ABSTRACT
In early May 2008, thousands of teenagers began to gather in Seoul Square right next to the City Hall to express their anxieties and grievances surrounding the Korean-US agreement on the import of US beef into Korea. At issue was the BSE risk, which the protestors believed could follow the unregulated import of all types of beef products from the United States without sufficient rights given to the Korean government to inspect and control them. Nobody could anticipate at that time that this event would develop some weeks later into political turmoil that would shake the whole country and challenge the legitimacy of the newly installed conservative political power.
