Renegotiating the US beef agreement. End in sight?

The word is out in Washington that Herr Bush's minions are close to renegotiating the agreement the impudent and naive and wet behind the ears South Korean president Lee Myung-bak signed when he was in the US two months ago, by which he gave the green light to reimport US beef to his country. This impetuous decision has caused a fire storm for Lee, and more than that, has given risen to daily street protests and a call for his resignation. Two 'sincere' apologies' to the nation brought nothing but sneers. Lee had dispatched his minister of trade Kim Joon hong to the US to renegotiate the agreement. You would've thought Herr Bush would be more understandable by easing the one South Korean president whom he thought much of, because Lee was more red white & blue than his two other predecessors. Well, he wasn't. And talks almost stopped before they started. Now a meeting of the minds is near. No matter what Herr Bush agrees to, he's inextricably plunged the knife deeper into Lee's self inflicted wound by originally allowing again the import of US beef to South Korea. He's weakened an ally and thereby opened a pandora's box on relations between the US and the ROK. Even though South Koreans fear mad cow disease, the issue is not really there. US beef is genetically modified through what it eats, and in what he eats has bone fragments which in other countries did account for the outbreak of mad cow disease. Still more the US ignored the symbolism of what home grown beef meant to South Koreans. US ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow didn't help matters by haughtily dismissing South Korean fears. He went so far to dismiss their concerns as though he were talking to a 5 year old. Which all goes to show you, he is not the right man in times of crisis and he typifies by his words that hoary figure of the 'ugly american'. Whatever the outcome of this flapdoodle, it is obvious Lee is a weed reed, and sooner rather than later will have to step down. And Herr Bush's foot dragging will simply have given more fuel to the quiet fires of South Korea's anti Americanism.