Seoul, Korea.

I am now in Seoul, Korea, for the IFAP congress.
It is a meeting of farmers associations from around the world. Their main topic at this meeting is to discuss their situation after the WTO Doha round is completed. This meeting dovetailed nicely with the French Congressmen visit I accompanied last month in Washington on the same subject. It appears that the US will not move from their offer to reduce tariffs by 60% if the EU does not enlarge its market access. The EU is unwilling to move, ie. to reform the CAP any further since it just went through a very painful reform, valid until 2013. Doha is doomed. This means that further liberalization of exchanges is frozen, a huge brake is applied to world trade and the rest of the world is going to pay.
It was also my umpteenth trip to the "Land of the Morning Calm". By magic, nobody here talks about Jacques Chirac's latest Clearstream scandal, nor about GWB's dismal show in the polls. Koreans are busy working from dawn to dusk. Their capital of 14 million, is a beehive. traffic jams, of mostly new vehicles, are monstrous. A subway ride from A to B, might take hours, such are the distances.
There are a few demonstrations, mostly anti-US. The American presence is very discreet. Gone are the hordes of GIs walking the sidewalk of Itaewon with a young korean girl at their side. US military presence is down to a mere 35,000, mostly redeployed in the south of the country.

Korea is a land of contrast. Leaders in research, automobile, shipyards, and education, they are now turning their sight towards nanotecnology, medicine, and space.

The most intriguing sight on the streets of Seoul? 90% of the population walks like zombies, their eyes on their cellphones, constantly reading and sending SMS messages!