By Oh Young-jin
Staff Reporter

In a dramatic turn of events, Korea's Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon Monday (Korea Standard Time) canceled his flight home at the last minute and decided to stay on at the request of his U.S. counterpart to rework the April 18 beef deal.

Kim's decision to stay for additional talks aimed at persuading the United States to provide official guarantees that it would not ship beef from cattle older than 30 months came hours after the Korean Embassy said in a news release that Kim had given up his third round of talks with his U.S. counterpart Susan Schwab. The pair held two rounds of talks but failed to make any progress.

The embassy said that the Kim was departing because Washington fully understood Seoul's stance, with technical matters to be discussed at a sub-minister level meeting.

``Minister Kim is staying in response to a U.S. request that more talks were necessary,'' said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

This also raised hope for an eleventh hour concession by the Americans, something Seoul is relying heavily on to defuse public antipathy towards the decision to allow imports of beef, hours before President Lee visited Camp David for his first summit with U.S. President George W. Bush.

The decision, which was unexpected as it came after Seoul's more selective stance, enraged the public who felt the government had failed to protect them and triggered a month-long civil disobedience campaign, peaking with a protest by hundreds of thousands in downtown Seoul on June 10.

In the face of these massive protests and a dismal drop in Lee's popularity to below 20 percent, Cheong Wa Dae said that it would reshuffle the presidential secretariat along with the Cabinet whose members tendered their resignation en masse.

The visit came after high-powered delegations including a senior presidential secretary received a cool reception from their U.S. hosts.

During previous talks, Minister Kim asked Schwab to grant an export verification program to Korea-bound beef shipments, similar to the one applied to shipments to Japan, now held in abeyance, that provided U.S. Department of Agriculture's guarantees of beef from young cattle, believed to be safer than that from cattle aged 30 months or older.

South Korea banned U.S imports in 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was detected, the first of three confirmed cases in the United States. In April this year, Seoul agreed to reopen its market to U.S. beef imports, scrapping nearly all quarantine regulations.

foolsdie@koreatimes.co.kr