Beef uproar reflects digital age politics

As hundreds of thousands of Koreans take to the streets on June 10, the 21st anniversary of the 1987 democracy movement, the people are speaking with a resoundingly loud voice. Meanwhile, the beleaguered government is at its wit's end in trying to subdue the massive uproar over the re-importation of U.S. beef. To opine that Cheong Wa Dae is in turmoil would be a gross understatement.
"Oh, how the mighty have fallen."
That must be the exact sentiments of President Lee Myung-bak and his supporters as they have witnessed a remarkable turnaround in their fortunes, with thousands out in force and millions more on the internet railing against his leadership on a daily basis.
Winning last year's presidential election by the largest margin in Korean political history, Lee was self-assured of a hefty mandate to push through his bold policy initiatives. This included closer ties with the United States and a more open trade attitude; ratifying the KORUS FTA was a top priority. Opening the market to U.S. beef was a Washington prerequisite for FTA implementation and the new president happily obliged within his first two months in office.
A "new" activism
What happened next took everyone by surprise. Candlelight vigils have been a daily occurrence in Korea for the past few weeks with no end in sight.
The nation seemingly mobilized overnight. Middle, high school and university students are at the forefront. Young mothers with their allegedly mad-cow vulnerable toddlers at bay have taken to the streets. In the tens of thousands, they march from City Hall, through Cheonggyecheon and towards the Blue House, before being thwarted, sometimes violently, by riot police.
Despite accusations by the government and the conservative press that this nationwide protest has somehow been orchestrated by leftist groups and liberal politicians, observers on the ground are taken aback by the very spontaneous nature of these rallies.
With disparate groups from all strata of society mingling together in a haphazard fashion, these mass vigils are markedly different from the democracy protests of the 1980s, or the huge labor upheavals Korea witnesses occasionally. Those demonstrations were tightly regimented with a very hierarchical structure. Protesters would chant as one and march with the precision of a well-honed military unit.
To paraphrase an old idiom: this definitely ain't your daddy's protests.
Candlelight vigils are nothing new in and of themselves, if one remembers the 2002 protests over the deaths of two schoolgirls at the hands of the U.S. military. But something different is afoot here. The dramatic reversal of public sentiment and vociferous outcry against President Lee has been breathtakingly swift. From "savior" of the Korean economy, to the most unpopular president after just 100 days' tenure, a phenomenon has taken place that cannot be explained through traditional political science theories.
The explanation may lie in the "digital age" and "ubiquitous society" that Korea is often described as being enveloped in. The social, economic and political transformations that have taken place through IT advances have upended traditional power structures, while playing a revolutionary role in mobilizing mass public sentiment. The result: old-school politicians, government officials and offline media outlets are powerless in this new reality. And ordinary citizens, for better or worse, are forcing the authorities to listen.
"Megatrends Korea"
The Korea Information Society Development Institute, a state-funded IT think-tank, issued a large-scale research report late last year to study the effects of digitization on Korean society. Entitled "Megatrends Korea: Great Transformations in the Digital Age", this eerily-prescient report examined how the nation would be drastically and irrevocably changed through the ever-increasing presence of advanced technology in our daily lives.
The KISDI report states, "As IT spreads rapidly in Korea, society is experiencing a paradigm shift towards a knowledge-based information society and the old theories developed in the industrial age can no longer be used to explain the current world. IT is not just a technology, but a crucial factor that leads to structural change, and megatrends of the society."
A "megatrend" is defined as "a general trend of social changes projected for the future based on theoretical and empirical studies."
Basically, most people view IT in terms of computers gadgets and convenience. But the KISDI report attempted to relate how IT and the "digital age" were also creating an earthquake of change in all facets of society.
In a helpful summary, KISDI organized and categorized the more than twenty megatrends into four broader "meta-trends." The four meta-trends are:
1) "A Society Connected to Network - Anytime, Anywhere" -- This meta-trend deals with the overly bandied-about term "ubiquitous society" in which people can access limitless content and interact with each other in virtually any setting, whether at home, in the office, or on the move.
