "Americans want to export beef to Korea that Americans can't legally feed to their pets"). Take an already combustible situation and throw a lot of people with very questionable political motivations (for another example, see the 2002 schoolgirl death protests, which followed a very similar pattern) and you have a great recipe for massive protests based on very little substantive issues.
4) The protests have become a great example of after-the-fact justification and circular logic. The original reason for the protests was the Mad Cow Hysteria. But since it is clear that the original reason was based on complete nonsense, the reason for protesting has morphed into, "We're angry at Lee Myung-Bak for being arrogant and ignoring the public's health concerns." For that to make sense, of course, there would have to actually be a health concern. So you end up with one big circle: The protests invent a reason to protest, get mad when the President ignores them, then claim that his ignoring them is why they protested in the first place (rather than Mad Cow hysteria).
5) Believe it or not, when this whole fiasco started, Lee had been in office less than 60 days (he's at around 100 days now). The decision to import U.S. beef again, and the FTA, were both made by his predecessor. Incredibly, people claim to now be protesting his overall policies -- for a guy who hadn't even been in office 3 months!
6) I'd wager there are far more Koreans who thing this whole thing is ridiculous than are being reported, but many of them are afraid to speak up. Newspapers (e.g. Chosun Ilbo, Dong-A Ilbo, and so on) that have dared air opposing views have had their advertisers subject to some pretty nasty harassment, boycott threats, and so forth. A talk show host who tried to advocate an opposing view (Jeong Seon-Hee for those curious) was essentially browbeaten into apologizing and had to cancel several subsequent shows because of it.
7) Korea is actually lucky that most Americans pay scant attention to it. Imagine if this was France doing the same thing. I'm sure there'd be an uproar here. So far, however, I can't say I've heard of any calls to boycott Hyundai or Samsung.
8) I love Korea. I loved being there, I love the food, the culture, and some of my closest friends are Korean. But this fiasco has become an embarrassment. Like I said, they are actually lucky most Americans don't pay much attention to them to begin with. What's amazing is that Korea actually has a lot of reason to claim it ought to be considered a major U.S. ally. It sent hundreds of thousands of Soldiers to Vietnam (more than any other ally), it had the second largest force in Iraq and Soldiers in Afghanistan, and it sends more students abroad to study in the U.S. than any other country. Yet, it always manages to shoot itself in the foot and reinforce an image that it is an "anti-American" country -- and over incredibly stupid things. Heck, France and Germany had good reason to not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and if that resulted in a backlash, so be it. But Korea actually has stuck by the U.S. in quite a few major world issues, including Iraq -- and then picks "Mad Cow Disease" as a reason to kick and scream.
