Trade Minister, Tim Groser, says South Korea President Lee Myung-Bak’s flying visit this month, culminating in a commitment to free trade agreement talks, shows the Asian nation is lowering “severe” access barriers for agricultural products in favour of a commitment to global trade. Lee and PM John Key agreed to a preliminary first round of talks, with officials likely to meet in July.

Groser says there’s no reason why the talks should take four years “if the politics are aligned.” He says Korea’s agricultural lobby “is still very, very sensitive but Korea’s political, business and intellectual elite have recognised the adjustment to global trade is required.” NZ’s sixth-largest export market and the world’s 13th-biggest economy took $1.29bn of NZ exports in the year to 31 January.

Better than ASEAN agreement. The agreement to FTA talks comes a week after NZ signed a commitment to free trade with the ASEAN nations and Aust. Groser says a trade deal with South Korea is potentially more significant in terms of the removal of tariff barriers for NZ’s produce. South Korea’s fruit and vegetable market alone could deliver annual tariff savings of $34m a year, not much less than the entire tariff saving across the ASEAN nations, at $50m.

Lessons from NZ farmers. President Lee’s trade talks coincide with movement at home to begin agricultural reform, which requires soothing concerns of farming groups who fear free trade will open South Korea to a flood of imports of cheap dairy products, meat and other produce. Lee says South Korean farmers need to raise their competitiveness and should look to their NZ counterparts as a model. “Protectionism may help a country for a while” but ultimately “it will slow down the recovery of the global economy.”

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