A Study on the Planned Promotion of Sea Mustard(Undaria Pinnatifida) for Export

Abstract

Sea mustard(Undaria pinnatifida) is a well-known cultured fishery products in South Korea with an annual production of around 600,000 tons. It is considered to be a healthy food containing 40 kinds of nutrients such as minerals, DHA, linoleic acid, fiber, and vitamins. Nevertheless, sea mustard has been mainly consumed in some Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan. Even though the importing countries of sea mustard have recently become more diverse than in the past, South Korea’s exports of sea mustard to Japan still account for nearly 60% of total exports. However, as seaweed has been re-focused on consumers as an healthy food in recent years, the demand for it is continuously increasing around the world. Westerners who have been avoiding seaweed to eat have recently started to properly evaluate the value of seaweed, and sea mustard is also as an iconic Korean healthy food owing to the so-called ‘Korean wave’ around the world. Following the latest trade data on South Korea, exports of sea mustard increased by 4.3 percent by volume and 7.1% by value to 127,000 tons valued at 40 millions USD from 2018 to 2019. Sea mustard is the second most important export commodity in value terms after dried seaweed(valued at 580 millions USD) among seaweed species. South Korea exported sea mustard to 64 countries in 2019 including Japan, China, Vietnam, the EU, Russia, Australia and Canada, and the number of sea mustard importing countries from South Korea continues to grow compared with a decade ago. Despite its importance, few studies on seaweed, especially sea mustard, have been conducted so far. The purpose of this paper is to understand the domestic sea mustard industries from production and exports data and to figures out the problems through a comprehensive analysis of the supply and demand. On that basis, this study suggests the export promotion plan of sea mustard in South Korea. The analyzed data brings up some problems: the errors of basic statistics which is related to sea mustard exports such as the variation in world seaweed production among the different sources, the segregation of edible and non-edible sea mustard, the inaccurate yield rate, and the double counting of processed products. Moreover, South Korea’s sea mustard export industry heavily dependent on a small number of countries and there are several cases of the falsification of the country of origin. To improve the problems mentioned above, it is proposed to make efforts to improve the reliability of the statistics, to establish an export strategy for sea mustard, to develop products that meet the needs of consumers, and to strengthen the labeling of the country of origin.