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Soy impasse much more than a hill of beans in Korea, U.S. trade negotiations

Published: 29 Oct. 2025, 18:50 Updated: 29 Oct. 2025, 19:04

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

Soybeans are harvested on the Warpup Farm in Warren, Indiana on Sept. 17. [AP/YONHAP]

The United States and China may have agreed to a deal on soybean imports, but the soybean issue remains very much on the table with Korea, with Washington's demand that Seoul buy more U.S. soybeans a potential flashpoint for Korean farmers.

Rumors of the U.S. requirement, a condition for a final trade deal, recently emerged after China threatened to stop imports of U.S. soybeans while Japan began considering expanding its imports of U.S. rice and soybeans. Wi Sung-lac, Korea's director of national security, partly confirmed the rumors on Oct. 17 when he told reporters that “the only new agricultural issue raised in the Korea-U. S. negotiations were soybeans.”

Other high-ranking government officials, however, rushed to defuse the controversy, with Industry Minister Kim Jung-Kwan and Agriculture Minister Song Mi-ryung reassuring lawmakers and farmers that soybeans are not being discussed during tariff talks.

But even the slightest possibility of Korea expanding imports of U.S. soybeans was enough to spark a backlash from local farmers, who have harvested more beans in response to government policy aimed at ensuring self-sufficiency.

The Korean Peasants League, in a statement released Oct. 20, criticized the attempt to increase U.S. soybean imports, pointing out the government’s previous efforts over many years to improve the bean self-sufficiency rate, including encouraging farmers to grow more beans rather than rice.

Soybeans are widely used in Korea in foods like tofu, soybean paste and soybean milk, in animal feed and in soybean oil. Korea consumed 1.4 million tons of soybeans in 2023, but produced only 130,000 tons domestically, according to recent data from the Korea Rural Economic Institute, leaving the soybean self-sufficiency rate at just 9.3 percent.

It also means that Korea already imports a considerable amount of soybeans from countries like the United States, Brazil and Argentina to keep up with the local demand.

“Despite the government increasing local bean supply, consumption of the Korean-made beans fell from 34.3 percent in 2023 to 30.5 percent in 2024,” the statement from the Korean Peasants League said. Korean beans are sold at a price three times higher than imported beans.

“Increasing U.S. soybeans not only goes against the government’s own policy of increasing bean self-sufficiency, but also crumbles bean production in the country,” the statement said, adding that the government should consider the farmers who invested in bean-related machinery, and how the government had pushed farmers to grow beans instead of rice.

And despite denials from government officials, Newsis reported Monday that Korea may try to increase U.S. imports of soybeans but maintain the total import number by decreasing purchases from other nations.

“People working in trade and commerce claim that importing more soybeans from the U.S. may not have a large impact, as Korea already imports a lot from overseas,” Seoul National University Professor of Agricultural & Resource Economics Lim Jeong-bin said. “But there would be a considerable number of consequences.”

Korea should be considering the side effects of reducing soybean imports from countries like Argentina and Brazil — as well as future relations with the said countries, according to the professor. The professor also claimed that when Korea uses a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) to manage soybean imports, having the government tell importers to increase imports from the U.S. and decrease them from other nations may violate World Trade Organization rules.

BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]