Posted on: Monday, August 19, 2002

South Korea sacrifices control of garlic market

By Yoolim Lee
Bloomberg News Service

MUAN, South Korea — For most of the 41,000 farmers in Muan, South Korea's garlic capital, the government's new trade policy stinks.

South Korea last month announced it will lift restrictions on Chinese garlic imports next year.

"I nearly fainted," said Park Ahn-su, 41, who gets most of his $12,500 annual income from growing the vegetable that spices up kimchi, the national dish. "There's no way we can compete with cheap Chinese imports. I don't know what to do."

Korea is sacrificing control over its $445 million market for garlic, the country's second-biggest cash crop after rice, to help exporters of consumer and industrial goods such as Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Chem Ltd., boost sales to China, Korea's No. 3 trading partner after the United States and Japan.

Agriculture accounted for 4 percent of Korea's gross domestic product last year. Manufacturing made up 36 percent.

"It's an economic decision," said Lee Phil-sang, economics professor at Korea University in Seoul. "Would any government sacrifice cell phone exports to the world's most populous country to protect its garlic industry?"

China threatened to ban Korean mobile-phone imports in 2000 if Korea didn't open up its garlic market. Mobile phones became Korea's No. 1 export item last year, making up 6.6 percent of total overseas sales and generating $9.9 billion.

China, which bought $18.2 billion of products from South Korea last year, is an attractive market for Korean mobile-phone makers. Two out of three South Koreans have a mobile phone, compared with one in eight in China.

But there's more than just economics involved. Garlic has a special place in Korean culture. A key ingredient in almost all Korean dishes, including kimchi, the spicy pickled cabbage Koreans eat with every meal, it is also the stuff of legend. Korean folklore says the nation was founded 5,000 years ago by Dangun, the offspring of a bear and a tiger who became humans after enduring 100 days in a cave eating only garlic and herbs.

Last year, their 47 million descendants ate 474,000 tons of garlic, or about 22 pounds per person.

"I like the prospects of buying cheaper garlic, but I wonder if kimchi made with Chinese garlic would taste the same," said Bang Hae-joo, a 32-year-old housewife in Seoul.

In an effort to appease the farmers, the government on July 25 said it will provide $1.5 billion in subsidies to garlic growers over the next five years. That's little comfort to Park in Muan as he looks across his fields behind the house where his great-grandfather, also a garlic-grower, was born, and contemplates turning them over to another crop.