hankyoreh

At a senior-level meeting between the Grand National Party and officials of the Lee Myung-bak administration a few days ago, Minister of Strategy and Finance Yoon Jeung-hyun reportedly took issue with the moral laxity of livestock farmers who have not undertaken foot-and-mouth disease quarantine efforts.
Yoon reportedly said, “Why should the police spend a hundred days watching the thief when the owner of the house is not interested in catching him?”
He was also quoted as saying, “There are cases in some of the corporate livestock farms where brothers are each receiving tens of billions of Won in compensation money.”
His comments suggest that farmers are not participating in the quarantine effort because they hope to receive compensation money from the government.
One wonders just what he is thinking as a cabinet official. It is outrageous for the government to say, at a point in time when the foot-and-mouth outbreak has been raging for two months and has yet to be brought under control, that the disease is spreading because of the farmers. Foot-and-mouth disease is not a livestock disease that can be brought under control by single individuals or local governments. It is a Type 1 legally designated contagious disease that cannot be prevented without full-force measures at the national level. This is why the United Nations FAO issued a warning to the different nations' quarantine authorities stating that the worst foot-and-mouth outbreak in half a century had erupted in South Korea.
The attitude of Minister of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yoo Jeong-bok has also been exceedingly casual.
Yoo declared, “After we put a swift end to the foot-and-mouth outbreak and resolve the situation cleanly, I will step down.”
But people are not bringing up his actions simply to demand that he take moral responsibility. They are questioning his competence in controlling the situation based on what he has shown for the past two months as the control tower for checking the outbreak. The current minister should step down, and a new control tower should be formed, not to rock the government unnecessarily but to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
Currently, the farmers and health authorities trying to quell the outbreak are spending sleepless nights on the scene waging a desperate battle. A number of health officials have even undergone psychiatric treatment after overseeing and sometimes witnessing some 2.7 million animals slaughtered. It is a situation where all cabinet officials should naturally be focusing all their energies on bringing the outbreak to an end. It is pathetic to see the relevant ministers instead merely blaming others, claiming that the outbreak is due to moral laxity on the part of the farmers or mistaken information in the manual. If the manual is capable of solving everything, why do we even need a minister?
The cabinet ministers are not capable of getting this situation under control in their current mental state. As a first step, they need to change their approach. We also need to create a new control tower for the quarantine effort. Only then can they break away from their attempts to evade responsibility and proceed with a new sense of determination toward shutting the outbreak down. The current control tower has already had plenty of time to do this.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]