Protectionist protest free trade in South Korea

AP/Fox News:

Tens of thousands of South Korean workers on Wednesday held nationwide rallies and partial strikes to oppose a free trade agreement with the United States and demand better working conditions.

Chanting "Down, down FTA," some 9,000 protesters held a peaceful rally near the city hall in central Seoul, while some 400 farmers out of 3,000 clashed with police in the southwestern city of Gwangju but no injuries were reported.

The protest comes less than two weeks before South Korean and American negotiators meet for their fifth round of free-trade talks in the U.S. to hammer out an accord that would slash tariffs and other trade barriers.

Seoul and Washington kicked off the negotiations in June and have since made some headway in their previous talks but they are unlikely to wrap up an agreement by the end of this year as originally hoped.

A free-trade agreement would slash tariffs and other barriers on a wide range of goods and services from the two nations, which already do $72 billion worth of business a year. If successful, a pact would be the biggest for Washington since the North American Free-Trade Agreement of 1993.

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Protectionism like that in Korea is a form of corruption that losers the standard of living for all for the benefit of the few. It is what the labor thugs would like to do in this country and to some extent the farm lobby. This distortion of the market place is similar to corruption because it takes the away the incentive to have the best product at the best price and instead awards the less productive who reward politicians.