Suicide Underscored by Power Shift in WTO

San Diego Union Tribune

Suicide underscored power shift in WTO

By S. Lynne Walker

COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

September 16, 2003

CANCUN, Mexico – A politically motivated suicide and the collapse of World Trade Organization talks have emerged as tangible signs of the desperation and hope of poor countries struggling to compete in the global economy.

As the family of suicide victim Kyung-hae Lee flew his body home to South Korea yesterday for a funeral befitting a hero, more than 4,000 WTO trade delegates left Cancun empty-handed after five days of negotiations.

Free-trade opponents said the breakdown of the talks Sunday was triggered at least in part by a bloc of developing nations who represent almost half the world's population. The nations complained the WTO had failed to agree on agricultural reforms that were crucial to their economic development.

John Cavanagh, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, said the failed talks underscored a shift in the balance of power at the global bargaining table.

"For the first time in over two decades, the most powerful poor countries have gotten together and taken a stand in their interests," said Cavanagh, who attended the Cancun meeting. "They stood up to pressure that, in other times, they would not have been able to do. This may be a new era."

But it was Lee, a 56-year-old dairy farmer who lost his land after cheap, imported milk began pouring into South Korea, who put a face on the suffering of the world's poorest farmers. While developing countries spoke inside Cancun's convention center about the pressing needs of their people, Lee chose a far more dramatic way to protest trade agreements he believed were robbing small farmers of their livelihoods.

Lee stabbed himself in the heart as he sat atop a fence during a violent protest against the trade organization. He wore a sign saying, "WTO kills farmers" and led a crowd of 7,000 protesters in anti-trade chants before taking his life.

"He quickly became a martyr of this movement," Cavanagh said. "He helped put the World Trade Organization into the minds of people around the world."

"This was not an act of sadness," Lee's 48-year-old sister, Young Sin Lee, said in Cancun after attending a memorial service held by protesters. "He had a great heart for farmers. He wanted to show the needs of farmers."

In Lee's diary, found in his hotel room by fellow protesters from South Korea, he wrote that he planned to take his life as a statement about the plight of farmers.

"I will give my body to God," he wrote. "Give me what I wish for farmers to improve their lives."

Lee, a three-term city councilman and agricultural newspaper publisher, understood the frustration felt by small farmers. In February he camped outside the WTO's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in hopes of speaking with trade officials about farm problems.

But according to another diary brought to Cancun by his sister, Lee was brushed off by a top WTO official. He wrote that the incident made him so angry he thought of slashing his abdomen. A month later, he began a hunger strike against WTO policies.

Fellow farmers asked Lee, a former president of the Korean Advanced Farmers Federation, not to travel to Cancun.

"He was very radical," said one of the South Korean protesters.

But in early September, after celebrating his birthday with his family, Lee joined nearly 200 South Koreans in Cancun.

He had tried to commit suicide in 1994, during another round of international trade talks. But his sister didn't believe he'd hurt himself during the Cancun trip because he'd promised to be home for his daughter's wedding Sept. 29.

Lee's friend and fellow protester, Jung Hyun Chan, said Lee, "loved agriculture."

"He came from a rich family. But he gave that status up because he loved farmers," said Chan, president of the Korean Farmers League.

Lee lost his land in the early 1990s because he couldn't pay his bank debt. During that period, most of South Korea's farmers suffered from a heavy debt load, his sister said, and Lee successfully fought with the government to get the debts lowered.

"But for himself, he did not ask for a cent of reduction in his debt."

He had "a lot of love for his family," his sister said. "But he loved the farmers more than his family. That is why he took this path."

Lee's story mirrors the desperation of small farmers throughout the world who are losing their farms because they are being excluded from the global economy, said Debi Barker, executive director of the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization.

"He did this in a very visible, political moment," she said, "but this is a story that has been repeated in country after country. Subsidized and artificially cheap products are coming in, and they are no longer able to farm at all."

After the abrupt end of the Cancun talks, Cavanagh said two images linger.

"One is Mr. Lee and the other is jubilant protesters – citizen groups – that had worked with poor-country governments," he said. "While Mr. Lee's suicide dramatizes the desperate plight of poor farmers around the world, this meeting is also about an enormous sense of possibilities, opportunities and alternatives."

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