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TITLE: Is South Korea a Democracy?
BLOG NAME: Kamelian X-Rays
Flying Yangban and Kevin at IA both have some quality pictures and commentary on the riots held in Seoul yesterday by farmers against the FTA with Chile and the Iraq deployment. I’m just stunned by the depths to which

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TITLE: Rioting in Korea
BLOG NAME: Barry Talks!
The South , of course.

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TITLE: Koreans and the FTA
BLOG NAME: Silent Running
The Marmot has a post about South Korea’s reluctance to pass a free trade agreement with Chile. Its worth reading just to see how misinformed most Koreans are about the issues involved. At any rate, the Koreans were dragging their…

I apply this argument as much to Newfoundland fishermen and European farmers as I do rioting South Koreans. This starry-eyes nostalgic coddling of traditional industries does the economy no real good and hurts more people than it helps — especially in the third world, where farming is often non-viable because of all the subsidized product swamping the local markets.

I also partially blame the governments for tacitly telling these people that their archaic jobs will be preserved indefinitely, rather than teaching them the world has changed and that different skills and flexibility are necessary now.

That said, I wonder what makes the Korean political system so susceptible to rent-seeking (special interests)… These endless corruption scandals and useless parliamentary sessions aren’t signs of a low level of morality amoung Koreans and Korean politicians — the problems are too endemic — they are signs of structural problems that need fixing.

Offhand, I’m inclined to think that until Korea shifts from personality-based political parties to policy-based, nothing will change.

you have the luxury to be sleepy. wake up.

This is nothing but a successful continuation of the Dear Leader’s plan to paralyse the South. Not that He is allowing all the political infighting to continue but blocking anything that would open the South’s ecomony more. Hell, there have been more reversals this year than I can count, the beef and poultry import bans for example, two of SK’s largest import items.

Juche for all!

But there is a deeper bias against imports in general, as any consumer will note. Politically, there appear to be no groups who are not captive to vested interests. This is surely not unique to Korea, but I think the high-octane “Uri” (Juche?) nationalism and the pervasive mercantilist mentality exacerbate it. Consumer groups are notably nativist here, too.

Have you ever seen a Korean member of parliament question why food costs are always higher (in relative-to-income terms, and often in absolute terms) here than in other OECD countries or why a stock model Korean car costs at least 50% or more here in Korea than a features-loaded one of the same model does in the U.S.?

Reporter: Some Korean farmers oppose the free trade agreement between South Korea and Chile.

Ambassador Fernando Schmidt: I want to point out three things. First, the FTA with Chile will allow Korean farmers to make inroads into the Southern America market. Remember that an FTA is a bilateral agreement. Second, Chile is not an agricultural country. The agricultural industry constitutes only 4.3 percent of the gross domestic production in Chile. Third, Chile is not an agricultural product exporter. Please remember that Chile agreed to export grapes, its main export product, to Korea for only a specific time period.

Damn, I’m sleepy.