These days, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Song Mi-ryeong is putting her greatest effort into ‘soybeans’. Since the start of the year, after visiting soybean processing companies and holding meetings related to soybeans, she is also scheduled to appear on a cooking entertainment program that features dishes using domestic soybeans. It is to promote domestic soybean consumption. Although the soybean cultivation area was expanded to reduce rice oversupply, consumption has not increased, and government stockpiles have swollen to a record level, prompting the minister to get involved personally.

According to the agriculture ministry on the 1st, Minister Song has been carrying out a series of on-site schedules related to soybeans since the beginning of the year. On the 6th of last month, she visited Queensbucket, a domestic soybean oil processor, to encourage the use of domestic soybeans, and on the 26th she met with the restaurant industry at the Korean Food Promotion Institute to discuss ways to expand soybean consumption. At the institute’s event, she met star chefs and said, “For domestically grown soybeans to be chosen at our tables in practice, in addition to traditional consumption methods, their value and benefits need to be newly recognized by consumers through new recipes and products.”

Minister Song is also coordinating a schedule to appear by March on a variety program that introduces dishes using domestic soybeans. She is further considering appearing on cooking YouTube channels.

In August last year, Minister Song visited a specialized paddy-soybean production complex in North Jeolla Province, and in October she appeared on a radio program to emphasize ‘expanding the premium market for domestic soybeans’. While it is natural for the minister in charge to encourage the use of domestic products, some say it is unusual to focus on a single crop among many and build messages and activities around it.

Behind Minister Song stepping forward as a ‘soybean ambassador’ lies the problem of domestic soybean overproduction.

To resolve the structural oversupply of rice, the government has provided additional incentives to farms that switch to strategic crops such as soybeans. As a result, as of last year, the area planted to paddy-field soybeans increased by about 17% from a year earlier. Soybean production also rose 0.8% from a year earlier due to the increase in paddy-field soybean acreage.

The problem is that consumption of domestic soybeans is declining. According to the Korea Rural Economic Institute, per-capita soybean consumption in Korea fell about 13%, from 8.2 kg in 2015 to 7.1 kg last year, due to changes in dietary habits and other factors. The institute projected that per-capita soybean consumption this year will also decrease by about 4.2% from the previous year. In particular, most of the decline is said to be in domestic soybeans. This is attributed to the fact that domestic soybeans are about twice as expensive as imported ones and thus lag in price competitiveness.

As of January, the government’s soybean stockpile stands at about 100,000 tons (t), a record high. Procurement of the 2025 soybean crop is currently underway, so inventories could increase further. The government expects the soybean cultivation area to decrease somewhat this year due to deteriorating profitability, but production controls alone are insufficient to restore supply-demand balance. Expanding sales channels is therefore essential to alleviate concerns about soybean overproduction.

The government is first reviewing ways to promote the use of domestic soybeans in the soybean oil market, which is large in scale. It is also considering supplying additional stockpiled soybeans to processors at discounted prices. The government expects that when the full GMO (genetically modified organism) labeling system is implemented at the end of this year, labeling of imported GMO soybeans will become mandatory and the domestic soybean ‘premium’ will grow.

An official at the agriculture ministry said, “Imports of soybeans for crushing approach 900,000 t annually, and if just 20,000-30,000 t of that were taken up by domestic soybeans, it could make a considerable contribution to stabilizing supply and demand,” adding, “We believe domestic soybean demand could increase somewhat when the full GMO labeling system takes effect at year’s end, and we are currently in discussions with relevant companies.”