2) "Mix of the Virtual and the Real" -- KISDI cites this second mega-trend as the constant meshing between the online and offline worlds. Websites like "Second Life," social networking portals, blogs, and User Created Content, have all contributed to people no longer differentiating between what happens in the virtual and real worlds.
3) "Blurred Boundaries" -- This third meta-trend refers to the erosion of barriers that have been entrenched in society for decades. For example, communication between people and data exchange is infinitely faster and cheaper than it was before. This reflects a "globalization" effect and the democratization of information. Traditional actors in information dispersion, such as the government and media, are no longer able to "control the message," so to speak.
4) "Rise of Minorities" -- According to KISDI's report, the final meta-trend describes the truly egalitarian nature of the internet. People previously without a voice in society or politics can now wield substantially more influence and promulgate their views and ideas to a wide audience. In traditional Korea, people not following the homogeneity of Confucian society were regarded as "pyaein," or "disabled." These heretofore social outcasts are now able to effect change and can sometimes emerge as leaders and offer innovative ideas.
KISDI asserts that these trends are here to stay and irreversible. "Megatrends Korea: Great Transformations in the Digital Age" was written to seek the "crystal ball that will tell us what the future holds." In the case of the U.S. beef uproar, the prophecies have come true.
A prophetic situation
The KISDI report was published in late 2007, before the beef brouhaha. But making the logical leap in connecting the megatrends analysis and the current anti-beef phenomenon would not take any strenuous mental gymnastics.
The uproar over re-importing U.S. beef was first and foremost, a grassroots phenomenon. Yes, there was an incendiary investigative report on TV, and progressive politicians and civil activists vehemently protested the government's decision. But TV reports occur all the time, and left-leaning activists always have an axe to grind, whether it be labor, economic, or social issues.
This issue was different. What started as a few postings on the internet by some teenage students has snowballed into an amalgamation of eclectic groups that ordinarily would not hang out at the same restaurant, let alone gather to march together in central Seoul.
All the "meta-trends" are in play here. The hyper-rapid dissemination of information via the internet and text messaging has had a viral effect in a community where millions of people are now socially connected. Whether the rumors and claims that were spread were exaggerated or because Koreans did not learn the "science" (as U.S. ambassador Alexander Vershbow inelegantly stated) of the issue is besides the point.
The point is that information spread rapidly, the online world quickly translated into offline (candlelight vigils) actions. People who previously were not politically active became quasi-celebrities on the internet. For example, a female student from Seoul National University was viciously stomped on by a policeman during the protests. The video images of that beating have been plastered all over the internet and even made its way to mainstream TV news. Needless to say, those images have only exacerbated the nation's anger and shoved the government and police deeper into the corner.
The truly diverse nature of the protests is also a reflection of the diversity inherent in the internet. People may come from drastically diverse socio-economic backgrounds but on this one issue, the fear that mad-cow tainted U.S. beef may be forced down their throats, regular differences in their daily lives were subverted to rally for a common cause.
Students, civic activists, parents, office workers and now, opposition politicians trying to hop on the bandwagon have joined together in a way that would be unheard of in a pre-digitized Korean society, where conformity, Confucian hierarchy and segmentation, would preclude such a ragtag grouping of people.
Megatrend losers
If the people who previously felt they didn't have a voice in society can be construed as being the "winners" in this megatrend phenomenon, then in a zero-sum game there have to be "losers" as well.
The most obvious group getting the short end of the megatrend stick is the Lee Myung-bak government and, through guilt-by-association, his Grand National Party.
The digitization effect on mobilizing the masses has had an immense impact and the dramatic way the tables have turned for Lee and the ruling GNP have been nothing short of incredible.
With over 50 percent approval ratings at the beginning of his term, Lee has seen his support whittle down to less than 20 percent in just three months, an unprecedented drop so early in a presidential term. These are poll ratings even the much-maligned former President Roh Moo-hyun would bemoan.
The netizens have now taken to derisively calling him "2mb." "2" in Korean has the same pronunciation as his surname Lee, and MB is a well-known moniker of his first name Myung-bak. So, using a clever pun, "2mb" or two megabytes, is an insulting reference to his supposed lack of intelligence.
