South Korean protester pours milk over himself

This South Korean gentleman poured milk over his head to draw attention to US beef imports into his country, which protestors there are claiming hurts farmers. Link (via Arbroath)

[#1 posted by Takuan , June 19, 2008 10:29 AM]

"after dousing himself, the protesting farmer was dejected when the milk failed to ignite."

[#2 posted by geo the moose , June 19, 2008 10:41 AM]

and it turned out to be goat milk...

[#3 posted by Ryan Waddell , June 19, 2008 10:51 AM]

Hrmm, I don't see him complaining about all those cheap Korean electronics that get exported to the US!

[#4 posted by zuzu , June 19, 2008 11:01 AM]

Hrmm, I don't see him complaining about all those cheap Korean electronics that get exported to the US!

Those don't cause CJD; whereas beef from the United States poses a significant risk of just that.

It helps none that the USDA actually obscures the risk of "mad cow" disease, particularly by preventing farmers who perform Good Manufacturing Practices and testing for the deadly prions from marketing their beef as a premium as such -- because that would be admitting that there's a problem. So, "for the good of the industry", the USDA forbids farmers from doing The Right Thingâ„¢ and informing their customers of how their beef is grown and processed.

This is called regulatory capture.

(Not that Samsung isn't deeply in bed with the ROK government too.)

[#5 posted by KWillets , June 19, 2008 11:05 AM]

The self-immolation count is up to two so far as I read in the newspapers.

I think the farmers gave up the protectionism angle several weeks ago, or at least they joined the mad cow disease scare-mongering at that time. Now it seems to be a combination of professional agitators, gullible internet users, LMB's (and Korea's) top-down governing style, and the opposition's attempts to take advantage of, and exacerbate, any possible political vulnerability.

LMB is stuck trying to get the KOR-US FTA ratified before both sides fall apart. In the meantime the economy is failing. It's a tense game.

[#6 posted by Enochrewt , June 19, 2008 11:59 AM]

Is there a class in Asia somewhere that teaches weird and ineffective protesting? They sure do a lot of it.

[#7 posted by zuzu , June 19, 2008 12:06 PM]

Is there a class in Asia somewhere that teaches weird and ineffective protesting?

As opposed to effective protesting???

[#8 posted by SomeGuy , June 19, 2008 12:39 PM]

I suppose there's no sense in crying over spilt...er, never mind.

[#9 posted by Crunchbird , June 19, 2008 12:55 PM]

Those don't cause CJD; whereas beef from the United States poses a significant risk of just that.

I'm sorry, but a statement like that REALLY requires a citation, or at least some shred of evidence to back it up. Has there ever been a case of CJD or vCJD that was attributable to consumption of American cows with BSE? I'm not saying that there's no risk, the situation in the UK in the '80s and '90s proved that there was, but the idea that US beef poses a "significant risk" strikes me as a pretty "significant" exaggeration. In the UK, hundreds of thousands of infected cows led to a couple hundred deaths. In the US, only a handful cows have ever even been detected with the disease.

[#10 posted by Axx , June 19, 2008 2:46 PM]

A mooving demonstration indeed.

[#11 posted by Wareq , June 19, 2008 4:05 PM]

Do it right, people.

[#12 posted by Antinous , June 19, 2008 4:14 PM]

Wareq,

I stripped your link. You cannot spring that on people without warning.

[#13 posted by Art Carnage , June 19, 2008 4:45 PM]

Worst. Protest. Ever.

[#14 posted by Anonymous , June 19, 2008 6:10 PM]

This was not in protest to the U.S. beef imports. This man was a milk farmer protesting the gov't price freeze on milk products amidst increasing production and feed costs.

But dumping milk on your head seems wasteful...as well as futile. :)

[#15 posted by Daneman , June 19, 2008 10:00 PM]

DEAR BOINGBOING,

I live in South Korea.

There has been mass protesting over the US-Korea Free Trade agreement for months. The protesters have never once mentioned the plight of the Korean Beef Farmer were the agreement were to be ratified as is.

Rather, the protests center around the belief that American beef has and will cause Mad Cow Disease (and vCJD) in Korea. This belief has been widely reported in the media as fact. The misinformation is staggering. It has been reported that Mad Cow is airborne, can be caught through cosmetics and diapers, and that Koreans are 3x more likely to catch it than Westerners.

The issue at heart may be the protection of the domestic beef market, but the protests are solely about Mad Cow and have become a referendum on the president Lee Myung-Bak who has only been in office for five months.

When it comes to a protester pouring milk on themself, this is a welcome change of pace as at least two people have burned themselves alive.

[#16 posted by Takuan , June 19, 2008 10:03 PM]

agreed

[#17 posted by Kyle Armbruster , June 20, 2008 5:51 AM]

We had this nonsense in Japan back in 2005. I had some of my students who were interested in it look into it for a project. Here is what they found:

Japan has had 21 instances of BSE, so the US cut off imports of Japanese beef.

Then, the US had a single BSE case, on a cow from Canada.

Japan got most of their beef from Nebraska, which has the land for grassfeeding... They buy good beef.

The Japanese govt., upset about the US embargo on their beef, cut off US beef imports and told everyone via the media that US beef would turn their brains into goo that would leak out their nose and turn them into zombies. Well... Close enough to that, anyway.

Yoshinoya, awesome purveyors of cheap and delicious beef-and-rice bowls, started selling crappy pork bowls.

They told Bush they wanted the govt. to institute insanely expensive and labor-intensive checks on beef that just plain isn't going to have BSE because we in the US haven't used cow-derived feed for a long time, and most of our beef is grass-fed, because, you know, we're the kind of place that can actually raise large grazing animals, unlike Japan, which has developed a taste for them.

Bush told them to go blank themselves (and even though I'd like to see him swing for other reasons, this was the appropriate response, IMO).

The Japanese media crucified US beef.

The Aussies swooped in with their nasty, bitter, stringy beef. (Okay, you can find good Aussie beef, but it's as expensive as Japanese beef, so what's the point?)

Some packing plants decided to follow Japan's bullshit rules and US beef imports resumed.

Yoshinoya resumed beef bowls, but only for lunch, and the one closest to work is so smoky I smell like I've been rolling around in an ashtray for the rest of the day if I go.

One packing plant screwed up the crazy rules and US beef imports were shut down again.

Somehow things got back on track, and I can get semi-reasonably priced pot roasts at Costco again.

The point of the story is that people are gullible and when the media doesn't do its job and reports whatever the government wants, stupidity ensues, whether that be a dearth of affordable beef bowls for lunch, or the massacre of a million innocent Iraqis by trained killers from Iowa.

The End.

[#18 posted by sirkowski , June 20, 2008 11:32 AM]

About the people setting themselves on fire. Are these people with mental problems? People who are already suicidal and just find a excuse to off themselves publicly? Because I can't understand how a sane person would kill himself (and in a pretty gruesome way) over a different about beef import...