The Marmot’s Hole

The Hankyoreh ran a pretty good piece today on the (get out your hankies) pain and irrepressible anger felt by Korean farmers. With the ratification of the ROK-Chile Free Trade Agreement all but a certainty, farmers are letting politicians know their feelings of outrage; feelings of betrayal are particularly acute, especially toward those politicians who hail from rural areas. When the general elections role around on April 15 of next year, many farmers, having lost faith in politicians, are planning to stay home, while others talk of entering politics themselves. The Hankyoreh piece is long, and full of choice quotes, but let me concentrate on one man’s testimony in particular.

“To speak frankly, rather than the Assemblymen from urban areas who agree with the [ROK-Chile] FTA, the feelings of betrayal are greater toward those Assemblymen coming from farming areas. From small children to 80 year old village elders, we all say ‘don’t pass the FTA’ and flock to Yoido [the area in Seoul where the National Assembly is located], but the Assemblymen say, “I oppose it [the FTA], but since the others agree with it, there is nothing I can do,” and they submit [to passing it].”

These days, when Im Heung-nak of the P’yongtaek Farmers’ Association thinks of the ‘Assembly ratification of the ROK-Chile FTA,’ he burns inside. This is because the politicians have only put it off temporarily because of the special prosecutor bill and GNP head Choe Byeong-nyeol’s hunger strike, and both the executive branch and the legislators say that “the conclusion of the FTA is in accordance with the trends of the times” and are waiting only for the day to ratify it.

According to Im, “If the ROK-Chile FTA is ratified, not only rice and grapes, but cheap livestock products will flood into Korea, and to ratify the agreement without any countermeasures is, in actuality, to give up on the agricultural industry,” and reckoned that “by ratifying this FTA, won’t the Assemblymen become the enemies of the farmers?”

Im added, “When it’s election time, they raise their voices saying that they are sons of farmers, and that they are legislators that represent the farmers. If they are true farmers’ Assemblymen, they have to do their duty as legislators and come out against the ratification of the FTA,” and “It’s the position of farmers’ groups that next year, we will launch a movement to defeat those Assemblymen who voted for the ratification of the FTA.”

Im believes that politicians such as these are insensitive to the problems of the agricultural industry because they mistakenly see it only from the perspective of economics.

“In order to export cars and electronics goods, they are making the uncompetitive agricultural industry a sacrificial lamb. It’s the theory of comparative advantage. But is there a developed country that sells its “food sovereign” abroad? You can’t look at the agricultural industry from the economic perspective, but see it as a bioindustry that produces the food of the [Korean] race. It’s a national security industry, and you have to give it treatment as such. The Assemblymen must first set straight [i.e. reform] the agricultural sector.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times - you farmers will be the death of this nation if you keep this crap up. You’re lucky that a number of other countries (the US and France come immediately to mind) still have their heads up their asses as far as their own agricultural industries are concerned so they can’t (better, shouldn’t) press Korea too hard on this. Korea is NO LONGER an agricultural country - the lifeblood of the nation is industry and information technologies. You CANNOT chose to compete in those industries your good at while protecting the ones at which you aren’t. Other nations tend to get VERY pissed off at this, and while Chile probably poses no threat, all you need to do is think back when China threatened to close its markets to Korean telecom exports in retaliation for Korean barriers to Chinese garlic exports. As a nation that exports high-tech goods, Korea should be doing all it can to open markets abroad; the LAST thing it should be doing is maintaining anachronistic, neo-mercantilist trade barriers for a dying industry. Yes, food can be considered “security,” but so can a gazillion other different industries (steel, semiconductors, electronics, cars) that Korea would not want to see other countries designate “industries necessary to national security.”

You know, I really do hope that farmers get into politics. Perhaps that might free other politicians from having to pay lip service to them. Maybe, just maybe, other politicians will begin to discuss how agricultural trade barriers screw, first and foremost, Korean agricultural consumers - consumers who not only pay out the friggin’ nose for agricultural goods (trust me, I just came back from the supermarket), but also make up the overwhelming majority of Korea’s voters. Perhaps they might point out that protecting Chul-soo the garlic farmer in Uiseong puts Min-ho and Young-hee the microchip manufacturers in Suwon out of their jobs.

Look, Korea is hardly alone in protecting its farmers from reality and good economic sense, and I realize its going to take time for people to get with the program. But the politicians need to do more to combat the misplaced nationalist rhetoric and special interests that seek to elevate narrow economic concerns above the livelihood of the nation before its too late.

Oh, BTW, Jeff in Pusan had an excellent post on Korea and free trade a little while back, which you can read here.