Changes in South Korean consumers’ preferences for meat

This study analyzes the South Korean meat demand system, and the empirical results show that there are two statistically significant structural changes in Korean consumers’ meat preferences, respectively in August 1998 and October 2001. The first break point is related to the Asian financial crisis and the second one coincides with the BSE outbreak in Japan. This implies that South Korean consumers reacted by taking defensive actions to lower their level of health risk by responding to a myriad of mass media reports regarding the Japanese BSE outbreak, although there was no case of BSE in South Korea.