The purpose of this study is to present ways of developing the domestic seed industry by exploring recent trends of the seed industry and finding out its problems. When the market value of the seed industry in 2010 was estimated, the value of food seeds was 75.4 billion won, vegetable seeds 236.8 billion won, fruit seeds 116.6 won and flower seeds 259.2 billion won. The total market value of the seed industry was estimated, therefore, at 688 billion won. The seed industry is divided into four parts and each part has a different structure. The production and distribution are operated in the food seed industry by the state and in the vegetable seed industry by private companies. In the fruit and flower industry, the production and distribution are indeed partly operated by the state and partly by private companies, but in this case most seeds are imported.
According to the investigation on the vegetable seed companies, the proportion of the companies, which achieved in 2012 revenue over 10 billion won, was 36.8 % and the companies of revenue under 5 billion won accounted for 57.9%, but the companies of revenue between 5 and 10 billion won accounted for only 5.3%. Consequently the corporate structure of vegetable seed companies can be seen as a polarization by the large and the small companies. The opinion survey about the agricultural policy for the seed industry shows that 70% of the farmers prefer the production and distributions of food seeds by the state. On the other hand, the majority of seed companies prefer the privatization of the food seed industry. As for the breeding promotion policy, most farmers prefer the promotion of the hybrids breeding to the gene manipulation (GM) breeding for the consumer protection and food safety.
For the development of the domestic seed industry, the following measures can be suggested:
1) The basic direction of the seed industry policy should promote the breeding of the hybrid seeds rather than of the GM seeds. The reasons for this are that the safety of GM seeds are still uncertain and the GM breeding ability of domestic industry has no competition ability.
2) In order to protect the indigenous genetic resources from the patent rights of the climate gene by the global enterprises, the Access and Benefit Sharing agreement (ABS) should be executed.
3) The privatization of food seed industry should be introduced gradually. Selecting the seed should be also placed in order. In the transition phase towards privatization, the agricultural cooperative (NACF) plays an important role.
4) To resolve the problem of dual structure in the vegetable seed industry, it is necessary to bring the specialization of certain seeds by the coalition of many small companies.
5) In the fruit and flower industry, the strategy should be developed, in which one accepts the foreign highly qualified varieties as a better technology and looks for ways of cooperation with those foreign companies.