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Bloggers and Politics in South Korea CHEN: South Korean bloggers are not only taking to the streets protesting U.S. beef imports but also becoming influential citizen journalists. Their online claim that beef import could put Koreans at risk of mad cow disease, was watched by two hundred million Internet users a day. STORY: The recent beef protests in Seoul are the biggest South Korea has seen in 20 years. Spurred by a flurry of online gripes that a deal to import US beef put society at risk of mad cow disease - these tech-savvy activists showed that they could take control of political and news agendas. [Do Jung-Gwan, Citizen Journalist]: "We just relied on the established media in the past to get to know the important issues. But it has changed -- we can take pictures ourselves and post them on the Internet. This new culture is changing the way our country does politics." The government was caught off-guard. After winning by a landslide in December's election, the president's approval rating is now barely 20 percent. With technology, activists also became more potent protesters, sending out messages urging friends to meet up at demonstrations and warning them when the police started to make arrests. They didn't just shout slogans - they took pictures, quickly posting them on the Internet - going from activists to "citizen journalists." Some websites went from 40 million pages viewed a day to 200 million. However, there is the need to weed through biased opinions and inaccurate reports. One citizen journalist said it wasn't easy to post pictures or videos on the Internet which went against the popular flow. [Lee Gwi-Jin, Citizen Journalist]: "If we post any pictures representing the government's opinion or any pictures showing the demonstrator's violence, many say we're working for the ruling party -- even if we always try to report impartially. I feel at a loss with the situation." It just proves the Internet is powerful, if not unwieldy. Tags: NTD NTDTV news Seoul South-Korea Blog Politics beef cow disease tech-savvy activist