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Seoul: US President George W. Bush arrived in South Korea on Tuesday for talks focused on communist North Korea and was greeted by a minor protest aimed mostly at his host instead of a big anti-US rally that had been expected.
In a surprising turn of events for Bush, who has largely managed to set aside prickly issues with Seoul, it was a rally in the city centre in support of what is likely to be his last visit to East Asia as president that ended up attracting a huge crowd.
"I came to pray for the country to come together and with President Bush coming, for his visit to go smoothly," Lim Ji-young, 23, said against a background of gospel music at the pro-US prayer rally of an estimated 15,000 people.
There was little sign of the widespread anger that had sparked weeks of mass anti-government protests after President Lee Myung-bak agreed completely to end a ban on US beef imports, which had been barred five years earlier over mad cow disease concerns.
Some 20,000 police have been mobilised for the Bush visit and easily outnumbered a few hundred anti-Bush protesters who were dispersed with a brief burst of water cannon.
A cameraman said he saw police arrest at least a dozen protesters.
Defusing anger
A senior US official said the furore over beef had receded as an agenda item in the meeting with Lee after the two sides reworked an April deal to open what was once the third-largest foreign market for the US product.
"That agreement seems to be working extremely well," Dennis Wilder, the White House National Security Council's senior director for Asian affairs, told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Before his trip Bush also quickly defused potential anger at Washington's position over the sovereignty of a desolate group of islands claimed by both South Korea and Japan.
His trip to Asia will take him to Bangkok today and then on to Beijing for the Olympic Games.
Lee had agreed to the beef imports in April during his first overseas trip after taking office.
Bush hosted him at Camp David, hoping the deal would lift a major barrier to the US Congress approving a free trade deal with Asia's fourth largest economy.
Lightning rod
But anger at home over the beef accord became a lightning rod for mass protests that signalled wider dissatisfaction with the conservative Lee government.
The government's popularity popularity tumbled in less than six months in office.
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