Beef concerns trump North Korea progress

SEOUL, South Korea – Beef bested bombs.

America’s chief diplomat found herself vouching for the purity of U.S. cattle Saturday, wading into a bitter trade dispute that for South Koreans has eclipsed the long-running drama over North Korea’s nuclear activity and threatened the government of President Lee Myung-bak.

Just a day after the communist North demolished the most visible symbol of its nuclear programs, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a barrage of questions about the safety of American steaks, chops and burgers.

“I want to assure everyone that American beef is safe,” she told a news conference with South Korea’s foreign minister, Yu Myung-hwan. “We will continue to work with you to have consumer confidence in that matter. We want there to be consumer confidence in American beef.”

For many South Koreans, who have lived with threats from their neighbor for five decades, the nuclear issue is of less concern than is Seoul’s agreement to lift a ban on American beef imports in April as a way to restore strained ties with Washington.

U.S. beef was banned for most of the past 4 1/2 years, since the first case of mad cow disease in the U.S. was discovered in 2003. Seoul agreed to resume beef imports only after U.S. producers said they would only ship meat from cattle younger than 30 months.

In Seoul, Rice did manage, briefly, to address the North Korea developments. She said Friday’s destruction of the cooling tower at the North’s main nuclear facility was significant, but that far more had to be done. The demolition followed moves last week by the U.S. to end penalties on North Korea in response to the country’s submission of a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear programs.

“I expect that the North will live up to the obligations that it’s undertaken, to take those concerns seriously and to address them,” Rice said. There are suspicions that information was left out of the declaration, such as Pyongyang’s alleged uranium enrichment.