It is well known that agriculture has been one of the most contentious areas in the Korea-U.S. FTA negotiations. Since the beginning of the talks, the United States has consistently demanded full opening of the South Korean market to American-grown products. For Korean farmers the issue at stake is much more than a mere loss in profits; it is a matter of the very survival of their livelihood and their communities. Furthermore, the severe weakening of its agriculture will have a severely negative social, culture and environmental impact on South Korea.   

While most American agriculture is controlled by large corporations, all farming in South Korea is done by individual farmers with small to medium-size holdings. A brief look at statistics makes the inequity readily apparent: the total acreage of land under cultivation in the United States is 105 times as great as that in Korea (176 million ha to 1.7 million ha), the average farm-size 58 times greater (29ha to 0.48ha) and the average income of individuals in the agricultural business four times greater ($7,200 to $1,400). Like small farmers in the United States, South Korea??/SPAN>s farmers cannot compete with large agro-business, which mass produce cheaply-priced goods with the aid of heavy government subsidies. The U.S. negotiators have made clear that American agricultural subsidies will not be affected through the FTA. As such, Korea??/SPAN>s domestic agricultural products stand to loose their markets almost completely once the FTA is implemented.

The effect will be devastating for South Korean farmers. The fate of the primarily citrus-producing population of Jeju Island is a good example: the opening of South Korea's fruit market to powerful companies such as Sunkist and Dole is projected to cause a 59% drop in the price of Korean tangerines, Jeju's primary product, and will result in an annual loss of over $200 million dollars. This, along with reductions in the sale of potato ($72 million), garlic (no statistics available), fish ($5 to $10 million) and meat and dairy ($23-$28 million) makes bankruptcy almost inevitable for farmers on Jeju. The yearly loss for South Korean agriculture nationwide is projected to be close to $9.3 billion. This translates to an average decrease in annual salary of nearly $8000 for farmers, the majority of whom now only make only a little over $10,000 a year. U.S. statistics shows that on the whole, South Korean agricultural production will decrease by 45% after the Korea-U.S. FTA has been implemented. This means that roughly half of Korea's farmers will loose their livelihood and have no option but to give up their farms and join the ranks of the urban poor. It was the prospect of a similar situation brought on by the WTO's impact on South Korean agriculture that prompted farmer Lee Kyung Hae to take his own life in protest at the Cancun Ministerial in 2003, crying "WTO kills farmers!"

The vitality of South Korea's domestic agrarian economy has significance well beyond the individual lives of Korean farmers. This significance is social, cultural and environmental. Traditionally an agricultural society, Korea's culture as a whole is based on customs that have developed around the cycle of cultivation kept alive today in farm villages. Unfortunately, the dissipation of these communities is rapidly underway. Due to rapid industrialization, the Korean farming population has dropped from 50% to less than 10% over the last thirty years. This decrease has occurred more than twice the pace of similar declines took place in the United States and Western Europe. This process has been accelerated in the last decade as a result of trade liberalization policies, forcing hundreds of thousands of farmers to migrate to already overcrowded cities where underemployment is a growing social problem. The flip-side of this over-urbanization is a breakdown of rural ways of life and destruction of the rural environment. In order to preserve South Korea's countryside, local communities, and culture, it is necessary to have measures to support agriculture and maintain farming as a feasible occupation; the comprehensive opening of South Korea's agricultural market is neither wise nor necessary at this time. 

Protective measures are not without precedent. The Swiss government, for example, has, since the first half of the 1990s, officially recognized that the importance of local agriculture goes beyond simple economics, to include preservation of the countryside and long-term sustainability of natural eco-systems. It has thus implemented a subsidy-system to protect and revitalize Swiss farming communities, now only 4% of the population. This goal was also one of the main reasons behind Switzerland's decision to suspend FTA negotiations with the United States.      

The Swiss case provides an important example for South Korea, especially now as it faces the deterioration of its rural villages and ways of life. The South Korean government should be moving to protect agriculture now, not exposing it to over-produced imports which can only but mean its downfall. Although the South Korean government has promised some consideration of this matter in the FTA negotiations, the obviously blind will it has demonstrated towards concluding a deal shows us we should not trust these promises. Clearly, the only way to safeguard Korean agriculture is to abandon the Korea-U.S. FTA completely.