US rice unloaded in RoK amid farmers' protest

The first shipment of US rice for direct sale to South Korean consumers was being unloaded at a southern port on Thursday as police held off about 100 farm activists seeking to block the imports, officials said.
South Korea's parliament approved a deal last year with rice-exporting countries that would open the local market slightly wider for foreign imports and allow for the first direct sales to consumers.
South Korean farmers have violently protested the opening of the domestic market, warning it could ruin their livelihoods, while some consumers have welcomed the shipment and say it will help to lower the price of a key staple in the local diet.
About 500 police sealed off roads near the southern port of Pusan, port and shipping officials said.
"The unloading of 1,372 tonnes of milled rice is successfully going on at the port of Pusan," said an official at Hanjin Shipping Co, which is managing the shipment of US rice.
"But police are confronting about a hundred farm activists in front of a gate at the port," he added. At another southern port of Mokpo, farmers and activists had earlier blocked the unloading of Chinese brown rice, which will be used in processed food. They stacked tyres and other objects on roads into the port to halt traffic.
Due to those protests, the Chinese shipment was redirected to Inchon, near Seoul, agriculture ministry officials said.
Consumers in South Korea will be able to make their first purchases of US rice beginning in late April, but South Korea's agriculture ministry has said the rice is expected to be only slightly less expensive than the home-grown product.
Locally grown rice costs about four times that of foreign rice, according to the ministry. The price gap will mostly be erased due to heavy taxes on imported rice, with the tax revenue being used to support local farmers.
"There will be no big difference between imported rice price and home-grown rice price," Kim Young-man, general director of the ministry, said at a news briefing on Thursday.
Under pressure from politically influential farmers, imports have been barred from stores until now, and the limited amount of foreign rice allowed into the country has been used for processed food.
In the deal with rice exporters under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation, South Korea will incrementally increase its imports of foreign rice from about 4.4 percent of total consumption in 2005 to 8 percent of total consumption by 2014.