North Korean residents use machines to transplant rice seedlings for the first time this year at a collective farm, southwest of the country’s capital Pyongyang, in this photo released on May 13, 2016, by the Rodong Simmun, the organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
A farmer plants rice by using a machine in a paddy in Cheorwon, 88 kilometers north of Seoul, on April 15, 2016. The rice planting is the first in the region. (Photo courtesy of Cheorwon county) (Yonhap)
Government officials attend a ceremony at a port in Gunsan, southwest of Seoul, on Jan. 29, 2016, for the first rice export to China. The first shipment of 30 tons will leave the port next month for Shanghai, where they will be marketed at Lotte Market outlets. South Korea has been working for the last seven years to have rice exported to the neighboring country, hindered by quarantine requirements. (Yonhap)
A farmer operates a rice-harvesting machine to gather ripe rice at a paddy field in the city of Boryeong on South Korea’s west coast on Oct. 13, 2015. (Yonhap)
I am not sure how this is considered opening the rice market when you put a 513% tariff on imports:
South Korea has notified the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it will open its rice market in January next year with a 513 percent tariff rate.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Tuesday submitted to the WTO secretariat its plan to revise the country’s tariff rate on rice imports. [KBS World]
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