South Korea is likely to win concessions concerning its quarantine inspection of American beef during the additional negotiations between the two allies over the weekend, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Monday.
The ministry said Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon would brief reporters on what has been discussed on U.S. beef between South Korea and the United States Tuesday.
The ministry has yet to reveal the main contents of the briefing but Yonhap News said it will have something to do with clauses that would be included in the beef agreement so South Korea could ``exercise quarantine sovereignty'' in case mad cow disease occurs in the United States. Kim is scheduled to meet the press Tuesday.
``Exercising quarantine sovereignty'' is interpreted as meaning that South Korea will be empowered to halt U.S. beef imports.
Kim Won-woon, chairman of the National Assembly's unification and foreign affairs and trade committee, also told Yonhap News that he received a report from the Foreign Ministry that there had been a progress in the latest bilateral talks. ``The key is whether South Korea has been guaranteed `quarantine sovereignty' in connection with beef imports from the U.S.,'' Kim was quoted as saying.
In recent days, thousands of South Koreans have participated in candlelight vigils calling on their government to scrap the beef deal. Faced with fierce opposition, the government has delayed issuing a government notice on the resumption, a measure required to restart imports. Imports were initially scheduled to resume last week.
Last month's deal to reopen South Korea's market to American beef came just hours before South Korean President Lee Myung-bak held his first summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C. The pact was widely seen as a concession aimed at getting the U.S. Congress to approve a broader trade deal.
South Korea suspended imports of U.S. beef after the first American case of mad cow disease appeared in December 2003 in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state.
Scientists believe mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, spreads when farmers feed cattle recycled meat and bones from infected animals. In humans, eating meat products contaminated with the illness is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, fatal malady.