The government has just started domestic procedures for a free trade agreement with China. Yet, no one can tell just how long it would take to have a bilateral trade pact concluded between Korea and the world’s fastest rising economy. The very first step here, a public hearing session, went awry.
The purported public debate at Seoul’s COEX last Friday, arranged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was disrupted by wild acts of protest by members of agricultural advocate groups. They deterred the opening of the session by pulling discussants from their seats, throwing objects at the podium and attacking ministry officials and police officers who were called to put the hall in order.
The words on the pickets and slogans the protesters shouted summarize how bitterly they look at the projected trade pact. “China FTA kills all Korean farmers” is their warning. Farm industry groups may be seeking to secure maximum compensation by the government through extreme resistance from the beginning, but prognoses on the impact of opening the agricultural market to Chinese products are truly grim.
Research institutes provide a variety of encouraging facts and figures to result from an FTA with China ― a 2.5-3.0 percent jump in GDP, a 30 percent rise in exports to China and overall benefits far greater than FTAs with the European Union and the United States. Yet, they also agree that the farming sector here will suffer many times the damage from the FTAs Korea has concluded with other countries.
Korea’s agricultural production will be reduced by some 15 percent ― fruit by some $1 billion and vegetables by about the same value ― in 10 years after an FTA with China takes effect, according to the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. Korea’s farming population has dropped to about 3 million or 6 percent of the nation’s total, and a sharp decline of farm products will either mean much poorer farmers or a massive exodus from agriculture.
Our farmers, about a third of them in their 60s or older, take care of rice paddies, orchards, the ubiquitous vinyl houses and hillside tea gardens. Few want the devastation of our farms from the impact of any FTA to raise exports of manufactured goods. There should be a balance in Korea’s industrial structure to maintain the national landscape and keep the rice fields and pear and apple orchards where they are now. People need their hometowns to return to on Chuseok and Seollal holidays.
But the democratic process is as important as the cause of our farmers. Through orderly participation in government-sponsored public hearings, with media advertisements in the name of farm associations, and by properly lobbying with parties and lawmakers, they can make their demands understood by other citizens and accepted as national consensus. Such approaches, we believe, are far more effective in winning support than physically obstructing debates called to compare various public opinions.
Our lawmakers have showed them bad examples through their violent acts in the National Assembly. Taking turns in opposition, as power shifted from one party to another, they engaged in “extreme struggles” in attempts to deter specific legislation proposed by rival parties. The law enforcement authorities have failed to deal with lawbreakers properly in protests by special interest groups.
The government needs to be extremely careful in pushing for an FTA with China. The ministries concerned should prepare public hearings not as the usual means of raising supportive opinions but in an absolutely neutral manner to hear farmers’ opposing position. Democratic practice requires more than equal attention to minority voices.