Meanwhile the GNP, which won 153 seats in the Apr. 9 general elections and retook the majority in the National Assembly, was shellacked in recent local by-elections, winning just nine of the 52 provincial seats up for grabs. Admittedly there is nothing specific that can blamed on the ruling party policy-wise, but the perception that the GNP has been passive in providing a check to Lee's unfettered dealings with the United States has been enormously damaging to the party's popularity. Essentially, the GNP has been dragged down into the Lee abyss.
But these obvious targets of the masses are not the only ones that have been marginalized by the U.S. beef controversy.
Traditional mass media, especially the conservative daily newspapers, have also seen their public standing and influence take a severe turn for the worse. The "Big Three" as they are known, Chosun Ilbo, Donga Ilbo and Joongang Ilbo have their roots in the militarist regimes of years gone by and have enjoyed the lion's share of Korea's newspaper circulation market for decades.
But at the outset of the beef uproar, the editorial pages in all three dailies ranted against the protests as obstructions to President Lee's wider economic and diplomatic vision and dismissed the initial outrage as merely the work of a few leftist rabble-rousers.
However as the controversy swelled to a fever pitch, the ordinary citizens put their faith in the digitized medium for their information instead. They began to push back against the "Big Three" and derided their pro-government stances. Since the nightly candlelight vigils center around the "newspaper hub" in central Seoul, chants could be heard at the gleaming headquarters buildings of the major dailies shouting "turn off your lights, you're not worth the electricity."
It has been noted that reporters from Chosun, Donga and Joongang covering the protests on the streets have been met with heckles and jeers from the crowd. There is a boycott movement underway against companies that advertise in these newspapers. Even though the editorial pages of these conservative dailies are now joining the fray in criticizing President Lee's policies, it appears much of the nation has eschewed the "Big Three" and turned to new media sources for their information.
Even opposition politicians who have tried to gain advantage through the beef uproar are not immune to criticism. As they join the crowds in the nightly vigils, they too have been the targets of heckles from a skeptical public wondering, "Where were you when we needed you?" Many ordinary citizens have become cynical over the usual Machiavellian machinations of political insiders and have instead put their faith in the evangelists of the digital world.
In fact, the only politician that has probably come out of this smelling like roses is the Democratic Labor Party's Kang Ki-gab. The former farmer has at least been consistent in his vehemence against the re-importation of U.S. beef. As a result, his DLP as well as the New Progressive Party have seen their poll numbers rise.
Politics as "unusual"
At the end of the day, the specific debate over beef is not the most dramatic development in what is happening in this nation. Something much bigger is occurring in Korea. The U.S. beef outrage has simply been the tipping point in bringing KISDI's megatrends theories to fruition. Whether the beef uproar, and the myriad other issues that people are now taking to the streets over (Grand Canal project, anti-deregulation, anti-FTA, etc) is a sign of a revolutionary change in the nation's new digitized world has still not been borne out yet.
But what is apparent is that the Korean people now have had a taste of true "participatory democracy." Aided through the advanced IT tools that Korean society enjoys, it is ironic that former President Roh Moo-hyun's official "Participatory Government" has really come about tangibly in the first three months of the Lee Myung-bak administration.
The question then is, why now? The internet has been around for quite a while and Korea has long been a very "wired" society. Perhaps the fact that Roh was a pioneer in utilizing the digital media for his campaign and politics and was considered "one of them" stifled any mass mobilization efforts against him through the megatrends phenomenon. To be sure, Roh had many political problems during his rule, but they were mostly centered around traditional political battlegrounds.
Lee, who is seen as a product of the old establishment, despite his CEO credentials, has never been considered a part of the digitized world. His popularity came about through dissatisfaction with the economy during Roh's tenure and the hope that his "bulldozer" style would usher in a new era of Korean prosperity. When that did not happen immediately, and he began "bulldozing" his policy initiatives in a "listen to me, I know what's good for you" manner, the digital medium became the vehicle to cause the explosion of bad will towards him, and has led to the megatrends phenomenon the country is witnessing today.
KISDI's "Megatrends Korea" is sure to be analyzed and debated in more detail in the forthcoming weeks. But for those who have envisioned a "new society" would be born through the emergence of new technology, the future is now.
By Henry Shinn