Korean farmers clash with police

Farmers clash with police

SEOUL, South Korea -- Rice farmers clashed with police during a protest action on Tuesday against the U.S.-led push for World Trade Organization talks on reducing farm product subsidies and trade barriers.

The clash occurred after 8,000 riot police locked arms behind their shields to prevent roughly 10,000 farmers, carrying banners and an Uncle Sam effigy, from marching on the country's National Assembly.

Farmers threw stones at truncheon-wielding police and whacked them with bamboo sticks.

Police hit back at the farmers, leaving several with bloody faces as they regrouped to throw flowerpots, garbage cans and chunks of torn up sidewalk.

The irate farmers pumped their fists into the late autumn sky and chanted "No to WTO," and burned 20 sacks of rice straw, which were emblazoned with slogans such as "Open-door Agriculture Policy."

They also shattered windows at the nearby headquarters of the opposition Grand National Party, which held power in 1994, when South Korea began opening its farm markets.

COUNTRY PROFILE At a glance: South Korea Provided by CountryWatch.com    CNN.com Asia More news from our Asia edition

The rice farmers were protesting the new global trade talk in the upcoming WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, which will discuss a further opening of farm markets after 2004, much to the detriment of local farmers.

South Korea has already ended its decades-old ban on rice imports and has agreed to increase them to 4 percent of all domestic rice consumption by 2004, under a 1994 global trade agreement.

The farmers accused the United States of jeopardizing their livelihood by forcing the country to open its markets further for cheap imported rice.

Open-door policy

"They are trying to kill us. We don't have any more ground to lose," Lee Ho-joong, an official from the farmers' organization that organized Tuesday's rally, told the Associated Press news agency.

Korean farmers admitted they were at the losing end should South Korea agreed to further liberalize its agricultural policy, noting the price of their rice is several times that of rice produced in the United States and China, which joined the WTO this week.

MORE STORIES WTO in Qatar

Farmers' group said it costs South Korean farmers $130 to produce 80 kilograms of rice. A bumper crop and reduced government subsidies this year forced farmers to sell below cost.

However, the same amount of rice imported from the United States and China costs would only cost $23- $31.

The farmers are demanding the government to provide more subsidies to compensate them for their losses.

They also called for the government to send rice to the hunger-stricken North Korea to help reduce an oversupply in the South.

South Korea produces about 5 million tons of rice a year.

Rice, the staple food of Koreans, is the main source of income for 6 million Korean farmers.

Korean farmers have previously benefited from a closed market and government subsidies.