South Koreans will continue their candlelight vigils to protest the U.S. beef import deal as South Korea's trade minister travels to the United States to have additional talks with U.S. officials, rally organizers said Friday.

"We can't just sit idly and watch," Yonhap News quoted Park Won-suk, a lead organizer of a civic coalition, the People's Association Against Mad Cow Disease, as saying. ``We expect a turnout of more than 20,000 people at Friday's vigil to be held at the Seoul City Hall plaza.''

Friday's rally coincides with the anniversary of the deaths of two middle schoolgirls who were hit by a U.S. armored vehicle in 2002. The accident led hundreds of thousands of people to take to
the streets demanding an apology from Washington.

Police expect the upcoming rallies to be smaller than those earlier this week, as many citizens are waiting to hear the results of the weekend beef talks in Washington. The daily protests have also fatigued many of the participants, police said.

"We are expecting the crowd to be at 7,000 today. Some 10,000 police officers will be mobilized," Kim Man-jung, a public security officer at the National Police Agency, was quoted as saying.

Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon is scheduled to meet U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab in Washington early Saturday morning (Korean time) to sound out the possibility of revising the beef agreement signed April 18. Seoul is seeking Washington's cooperation to ban exports of U.S. beef from cattle older than 30 months, which is allowed under the agreement, to allay Koreans' concerns over mad cow disease.

The agreement sparked massive street protests by Koreans, who accuse the government of abandoning "quarantine sovereignty" for the sake of improving trade relations with Washington. Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans staged protests across the country Tuesday, with some of them calling for the ouster of President Lee Myung-bak.