In May 2008, thousands of South Koreans took to the streets to protest the impending importation of U.S. beef. In a classic example of the social amplification of risk theory, citizens were apparently convinced that substandard beef was headed for South Korea and they would all develop mad cow disease.

Now, some citizens are fighting back.

JoonAng Daily reports that more than 1,000 Korean-Americans filed a group lawsuit against a Korean broadcaster yesterday, claiming its coverage of the supposed health risks of U.S. beef humiliated them and subjected them to mockery in the United States.

In April last year, Seoul-based MBC broadcast a report on U.S. beef warning that consumption of the meat may lead to the human form of mad cow disease. Following the airing of the “PD Diary” episode, tens of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets to protest a Seoul-Washington agreement that reopened the Korean beef market to U.S. products.

The protests continued for months, rattling the new Lee Myung-bak administration. …

“We demand that MBC and the chief producer of PD Diary pay for the psychological damage and broadcast a correction report and an apology,” said Lee Heon, legal representative of the group. …

Lee said the plaintiffs were insulted by PD Diary as its report insinuated that anyone who eats U.S. beef will contract the human form of mad cow disease. He also argued that because of the report, people living in Korea came to look down on overseas Koreans who have eaten U.S. beef for years.

And every time I hear of some frivolous story about mad cow disease – not the serious stories where innocent people die – I think of this 1995 song by Vancouver band, The Odds.
 

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One of the most influential papers I ever read was in a 1988 issue of the journal, Risk Analysis, entitled, The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework, by Roger E. Kasperson, Ortwin Renn, Paul Slovic, Halina S. Brown, Jacque Emel, Robert Goble, Jeanne X. Kasperson and Samuel Ratick. Today the paper seems particularly prescient for the events going on today, 20 years later,  in South Korea, where riot police were bracing for what could be the largest anti-government protest during weeks of rallies against an agreement to resume imports of U.S. beef.

Some 2,500 people gathered at a protest site in central Seoul, with thousands more expected to join them after a separate rally. Police estimated the total turnout would be about 20,000, the biggest in weeks of anti-U.S. beef protests.

Other reports said up to 100,000 protesters were present.

About a dozen farmers in traditional funeral clothes marched Saturday on a downtown street on the way to the main protest site, carrying signs with anti-government slogans. They also carried the severed head of a cow (right).

South Korea agreed last month to reopen what was formerly the third-largest overseas market for U.S. beef. It had been shut for most of the past 4 1/2 years following the first U.S. case of mad cow disease in a Canadian-born cow in Washington state in 2003.

That deal, coupled with some sensational media reports, sparked fears of mad cow disease and triggered weeks of near-daily street protests calling for scrapping and renegotiating the agreement (left, protesters carry a sign symbolizing U.S. beef infected by mad cow disease, from Reuters).











The abstract from the Kasperson, et al., paper, is below.

One of the most perplexing problems in risk analysis is why some relatively minor risks or risk events, as assessed by technical experts, often elicit strong public concerns and result in substantial impacts upon society and economy. This article sets forth a conceptual framework that seeks to link systematically the technical assessment of risk with psychological, sociological, and cultural perspectives of risk perception and risk-related behavior. The main thesis is that hazards interact with psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes in ways that may amplify or attenuate public responses to the risk or risk event. A structural description of the social amplification of risk is now possible. Amplification occurs at two stages: in the transfer of information about the risk, and in the response mechanisms of society. Signals about risk are processed by individual and social amplification stations, including the scientist who communicates the risk assessment, the news media, cultural groups, interpersonal networks, and others. Key steps of amplifications can be identified at each stage. The amplified risk leads to behavioral responses, which, in turn, result in secondary impacts. Models are presented that portray the elements and linkages in the proposed conceptual framework.

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