South Korea's parliament on Wednesday approved a bill opening the domestic rice market wider to imports, triggering street protests across the country and scuffles inside the National Assembly.
There were 139 votes in favour, 61 against and 23 abstentions in the 299-member chamber. The vote came some three weeks before crucial World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Hong Kong, where farm trade will be a major issue.
Some 200 farmers chanting slogans and carrying banners condemning the opening of the rice market protested outside the National Assembly.
Thousands of others were confronting police in some 100 cities and towns across the country to protest the vote, a farming union official told AFP.
Angry farmers' leaders called for a massive protest rally on December 1 and threatened to resort to violence to block rice imports.
"Today the government declared a death sentence for 3.5 million farmers," said a joint statement from the Korea Peasents' League and six other farmers' unions.
"We hereby declare an uncompromising struggle against the current government and we will stage campaigns to stop foreign imported rice from entering our ports and set fire to foreign rice storage facilities."
Inside the National Assembly, opponents of the bill from the leftist Democratic Labour Party surrounded the speaker's chair to try to block the vote but were eventually dislodged bu security guards amid scuffles with ruling party lawmakers.
"We inevitably passed the bill in a ratification vote. All of us may feel heartbroken, whether we voted for or against it," said speaker Kim Won-Ki.
"Given that we live as a member of the international community, we have no other choice but to take this way."
Under a WTO-sponsored deal negotiated last year with rice-exporting countries, South Korea pledged to raise its rice import quota to 7.96 percent of total domestic consumption from the current four percent.
In return it won a 10-year grace period before it must open up fully to rice imports.
Supporters of the deal warned that if the National Assembly failed to ratify it, South Korea would be forced to open up its markets without delay, with drastic consequences for the farming community.
"Our stance is that we should have a 10-year grace period during which we should resolve problems regarding the farming sector while partially opening the rice market," said Chung Sye-Kyun, head of the Uri Party which controls parliament.
The government argued that failure to approve the bill would put Seoul on a weak footing at the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong December 13-18.
That meeting was meant to set the seal on four years of market-opening talks launched in the Qatari capital and known as the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The talks aim to deliver a comprehensive treaty for free trade by 2006.
Some 2,500 South Korean protestors are expected to travel to Hong Kong for anti-WTO rallies to protest globalisation which they believe spells the end of their way of life as cheaper imports put them out of business.
Two Korean farmers committed suicide this month to protest against market opening.
Last week about 12,000 farmers rallied in Busan, South Korea, to protest the pro-WTO agenda of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum summit there.
While the National Assembly vote was underway angry farmers piled up sacks of rice and set them ablaze in villages and towns across the country while others used tractors to block highways and dump rice outside provincial government buildings, union officials said.
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