Fishing for opportunity The Asian peninsula’s falling domestic production makes the seafood-hungry Korean market especially appealing to traders across the globe

If it’s possible to have one-stop shopping for Korea’s seafood industry, the Busan International Seafood & Fisheries Expo in Busan, South Korea, could become it. After a sparkling premiere in 2003, followed by a muddled management change, the recent 2004 event got mixed reviews on administration, but consistently high marks as an open door to this country’s growing fish market.

South Korea’s 48.5 million people each eat an average of 79.3 pounds of fish per year, but the country’s domestic seafood production is steadily falling. Since 2001, Korea has suffered an annual seafood trade deficit with imports growing to $1.96 billion in 2003 from $1.88 billion in 2002, according to U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service data. The agency predicts a continuing decline in domestic production and imports of pollock, among other species, from Russia.

Sponsored by the Busan Metropolitan City government, the Busan expo is one of the country’s responses to its seafood shortage. As it fights to stake out a place on what some see as an already full Asian trade show circuit, the Busan event lacks its own identity. Unlike the shows in Boston and Brussels, with their focus on new seafood products and raw material sourcing, Busan has a more varied clientele.

Product exhibitors may have held a majority of booths in 2003, but the recent 449-booth event included sizable numbers of fishing or processing gear companies, restaurant suppliers ranging from cooking oil and cutlery to uniforms, marine history presentations and new products.

“This time it was more focused in equipment and fish-processing exhibitors,” said Sook-Eun Cho, an exhibition team manager for the Busan Exhibition & Convention Center Company. BEXCO operates an approximately 284,000-square-foot exhibition center, but did not manage the first expo and reluctantly took on this year’s event after Korea’s national election campaign scandal engulfed the previous Busan mayor and delayed preparations for the 2004 expo.

“It needs to be a more professional exhibition,” Cho said, though she also reported a 20 percent increase in exhibitors from 2003 and average daily attendance of 15,000 over the Nov. 25-28 event, including 25,000 on Saturday. But the weekend surge and much of the overall attendance comprised seafood-sampling Korean consumers rather than traders.

As in 2003, Alaska, the Southern United States Trade Association and the National Marine Fisheries Service were the only U.S. exhibitors at the Busan expo. Marcus Lower, U.S. agricultural trade office director in Seoul, had hoped to organize a U.S. pavilion but poor organizational delays prevented that initiative.

Sam Daniels, of Virginia-based Wanchese Fish Co. helped staff the SUSTA booth and got an education on market opportunities.

“We throw away more products that these people would love to have. I’m throwing away fish that people would love to have,” Daniels said. “Pretty much anything that swims in the ocean, these guys like it. They’ll find a use for it somehow.”

Kenneth Yang, representing Maine and nine other states through Food Export USA-Northeast of Philadelphia, had no booth, but spent his time walking the expo and left with plans to return next year with U.S. suppliers. Asked what he would tell New England fishmongers, Yang said, “The seafood market here is the largest next to Japan, or the second largest Asian market.”

Coming as it does in the midst of the U.S. holiday season, it discourages U.S. participation, and this absence is keeping U.S. sellers from capturing more of the expanding Korean market.

Even with growing Korean imports, U.S. sales to the country declined by 12 percent to $153 million in 2003, according to the Food and Agricultural Service’s November report, which forecasts a further export decrease in 2004. “U.S. prices are not competitive and many U.S. importers are shifting their focus to the Chinese market,” the government document noted.

U.S. exporters, in fact, seem to be ignoring the Korean market.

“That’s one comment I hear from Korean buyers,” Lower said. “It’s, well, I asked for a price and if I hear anything at all it takes several days.” U.S. suppliers “don’t realize, I think, the opportunities that are here in Korea.”

That’s not to say that Koreans will buy anything here in Korea, but it’s 40 million people and the GDP is fairly strong, he added.

Even those unhappy with expo management were happy with the business potential. “In terms of buyers, we have some strong trade leads to follow up. We know the market is interested in scallops, eel, monkfish and croaker and mackerel from our area, so there’s a lot of business opportunity here,” said Shirley Estes, executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board.

She said Korean buyers want to talk to individual company representatives rather than agency spokespeople like herself. “It definitely is much better if it’s one-on-one between companies because right away people want to talk about packaging, how they want the product delivered and price,” Estes said.

Bob Tkacz is senior correspondent for the Alaska Fisherman’s Journal in Juneau, Alaska.