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OPENING UP OF RICE MARKET

ROK starts talks with US, China, others next moth

ANN/ THE KOREA HERALD
South Korea is set to start negotiations with the United States, China and seven other countries on the wider opening up of the Korean rice market next month. The main issue will be whether it will continue to increase rice imports under the "minimum market access" scheme or liberalise them with a high tariff rate that is set to decline over time.
Either way, the nation is set to raise imports, to the chagrin of farmers. Korean negotiators will have to pull off an accord that will minimize damage to domestic rice farming and give farmers enough time to prepare for any onslaught by foreign exporters.
The Korean government says it aims at minimum market access, a scheme designed to increase imports up to a certain portion of domestic consumption over a set
period of time. Under the terms
concluded as part of the Uruguay round of trade talks in 1994,
imports will rise from the equivalent of 1 percent of domestic consumption in 1995 to 4 percent this year. New rules will apply, beginning next year.
Minimum market access is well chosen, given that farmers regard it as the lesser evil. But, depending on its terms, this mode of imports can be more harmful than opening the domestic market with an initially high rate of tariffs, say as high as 400 percent.
Of course, the nation will have to switch to tariffs, as some other importers did, if it is to serve its interests better. Japan, which began with minimum market access, as Korea did a decade ago, voluntarily converted to tariffs in 1999. So did Taiwan, one year after it joined the World Trade
Organization in 2001. To their relief, the changeover has not resulted in a substantial increase in imports.
Korea cannot insist only on minimum market access, a provisional relief for importing nations that are in transition to free rice trade. As a nation depending on exports for growth, it will eventually have to open its rice market completely. It is only a matter of time.
But the problem is that Korean farmers are firm in their belief that a switch to tariffs will spell an end to rice cultivation in the nation.
Most lawmakers with rural constituencies support the farmers' stand.
The Korean government will certainly have great difficulty persuading
farmers and lawmakers, whatever the outcome of the negotiations.