No honeymoon for unpopular S.Korean president

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - No new South Korean president has fallen as far and as fast as Lee Myung-bak who marked 100 days in office on Tuesday with tumbling support and mass street protests that could weaken his ability to push economic reforms.

It has been a dizzying reversal of fortune for the former construction company boss who won the presidency by a landslide in December but whose repeated stumbles culminated in a nationally televised apology last month for his government's handling of a hugely sensitive U.S. beef import agreement.

With inflation at a seven-year high and his promised 6 percent economic growth target for the year unreachable, thanks largely to a global downturn and high oil prices, Lee's election pledge to take South Korea's economy to new heights now looks over-ambitious.

Even with his conservative party taking control of parliament this week, analysts said he has little hope of pushing through his pro-business reforms unless he wins back public support.

Lee's government said a cabinet shake-up is in the works. It has asked the United States to rework the deal to fully open the local market to U.S. beef and delayed resuming imports to mollify a public concerned about the product's safety.

"He has to do something beyond that as well to show the people that he is really apologetic and he is really reborn and that he deserves one more chance to do things differently," said Hahm Sung Deuk, a professor at Korea University and an expert on the South Korean presidency.

Some of Lee's planned policy changes -- like opening up more to foreign investors, privatizing government assets and getting tough on labor unions -- have long been issues that can ignite furious protest in South Korea.

The government even delayed announcing details of a bank privatization for about a week, one official said, for fear it might become another target for the nightly mass rallies in central Seoul that began as opposition to U.S. beef imports and have since broadened into a wider attack on Lee's rule.

BEEF AND BULLDOZERS

South Korea banned U.S. beef for three years from 2003 after an outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States.

The beef deal was meant to be a crucial gesture to push the U.S. Congress into agreeing a separate free trade deal that would add an estimated extra $20 billion a year to two-way trade. Instead, it became a lightning rod for Lee's opponents at home, who said it showed disregard for the health of consumers.

Lee said on Tuesday his country will not import U.S. beef from cattle over 30 months without public support. That may irritate U.S. lawmakers who said the free trade deal could not go ahead unless South Korea fully opened its market to U.S. beef.

Lee arrived in office with an approval rating of around 52 percent. That has slumped to under 20 percent after 100 days, the lowest at that point of any South Korean leader since open elections started about 20 years ago.

Polls show that the CEO can-do image which earned Lee the nickname "bulldozer" and took him to the presidential Blue House, is now seen more as the mark of a leader with no time to listen or speak to them.

"Whether or not the president and his government, who have wasted the first 100 days, will be able to successfully wrap up the remaining 1,700 days depends on the decision that will be made in the next few days," the country's biggest newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, said in an editorial on Tuesday.