Political Response to Foot-and-Mouth Disease: A Review of Korean News

• Main Authors: Chang-Ryong Ko, Sung-Soo Seol, Geonha Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: foot-and-mouth disease; FMD; disposal site; Korea; political response; news review
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/3/463

The 2010/2011 foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in Korea produced about 4500 burial sites for 3.5 million animal carcasses, which can be summarized as quick, mass burials, at or near the outbreak farms. An FMD outbreak has occurred nearly every year since the big outbreak, although the sizes of these outbreaks have been small. This article presents the rationale behind government policies for FMD outbreaks and disposal sites, the secrecy of the government administration and the neglect of scientific data. We compared government news announcements with news from the non-governmental sector by analyzing all the news for FMD and disposal sites from 29 October 2010, the first day of the big outbreak to August 2016. We found that the Korean response to the FMD outbreak originated from political purposes. We present four rationales for our arguments including: (1) a military collision between North and South of Korea; (2) the reformation of four big rivers; (3) the incident at the Fukushima Atomic Energy Plant of Japan; and (4) the national elections. We believe that the next response should be based on scientific data and proof, and also from the environmental perspective, not the political or industry perspective.