SEOUL: South Korea's entire cabinet offered to resign Tuesday as tens of thousands of people filled boulevards in central Seoul in the largest demonstration yet against President Lee Myung Bak and his young but already unpopular government. The cabinet's offer to resign came as Lee struggled to find a breakthrough in the biggest political crisis to face his 107-day-old government, a dispute set off by fears that an agreement to reopen markets to American beef could expose the public to mad cow disease. But Lee's trouble runs deeper than discontent over the beef deal. Political analysts said Lee, once hailed as a potential savior of South Korea's troubled economy, has lost public confidence over a broad range of policies at a time when the nation is grappling not only with a slowing economy, but also with the continuing issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. "Lee Myung Bak, out," the protesters shouted, brandishing yellow and red cards that carried the same message.
SEOUL: South Korea's entire cabinet offered to resign Tuesday as tens of thousands of people filled boulevards in central Seoul in the largest demonstration yet against President Lee Myung Bak and his young but already unpopular government.
The cabinet's offer to resign came as Lee struggled to find a breakthrough in the biggest political crisis to face his 107-day-old government, a dispute set off by fears that an agreement to reopen markets to American beef could expose the public to mad cow disease.
But Lee's trouble runs deeper than discontent over the beef deal. Political analysts said Lee, once hailed as a potential savior of South Korea's troubled economy, has lost public confidence over a broad range of policies at a time when the nation is grappling not only with a slowing economy, but also with the continuing issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.
"Lee Myung Bak, out," the protesters shouted, brandishing yellow and red cards that carried the same message.
SEOUL - The issue 21 years ago was the cruelty of a venal dictator who had rammed through his own version of a constitution that would legitimize his power and that of a successor while suppressing a democratic movement that had captured the hearts and minds of a majority of the citizenry. The date was June 10, 1987, when the dictatorial Chun Doo-hwan and his top collaborator, Roh Tae-woo, both former generals, announced plans for a phony presidential election even as protesters opened three weeks of demonstrations that would transform the style and nature of Korean governance. The issue on this June 10, at what might have been a simple commemoration of that momentous month, is rather different - with eerily similar overtones. In the name of democracy, tens of thousands of protesters are taking to the streets of central Seoul to shout down what they see as an attempt to shove poisoned American beef down the throats of downtrodden South Koreans. The anti-beef, anti-American protest has mushroomed from relatively small outpourings six weeks ago to daily demonstrations complete with cartoon images of American cows beside caricatures of President Lee Myong-bak dressed in the uniform of a German Gestapo figure. The message is that he is not only a dictator in the tradition of Chun and Chun's long-ruling predecessor, Park Chung-hee, assassinated by his intelligence chief in October 1979, but also a stubborn fool with less intellect than the cows whose beef he wants to import from the US.
