SKorea's beef fiasco: President responds by replacing top aids

South Korea's embattled President Lee Myung-Bak Friday replaced seven top aides to give his government a fresh start after weeks of mass protests against a US beef import deal.

"We will do our best for our people, humbly paying attention to public opinion," Lee told a ceremony at which he appointed replacements for chief of staff Yu Woo-Ik and six senior presidential secretaries.

"From now, I will make a fresh start," said Lee, repeating a pledge he made Thursday during a televised apology for the turmoil sparked by fears of mad cow disease.

The conservative leader, elected with a record majority, has seen his popularity slump below 20 percent and his four-month-old government has been severely shaken. But there were some signs of hope Friday.

On Thursday, Lee already indicated that he was giving up his signature project and one of his key election promises - digging a canal across South Korea - in a gesture of changing his leadership style that attracted a rare but reserved applause from the political opposition.

"I have painfully learned that no policy can succeed without public support," Lee said, reflecting upon the beef brouhaha. "For the rest of my term, I will keep reminding myself of the lesson I have learned from this case."

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Also on Thursday, hundreds of the 13,000 South Korean truckers, whose strike against rising fuel costs paralyzed ports and cost businesses billions of dollars in lost exports, reached deals to increase cargo-hauling fees and returned to work, taking some of the pressure off Lee.

Lee ruled out renegotiating the beef deal because it would "contradict global standards and cause trade frictions." But to ease the public fear of mad cow disease, he reconfirmed Thursday that South Korea would not import U.S. beef unless Washington made sure that meat from cattle 30 months or older - feared to be more at risk for the disease - was not shipped to South Korea.

Lee angered South Koreans by agreeing in April to lift an import ban on U.S. beef, first imposed in 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in the United States.

Anti-U.S. beef protests quickly grew into broader demonstrations against Lee's leadership style. Protesters accused him of pandering to U.S. interests despite public heath concerns and pushing an education overhaul, the privatization of state-funded companies and other policy items without heeding public opinion.