Protests spread to restart N.K. rice aid

Farmers and opinion leaders are upping pressure on the government to send rice aid to North Korea to keep domestic rice prices from falling further amid a chronic oversupply.

A civic group held a press conference yesterday in central Seoul with a petition signed by 10,000 people urging Seoul to offer rice to the North to stabilize rice prices and improve inter-Korean relations.

"Rice is the most suitable item for resumption of humanitarian aid to North Korea as it is the main staple grain for Koreans," said Choi Young-ok, secretary general of the nongovernmental group committed to inter-Korean summit agreements.

"The government`s offer of 10,000 tons of corn is not nearly enough, and sending imported corn instead of homegrown rice is simply unacceptable for farmers."

Seoul has still not received a formal reply from Pyongyang to its offer of corn aid worth 4 billion won ($3.46 million).

Farmers` associations in the southern provinces of Gyeongsang and Jeolla have staged protests in front of provincial government offices with bags of unsold rice stacked on the streets.



A nationwide confederation of farmers plan to hold a mass rally next Tuesday in Seoul to press the government for legislation on rice aid to the North and other countermeasures for the surplus rice.

Domestic rice prices have steadily fallen over the past two decades as annual rice consumption dropped 37 percent to 75.8 kilograms, according to a report by the agriculture ministry. Nationwide rice inventory currently amounts to some 820,000 tons.

With this year being a bumper crop year, a bag of 80 kilograms of rice is now traded at around 130,000 won, about 15 percent lower than last year.

"Farmers are razing rice paddies out of anger, stacking bags of rice outside as they run out of storage space and dumping the surplus rice in the South while millions of people are starving in the North as they are short of some 800,000 tons of rice," Rep. Choi Kyu-sung of the opposition Democratic Party said at a National Assembly session yesterday.

"Rice aid to North Korea has played an important role in keeping domestic prices from falling. The government must send rice in humanitarian aid before it is too late."

Twenty-five opposition lawmakers including Choi, Kim Young-rok of the Democratic Party and Kang Ki-gap of the Democratic Labor Party issued a statement late last month urging the government to resume rice aid to the North.

South Korea had sent about 400,000 tons of rice to the North each year between 2002 and 2007. Rice aid to the North stopped after the Lee Myung-bak administration took office early last year.

The government has said resumption of massive aid to the North and plummeting rice prices were two separate issues.

"The South had spent 200 to 300 billion won each year to send the rice under previous administrations, so this is not an easy decision to make," said Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo.

"Resumption of such massive aid will be determined after sufficient dialogue with the North, in consideration of inter-Korean relations."

Agriculture Minister Chang Tae-pyong said earlier this week that this year`s rice production is expected to exceed previous projections and that the government will buy more surplus rice to stabilize domestic market prices.

"The government will purchase the additional rice for storage to keep it from entering the market," Chang said.

North Korea is suffering from the worst famine in decades this year, especially in the North and South Hamgyeong provinces.

A local human rights group said in its latest weekly newsletter that the North Koreans were describing this year`s food shortage as "the worst famine in 80 years."

"People live on acorns and herbs they collect in mountains while the better-off eat mostly porridge to save rice, not just in Hamgyeong but also in South Pyongan Province," said the newsletter published by "Good Friends."

Meanwhile, the Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corp., a state-run South Korean food buyer, bought 2,988 tons of Thai rice as part of an international trade program.

The state agency paid $648.40 a ton for the non-glutinous, milled rice in a tender late last month, according to a notice on the company`s website.

South Korea, which is 99 percent self-sufficient in rice, has imported the grain since 1995 under a so-called minimum-market-access program that mandates the purchases.

(sophie@heraldm.com)



By Kim So-hyun