Korean Government to Begin Inspecting USFK Agricultural Products

The recent dispute between the Korean and US governments has heated up recently as after beef fragments were found in the first shipments of US beef to Korea in three years.  The Koreans say that bone chips in US beef is a health concern because of the case of mad cow disease in one US dairy cow a few years ago.  The US government is claiming that the mad cow disease fears are just being used as a ploy to stop US beef from entering Korea and protecting the domestic Korean beef market from cheaper US beef.  One US governmental official has even gone as far to accuse the Korean government of planting the bone chips:

Park Hong-soo, minister of agriculture and forestry, has not made any particular comment on the beef import war between Seoul and Washington, in contrast to aggressive words by U.S. policymakers including Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns and Deputy Under Secretary Chuck Lambert.

Foreign media quoted Chuck Lambert, as saying, “The U.S. beef industry is suspicious about where the fragments came from. Some people have suggested DNA sampling or other means of trying to determine the origin of those bone chips.”

A U.S. agricultural news service reported that U.S. beef officials, in off-the-record comments, have intimated South Korea may have “planted” the bone fragments as an excuse to keep American beef out of the Korean market. An Australian broadcaster said Chuck Lambert is not ignoring the possibility that the shipments may have been tampered with.

Conveniently after the bone chips were found and disputed by the US government than the Koreans found dioxin poisoning in the beef.  Dioxin poisoning isn’t as ominous as the Korean government would lead you to believe.  The small trace amounts of dioxin come from the environment from cattle breathing in for example burned plastic or smoke from power plants and factories.  If you have ever smelled burned plastic guess what, you have dioxin in you.  The trace amounts are not enough to harm anyone, but the Korean government is going to use whatever they can to keep the domestic beef market closed to the US cattle industry. 

Now on the heels of this controversy the Korean government will not begin inspecting agricultural products bound for USFK commissaries in Korea:

South Korean officials and U.S. military personnel will carry out joint quarantine inspections of agricultural products brought into the country for the United States Forces Korea (USFK) starting in April, the government said Thursday.

The U.S. military is currently responsible for quarantine inspections of food imports for consumption by American soldiers stationed here.

The move, agreed upon at a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) meeting last week, will involve quarantine checks at the U.S. Army’s main garrison in Yongsan in Seoul as well as logistics support bases in the port of Busan and Gimpo near the capital, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said.

"Inspecting agricultural products, even those set aside for U.S. soldiers, is important to prevent harmful pests from coming into the country and posing problems for the local ecosystem," said a ministry official.

I just have to wonder if this is at all related to the FTA and US beef rejections issues.  For decades the Korean government had no concerns about USFK agricultural products being inspected by USFK, but now all the sudden they want to inspect the products.  You can buy US beef in USFK commissaries that have bones in them.  These beef products are some of the most popular blackmarket items in the commissary.  Will these quarantine inspectors stop these beef shipments from being sold in the commissaries?  Will they find more dioxin poisoning?  I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

This is all beginning to remind me of the camp pollution issue where the closed out USFK camps are so polluted that the Korean government cannot take them back because of public health concerns and demand that USFK pay to clean up the camps.  Of course this whole issue is a fraud just like the US beef issue because the closed out US camps in their respective cities are a virtual oasis of green in the middle of densely populated and overly polluted urban cities.  Enough of an oasis in fact that many of these camp are being looked at to be turned into public parks, yet they are so polluted it is a public health issue despite decades of US soldiers including myself living on these camps and never having adverse health effects.

Now we are to believe that the food especially the beef that US soldiers eat in Korea is infected with mad cow disease and dioxin poisoning and just like the closed out camps, is a public health issue thus the general Korean public needs to be protected from it.  If I am to believe the Korean government, I must currently be infected with mad cow disease and dioxin poisoning from US beef plus whatever else they find from these agricultural inspections, in addition to being exposed to radiation poisoning from living for years on USFK camps in Korea and not believe that both of these issues are nothing more than Korean demagoguery being used for political and economic advantage against the United States.