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Trade gets a martyr
By
Gary LaMoshi
HONG KONG - The suicide of South
Korean farm protester Lee Kyung-hae in Cancun
complicates the pictures emerging from this latest
meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its
critics. Lee's act of martyrdom almost seems designed to
confuse.
Lee's Korean Farmers League appears in
a photo in Wednesday's Joong-ang Daily newspaper. The
Cancun-bound activists are practicing behind an anti-WTO
banner before boarding their flight. The caption reads,
"A leading export", referring to the vocal
demonstrators, a species often seen on the streets of
Seoul.
In Cancun, Lee climbed a barricade
holding a banner reading "WTO Kills Farmers" and a paper
coffin, which Lee's companions set aflame. Then, in what
a fellow protestor called "an act of desperation", Lee
stabbed himself in the heart and tumbled off the
barricade. In the chaos, protesters directing their
violence outwardly broke though a police barrier but
then backed off as the meaning of Lee's gesture - this
guy killed himself! - emerged.
Peasants of
the world, unite!
Agence France Presse reported
that Lee "took his life to protest what he and other
militants contend is the damage being done to peasant
farmers the world over by the WTO's corporation-friendly
policies".
That may be true, but it obscures a
key fact: Lee and his fellow South Korean farmers are on
the opposite side of the debate from the poor countries
advocating an end to agricultural subsidies in the
developed world. Lee and company may be peasants, but
South Korea is a developed country and a heavy
subsidizer of its uncompetitive farmers.
South
Korea is self-sufficient in rice production, thanks to
heavy subsidies that it has repeatedly promised to cut
without following through. Current subsidies to farmers
like Lee total 480 billion won (US$411 million), $75 per
ton. That helps explain why South Korean consumers pay
about five times the world price for their rice.
Man the barricades
Upon joining the
WTO, South Korea's government promised to open its rice
market to cheaper exports, but it received a 10-year
waiver for doing so. Under that limiting agreement,
South Korean rice imports were a paltry 3 percent of
consumption last year. The limiting agreement is likely
to be extended when it expires after next year. When
farmer Lee thrust the knife into his heart, the
barricade on which he sat was an unwitting symbol of
South Korea's import barriers - endorsed by the WTO in
whose name Lee claimed to kill himself.
South
Korea is no different from other developed countries
that want to keep their farmers employed for a variety
of reasons. Most countries seek food self-sufficiency
for strategic reasons. In most countries, farmers also
hold a powerful historic and emotional place, connecting
the nation to its agrarian roots. In South Korea, in
France, in Kansas, the countryside just wouldn't be the
same without all those farmers, and the unemployment
rate would be that much higher, at least in the short
term. So governments willingly foot the bill to keep
those noble yeomen (and yeowomen) on the land. After
all, according to Korean lore, "The farmer is the base
of the world."
In less romantic moments, those
farmers are not characterized as righteous tillers of
the soil. They are also known as politically powerful
farm interests whose clout far exceeds their economic
importance. Thanks to rigged electoral systems that rank
acreage ahead of population, they enjoy disproportionate
political power in many developed countries. (In less
developed countries, farmers tend to be exploited for
the benefit of emerging urban classes comprising
government and its lackeys in large part.)
Get your own martyr
Make no mistake
about Lee's intentions and interests. He did not spill
his blood for the sake of impoverished cotton growers in
arid Mali or the peasants of the muddy Mekong delta; he
committed suicide to protect Korean farmers from those
rivals.
Anti-globalization activists are happy
to submerge these differences, just as the Group of 21
emerging economies pressing the developing countries for
concessions has papered over differences, for example,
between its leading lights, free trader Brazil and
protectionist India.
European Union and United
States negotiators have smugly dismissed the Group of 21
for those inconsistencies in its ranks. Inconsistencies
among the world's poor don't excuse the hypocrisy of the
world's rich nations that insist on open markets for
their goods (including subsidized farm products), while
coddling home producers.
In the charged
atmosphere that now characterizes trade negotiations,
it's important to separate the truth from myths.
Identifying the real enemies of the poor and the real
barriers to prosperity is more than just an intellectual
exercise; it's a retreat to the unromantic roots and
real potential benefits of globalization and free trade
that are buried now in rhetoric, gestures and greed, the
causes for which, few dare say, Lee really died.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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