According to Yonhap:
South Korea has significantly reduced import quotas for eight North Korean agricultural goods, government officials said Sunday, amid the enforcement of strong U.N. economic sanctions on the communist nation.
According to a public notice posted by the Unification Ministry, the amounts of six North Korean goods allowed to be shipped to the country, including crab, shrimp and peanut products, have been reduced to half from those of last year while the import quota for sesame seed has been reduced from 300 tons to 100 tons.
An official at the ministry, Seoul’s key office on North Korean affairs, said the move had little to do with the U.N. sanctions that were imposed shortly after the North’s second nuclear detonation test last year.
“The items, whose import quotas have been reduced this year, are the ones we had little imports of in the past five years,” the official said, asking not to be identified. “The change was only to reflect the actual amount of imports.”
The import quota for mung beans doubled from 1,000 tons last year to 2,000 tons while that of soybeans also increased from 2,000 tons to 3,000 tons, according to the official.
The government places import quotas on certain items to protect domestic markets and producers, he noted.
This comes as South Korea ends imports of North Korean sand.
