These days in Korea, importing beef from the U.S. is at issue. Most of citizens are against this, mainly because several cases of mad cow diseased people were reported. Even the U.S. civilians in Korea are doing voluntary protest to make the government not import the U.S. beef.
I am also against importing the U.S beef because of the danger of mad cow disease. The mad cow disease is spread by the means of a contact with a certain kind of protein from mad cows. Once the disease outbreaks in human, it can also affect others by blood transfusion. In that sense, I can say that all Koreans are exposed to the danger of mad cow disease.
Even if you buy Korean beef or beef from other countries that are not from the U.S., the possibility of buying the U.S. beef still remains. Because the U.S beef is much cheaper than other ones, sellers can be easily tempted to mix those two and sell it. Furthermore, since it is hard to distinguish meat's origin with its appearance, it is hard to keep sellers from not doing so.
Also, not eating beef can not help us 100 percent from the disease. Using the cosmetics made out of the U.S beef can make people sick. So, even though people don't eat beef, it is hard to get away from the danger. For these reasons, I am against importing U.S beef and support citizens' voluntary protest.
The protest is appropriate because it is making the government consider public opinion more than before when making national decisions. Also, before this, people had little interest in society and were not concerned about social problems. But this protest showed that public can also have a great influence on national decisions.
Everything has positive and negative sides at the same time. And this protest also has both sides. I think the publics are too emotionally connected to the problem sometimes. When we look at a problem, we should consider it rationally. For rational thinking, we have to know what the fundamental problem is. Otherwise the public opinion can be easily distorted by the media. So current voluntary protest should be welcomed, but public should do it with more information and logical thinking.
Chun Hae-jin (Business Administration, 1)