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Pro-Bush prayer gathering greets U.S. president on South Korea visit

South Koreans remain generally positive in public opinion surveys about the United States, which helped repel North Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War and still deploys some 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula to deter an attack.

Voters elected conservative, pro-American president Lee Myung-bak by a landslide, and he took office in February with promises to patch up relations with Washington that became strained under Seoul's previous decade of liberal governments.

Before Lee's April meeting with Bush in Washington, South Korea agreed to lift a ban on American beef that was imposed after the United States' first case of mad cow disease was discovered in late 2003. Lee's government said it would allow virtually unlimited imports, aiming to help passage of a wider free-trade agreement between the two countries.

But the announcement set off a firestorm at home, setting the stage for weeks of candlelight vigils and angry street rallies fueled by a perception that the government ignored public health concerns and caved in to U.S. pressure in Lee's haste to cozy up to the Americans. The criticism was fueled in part by false and sensational reports by South Korean media and rumors spread on the Web.

While the rallies were never overtly anti-American and focused on grievances with Lee, the candles were reminiscent of a series of anti-U.S. demonstrations that erupted in 2002 after two girls were killed in an accident with a U.S. military vehicle.

The protests mostly died down after Seoul won amendments to the beef deal that ban American meat from older cattle and include other safeguards. U.S. beef imports have resumed, although many larger South Korean stores and restaurants have refused to serve the meat due to the backlash.

Before he arrived, Bush defused what could have been another rallying cry for protests that would have spanned all factions of Korean society, involving the country's long-simmering territorial dispute with Japan.

The issue recently flared up after a Japanese educational manual said Japan's students should be taught about the dispute over the South Korean-controlled islets, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.

The U.S. Board of Geographic Names then injected itself into the dispute by altering a listing of the status of the islets from South Korean to "non-designated sovereignty," prompting anger in South Korea that could have overshadowed Bush's visit.

However, the president soothed Seoul's concerns last week by taking the unexpected step of asking the board to change the listing back.

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