Friday, April 23, 2004
A note on protectionism in Korea
Here's a stunner. South Koreans eat about 5 million metric tons of rice per year. Protection limits imports to 4% of domestic consumption. The world price of rice is about $250 per metric ton, 25% of the domestic price in Korea. Using these figures, the size of the transfer from Korean consumers to producers is thus $3.75 billion per year.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
