Chapter 418 Against You
Chapter 418 Against You
At the Chunchugwan in the Blue House, Bai Jinjun quickly left from the back door of the press conference hall and came to the corridor on the south side of the hall.
There were many staff members coming and going in the corridor. Bai Jinjun put the phone to his ear, listening to An Rushong's statement on the other end of the phone while walking towards a room not far away.
The room Bai Jinjun chose was a lounge. Ever since Li Minbo moved into the Blue House, this room has belonged to him. Walking west along the corridor from this door, in about twenty steps you can reach the west gate of Chunchugwan. And continuing west along the road from the west gate of Chunchugwan is the secretariat where he works.
During the call, An Rushong described what was happening on the Yongdong Bridge: protesters opposing the beef import agreement blocked traffic on the bridge, and an ambulance carrying the wounded was trapped. The injured in the car were seriously injured and needed emergency treatment, but the protesters refused to give way.
Just a few simple sentences pointed out a pair of opposing contradictions: the contradiction between the protesters and the injured.
At first, Bai Jinjun couldn't understand why An Rushong spoke to him in such a serious tone on the phone, but as he finished his description, Bai Jinjun, who had grasped the main contradiction, immediately realized how important this matter was.
In the past two days, the most troublesome thing for President Lee Min-bo is undoubtedly the wave of protests in South Korea after the signing of the beef import agreement. For two consecutive days, people from the Korean Beef Association and the Agricultural Cooperatives have been organizing marches and demonstrations. Yesterday was the first day of the protests, so the number of participants was slightly smaller. But today, the situation is very different. According to rough estimates, the number of people participating in the march and demonstration today has exceeded 5,000.
Yesterday, most of the protesters were farmers and cattle farm workers from around Seoul, but today, many more Seoul citizens are participating. According to the estimates of the countermeasures department, if the Blue House does not take effective countermeasures, the scale of the protests may increase several times within two days, and its influence will become increasingly greater.
For example, regarding imported beef, although there is a possibility of infection with mad cow disease among American beef cattle over 30 months old, Korean Customs does have a quarantine and inspection mechanism, and the peak incidence of mad cow disease in the United States has passed. So, overall, the risk is far less than people imagine.
Most importantly, for ordinary people in South Korea, they don’t really care about the issue of beef imports. How can ordinary people know so much about whether the country imports beef over 30 months old from the United States or beef under 30 months old? The reason why this storm has reached such a level is entirely the result of someone fanning the flames.
Who is fanning the flames? Besides the Korean Beef Association and the Agricultural Cooperatives, it is the progressives. It can even be said that the Korean Beef Association and the Agricultural Cooperatives have always stood on the side of the progressives. It was so in the past, it is so now, and it may be so in the future.
Now, the controversy over the South Korea-US beef import agreement is getting bigger and bigger. For the Blue House, the best response is to find another piece of news that can attract public attention and divert public attention from the beef import agreement. Otherwise, as President Lee Min-bo, under the pressure of public opinion, will have to formally apologize to the public and cancel the newly signed agreement.
As the new owner of the Blue House, Lee Min-bo has just been in office for less than two months. If he publicly apologizes to the people for a policy mistake at this time, his prestige as president will suffer a severe blow.
This is still secondary. The main thing is that if South Korea wants to cancel the Korea-US beef import agreement that has just been signed, it must obtain the understanding and recognition of the United States. After all, this is a bilateral trade agreement, and it is a bilateral trade agreement signed between South Korea and the United States. If South Korea unilaterally tears up the agreement, the consequences will be very serious - Washington will not consider how difficult it is for Lee Min-bo.
The fact is that last night, Li Minbo had a phone call with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gutierrez, hoping to renegotiate the beef import agreement, but was ruthlessly rejected by the other party. The position of the U.S. Department of Commerce actually represents the position of the White House.
This fact means that as President Lee Min-bo, he actually has no way out on the issue of the beef import agreement.
It is precisely because of this that after receiving this sudden call from An Rushong, Bai Jinjun immediately took it seriously. For no other reason, it was because he understood An Rushong's intention. At the same time, he also believed that the Blue House could seriously make a fuss about this matter.
At the end of his statement, An Rushong suggested that a helicopter was needed at Yongdong Bridge so that the injured could be quickly transferred to the nearest hospital.
To be honest, such a request was nothing to Bai Jinjun. He could easily solve the problem without even going through Li Minbo. In his opinion, arranging a helicopter to go there was the most important highlight of the whole thing.
