Golden fields, crimson apples and jujubes ripening on every branch announce the abundance of autumn. Yet even as the harvest season arrives, farmers are not entirely at ease. With the government signaling that it is considering joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, they may face another wave of market opening. The government has said it will not apply for membership this year, giving priority instead to restoring trust with farmers and fishers and to thorough communication. What matters now is turning that promise into substantive discussion and preparation.
Agriculture has always been the most sensitive issue in trade negotiations. From the Uruguay Round to the Korea-Chile free trade agreement and the Korea-U.S. FTA, every trade negotiation has brought repeated conflict and pain over opening the farm market. That is because agriculture is more than an industry: it is tied closely to food security, the sustainability of rural communities and the lives of citizens. For a country as dependent on trade as Korea, expanding commercial opportunities matters. But the results of trade policy are not complete with expanded commerce alone. Along with seizing the opportunities of opening, the country must also prepare measures to reduce the burden and protect the competitiveness and sustainability of agriculture.
First, communication must be substantive from before negotiations begin. The law requires that a public hearing be held before trade negotiations start, to gather a range of views from stakeholders. Looking back, however, most public hearings held ahead of trade negotiations broke down. If a hearing serves only to satisfy a legal procedure, with the government and the farm sector merely repeating their own positions, trust cannot be built. The government must not treat hearings as a rite of passage. It should listen fully to opposing views, explain the issues and the evidence behind them, and work together to find alternatives that ease concerns. The farm sector, too, comes closer to solutions when it joins the discussion on the basis of objective facts and concrete alternatives. Communication should not be a procedure for justifying a decision to join, but a process for producing a better decision.
Second, any review of CPTPP membership must closely examine the effects not only of tariffs but also of non-tariff areas such as animal and plant quarantine. The CPTPP emphasizes sanitary and quarantine measures grounded in scientific evidence, as well as procedural transparency, so joining could create additional obligations and institutional burdens different from those under existing FTAs. Quarantine in particular is an important safeguard protecting domestic agriculture and ecosystems from the entry of foreign pests and diseases, so the government must look carefully at how the relevant rules would affect the operation of Korea's quarantine system. Even if the CPTPP's quarantine rules are accepted, the foundation of a domestic quarantine system based on scientific risk assessment and international standards must not be shaken.
Third, Korea needs substantive measures to ease agriculture's burden from market opening and to support sustainable growth. After each major trade negotiation in the past, disputes recurred over the scale of damage to agriculture and the level of compensation. Assessing the impact of a negotiation objectively is not easy, and the results can differ depending on the criteria and perspective applied. It is time to move beyond arguments over the size of compensation and pool wisdom on minimizing the shock of opening and raising the competitiveness of agriculture. Rather than stopping at one-off compensation, the government should expand the agriculture budget and breathe life into rural society through permanent support. It should be remembered that farmers, who account for less than 5% of the total population, tend roughly 80% of the national territory and sustain rural communities. Support for agriculture is more than compensation for a particular industry; it is also an investment in the future of the country's land and communities.
Past experience with market opening left us both hardship and possibility. After the Korea-Chile FTA, imports of Chilean grapes rose sharply, but domestic growers responded with high-value varieties such as Shine Muscat and with quality competitiveness. Even as U.S. beef saw repeated tariff cuts following implementation of the Korea-U.S. FTA, the hanwoo beef industry held its market on the strength of trust in taste, freshness and quality. Not every product and not every farm, of course, achieved the same results. That experience does not mean the shock of opening should be underestimated; the lesson is that with sufficient preparation and continued support, a way to respond can be found.
In the debate over the CPTPP, too, trust and preparation matter more than speed. If membership is pursued, it must come with listening fully to the farm sector's concerns, upholding quarantine principles grounded in science, and devising effective measures to reduce the burden of opening. Trade policy can sustain its gains only when it moves together with agriculture, rather than treating agricultural concessions as a given. The success or failure of the CPTPP will depend not only on whether Korea joins, but on how responsibly it builds a path of mutual benefit with agriculture.