Outline for Korean Peninsula Ag Piece
Korean Food, Korean Identity: The Impact of Globalization on Korean Agriculture *John Feffer Pantech Fellow 2004 Agriculture is the foundation of the nation. Ancient Korean saying The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization. Fernand Braudel1 The food situations in North and South Korea, on the face of it, could not be more different. The collapse of the heavily mechanized agricultural system in the North, coupled with a longstanding ideological orientation toward self-sufficiency, has produced an acute food crisis that has lasted for at least a decade. In the South, integration into the global economy has brought Korean products to the world market and flooded stores at home with international brands. There is hunger in the North. There is abundance in the South. While North Koreans try to supplement their meager diets with plants eaten only during a famine, South Koreans are bombarded with messages to increase their caloric intake from such diverse sources as instant ramen, hamburgers, and sugary soft drinks. At a deeper level, however, the two Koreas are facing the same two problems: how to maintain agricultural production under what are widely considered to be conditions of comparative disadvantage and how to maintain a particular Korean food culture in the face of homogenizing pressures from the outside. In other words, despite their relative differences, both Koreas face the same general dilemma at the points of production and consumption. They are small, and the global market is huge. In South Korea, for instance, small farmers are struggling to compete against cheap food imports. Korean companies that specialize in Korean-style food and drink – shikhe, kimchi, kalbi made from hanu (Korean beef) – face steep competitive pressures from Coca-Cola, Chinese kimchi manufacturers, and Australian beef producers.
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