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CNN Clip of Mad Cow Fabrications by Korean News Program

July 8th, 2008 Shinsano · 8 Comments

American beef is apparently flying off the shelves in South Korea — my wife’s father even has a new contract delivering the stuff all over Busan. But the story is still in the Korean news — smaller protests continue as President Lee Myung-bak makes more changes to appease the public.But most interestingly the TV program PD Notebook is (finally) coming under fire for the distortion of facts following the announcement that the country would resume the importing of U.S. beef back in May. The program responded by claiming a translation error led the public to believe that cows writhing on the ground had mad cow disease (a disease the program also claimed Koreans were 94% more likely to get than Americans or Britons).Anyway, here’s a link to a CNN clip concerning the PD Notebook saga (via  Zenkimchi).

Tags: Food · Media

8 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Icecreaman // Jul 8, 2008 at 7:06 am

    Ive followed this from the U.S. I don’t get it and this clip puts it over the top. WTF? Ive eaten US beef my whole life. What are they eating?

  • 2 Simon Currie // Jul 8, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    At one point, US and Japan had banned eachother’s beef due to mad cow disease.

  • 3 Shinsano // Jul 8, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    I find myself in the odd position of defending US beef, which isn’t really my intention. But the way the Korean media has manipulated the situation to promote its own nationalist agenda bothers me. It’s US beef this year, but it’ll be something else next year.

  • 4 EW // Jul 9, 2008 at 9:56 am

    While I’ve dramatically curtailed my eating of beef ever since I lived in London during the mad cow scare in the late ’90s, I’ve always had a hard time understanding the fervor of the anti-U.S. beef rallies in Korea. This helps explain things a little bit and illustrates pretty well the dangers of abandoning your critical thinking skills and just believing what you read, hear and watch without question. Thanks for the link.

  • 5 Gus // Jul 9, 2008 at 10:38 am

    I may take some heat for this, but what the hell? Here’s the thing–shouldn’t we be calling for more clips of cattle being bulldozed, or mercilessly prodded in the head? Judging by the fact that something like 25 million Americans eat at Mcdonald’s daily, I would hope so. No, I don’t agree with the Korean media distorting the nature of the problem by linking those cattle shown in those clip to the ones being used for exportation to South Korea, but I do agree with the media raising the consumer’s awareness concerning the products the latter are buying, animal or otherwise. And that clip depicting a cow being bulldozed into slaughter certainly did that, at least for me. Yes, I’m well aware that a good many animals are being brutalized for our benefit, but one tends to forget.
    Having said that, Shinsano brings up a salient point with his comment that it’ll be another thing tomorrow, i.e., a newly discovered contagion that can not only go airborn, but one that foreigners are 94% more likely to carry than say, Koreans… Let’s hope not!

  • 6 EW // Jul 9, 2008 at 11:10 am

    Well, yeah, but the problem of downer cattle is a separate issue from mad cow disease. If South Koreans were angry because of the way the U.S. treats its livestock, well, that’s a fair argument. But you can’t show video of downer cattle and then imply or claim that they all have mad cow disease when probably none of them do. Yeah, all mad cows are downer cattle, but all downer cattle aren’t mad cows. Not even close. That’s the issue here.

  • 7 baekgom84 // Jul 9, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    Bottom line: media sucks.

    Well, not all of it. But a lot of it.

  • 8 Shinsano // Jul 9, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    This is from a week ago, but this is the best analysis of the beef fiasco I’ve read. The writer is my favorite Korean studies scholar and more often than not he’s dead on.
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121503329527624039.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
    I also like it because he states what I wrote in the comment above…that beef is just the current expression of Korean angst. That next year it’ll be something else.

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