Agricultural Policy Reform and Structural Adjustment in Korea and Japan

Despite many common features in agricultural sector, Korea and Japan have passed through quite different paths of structural adjustment. An important consequence of the different structural adjustment paths is full-time vs. part-time based farming system. As far as policy reforms are concerned, full-time based Korean agriculture has much more barriers to smooth policy reform mainly due to the income-related problems. With high level of off-farm income, farm household income problem is not a great concern to Japan. In addition to the income problem, other barriers to smooth policy reform in Korea are pointed out and discussed