Take the news hype later, for example. If the relevant reports only said that the demonstrators blocked the traffic on Yongdong Bridge, which prevented the ambulance from sending the injured to the hospital, the public probably would not be able to feel the urgent atmosphere at that time. But if the report added: In order to save the injured in a race against time, the relevant agencies also dispatched a helicopter and staged a thrilling rescue drama on Yongdong Bridge in the rain, wouldn’t the picture and sense of urgency come out immediately?
That's right, the Blue House cannot be implicated in this matter, otherwise, people will question that the normal rescue was originally a play directed by the Blue House - after hanging up the call with An Rusong, such a thought flashed through Bai Jinjun's mind. At the same time, he immediately grabbed the phone on the table and called the presidential office through the internal phone.
The call was connected quickly, but the person who answered the phone was not Lee Min-bok, but Kim Xijin, the current director of the First Subsidiary Office of the Presidential Office. This person is nearly twenty years older than Baek Jin-jun. He served as Lee Min-bok's secretary when Lee Min-bok was the mayor of Seoul. He is one of the people around the president who is very trusted.
Bai Jinjun also plays almost the same role beside Li Minbo, so the relationship between him and Jin Xijin is not only not harmonious, but even a little hostile. However, they will not show this antagonistic relationship in front of Li Minbo.
He told Jin Xijin on the phone that he had something urgent to discuss with the President. A moment later, Li Minbo's obviously tired voice came from the phone.
Bai Jinjun did not dare to delay and immediately told Li Minbo about the unexpected situation that An Rushong had encountered. At the same time, Bai Jinjun also briefly stated his own views.
Yes, in everyone's opinion, what happened to An Rushong at Yongdong Bridge was also an unexpected accident. If there was no one pushing it behind the scenes, this matter might not have attracted anyone's attention, and it would not have had any substantial impact.
The injured person in the car may eventually be saved, or he may eventually die from his injuries because the best time for treatment is delayed. But no matter whether he is dead or alive, this accident is unlikely to be linked to the current sensational demonstration.
But the problem now is that this accident was encountered by An Rushong, and he wanted to get involved in it and use it to guide public opinion. So, for the Blue House, this matter is worth working on.
The Nonghui and the Korean Beef Association can certainly criticize the Blue House for selling out the interests of the Republic of Korea over the beef import agreement, and the Blue House can also secretly guide public opinion to criticize the demonstrations organized by the Nonghui and the Korean Beef Association, which are disruptive to social order and inhumane.
Regardless of whether such a counterattack is effective or whether it can divert public attention, at least its appearance can reverse the situation in which the Blue House has been passively attacked.
Therefore, when Bai Jinjun ended the call with Li Minbo, the final instruction he received was to try his best to cooperate with An Rushong's plan and try to hype the Yongdong Bridge incident into a hot news.
Just as Bai Jinjun was calling Li Minbo for instructions, An Rusong, who had hung up the phone on the completely blocked Yongdong Bridge, looked at the young doctor who was still staring at him blankly. He put his phone in his pocket, then reached out and pressed the young doctor's shoulder, saying, "I have contacted the helicopter, and they should be here soon. Before that, please take good care of the injured in the car."
As he spoke, he turned his head and looked around, then emphasized, "To us, every life is precious."
Luo Minzhi, who was standing by, felt his throat itchy and wanted to cough hard. He found that his boss seemed to be getting thicker and thicker, and he could even go into politics and run for a seat in parliament.
An Rushong, possessed by the spirit of acting, shook hands with the middle-aged doctor again. Then, he glanced to the left with the corner of his eye. There, a camera squeezed into the crowd was facing him.
An Rusong took two steps sideways and walked to the middle-aged man who led the demonstration. He first glanced at his name tag and then said, "Mr. Jin Chengyuan, right? I don't know if you belong to the Agricultural Cooperative or the Korean Beef Association, but what I want to say is that if you have different opinions on the policies of the Blue House and want to express your own position through demonstrations, it is understandable. But coercing public opinion, even using the excuse of petitions to create chaos, disrupt order, and even disregarding humanity and human life, is an act that can only be despised."
"So, Mr. Kim Sung-won," he said again, wiping the rain off his face with his hand, "as a Korean with a conscience, I publicly declare that I oppose your position and the demonstrations you organize under any pretext."
(End of this chapter)