Alar Fear Hurts U.S. Grapefruit Sales in S. Korea : Agriculture: Experts say an agency official misinterpreted test results. But consumer demand has plummeted.

Kim Jae Ok, secretary-general of the Citizens Alliance for Consumer Protection, insists that a South Korean government laboratory was pressured into backing off on its finding that imported American grapefruit contained Alar, a chemical with a potential for causing cancer.

Lined up against her are the Agricultural Chemical Research Institute, which examined the grapefruit, the Korean National Health Institute, the U.S. government, American producers and Korean grapefruit importers.

All contend that Kim mistakenly interpreted the results of the institute’s test and that no Alar had actually been found. The U.S. government, the producers and the importers insist that Alar--used on some fruits as a growth-regulating agent that can improve the product’s appearance--has never been used on grapefruit.

But in the battle for public opinion and for a market that has more than doubled since South Korea lifted a ban on imports in 1986, Kim and her consumer alliance appear to have won the day.

“The U.S. grapefruit market in Korea is almost dead,” Kim Myung Soo, chairman of the Korea Fresh Fruit Importers Assn., complained the other day.

In early November, the association’s 43 firms gave up on the last of the grapefruit that they had imported in the 1988-89 season. More than 100 tons rotted in warehouses, Kim Myung Soo said.

Even after prices were lowered because of the Alar scare--down from $1 each to as little as 15 cents--shopkeepers could not sell the grapefruit, he complained.

He estimated importers’ losses at $5 million, including $500,000 that he said his own firm had lost.

On Thursday the first monthly shipment of produce of the 1989-90 season is scheduled to arrive, but it contains less than 200 tons of grapefruit, a small fraction of last season’s average shipment, he said.

Grapefruit was a relatively small item in South Korea’s imports of about $2.3 billion in U.S. agricultural products last year, but it was considered one of the most promising. Despite a 50% import duty, shipments rose from 1,000 tons in 1987 to 4,000 tons in 1988 and had reached 11,000 tons in June when the Alar dispute developed. Importers were looking forward to selling as much as 25,500 tons next year.

“In a few years, the market would have expanded to 85,000 tons,” importer Kim said.

Nearly all the U.S. grapefruit imported into Korea comes from Florida, he said, because Korean consumers prefer the sweet variety produced there.

A few years ago, living standards here were so low that the only consumer movements were financed by the government and were little more than mouthpieces for the government. Public concern over food safety was so low that the government itself never set any standards for permissible levels of chemicals used on farm products.

Moreover, decades of authoritarian rule and government deceit led the average South Korean to dismiss as untrue almost everything that the government said.

“Until recently, the government’s economic policy consisted of just pushing exports,” the consumer alliance’s Kim Jae Ok said. “They made no effort to protect consumers.”

She said the alliance, embracing about 60 organizations and 2 million members, receives a small amount of government assistance, enough to pay the salary of one staff member and conduct some consumer education programs.

“But most of our organizations have their own budgets,” she added, “and the government never touches our organizations.”

Now, with South Korean per-capita income rising toward $5,000 a year and with the spread of freedom of speech and press since President Roh Tae Woo pledged in 1987 to end authoritarian rule, the discontent and distrust built up over the years have come home to roost.

The dispute contains an element of anti-Americanism. The Alar complaints brought joy to South Korean farmers, who have mounted an increasingly harsh campaign against imports of American cigarettes, beef and agricultural products in general. Movie makers opposing direct imports of U.S. films have played on the resentment of what many Koreans see as American pressure tactics to open up the South Korean market.

The consumer alliance’s Kim insisted that her concern is for food safety alone.

“Scientists and scientific results cannot be changed,” she said. “No one should question the pure motives of the consumer movement. We have no reason to be anti-American.”

Officials at the U.S. Embassy here, smarting over earlier campaigns against American cigarettes, beef and farm products, have never attempted to meet Kim or other officials of the consumer alliance. She was called by telephone, but she described the call as an “order” to send the embassy the results of the initial Alar test.

U.S. congressmen, government officials and growers have charged publicly that the consumer group is using “guerrilla warfare” tactics against U.S. farm imports in collusion with South Korean farmers.

At the request of the United States, the South Korean government had the Olympic doping institute and the Korean National Health Institute conduct Alar tests on grapefruit, both of which proved negative.

When the head of the governmental Agricultural Chemical Research Institute announced sheepishly for the first time that his laboratory’s test had, in fact, detected no Alar in the grapefruit above a level of 0.5 parts per million, consumer advocate Kim charged that U.S. and South Korean government pressure had forced the lab to change its initial finding.

She said the lab’s refusal to complete tests that the alliance requested convinced her that government pressure was involved.

“The U.S. Embassy thinks it can solve any problem by pressuring the Korean government,” she said.

Other evidence, including U.S. Consumer Reports studies, indicates that the consumer alliance misread the laboratory’s report as meaning that 0.5 parts per million had in fact been detected. A U.S. Consumer Reports study noted last May that the most common test for Alar, a brand name for daminozide, a plant-growth regulator, could not detect the chemical at a level of 0.5 parts per million or less.

But in the heated public debate here, the evidence has failed to assuage public anger.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” said an American economist who asked not to be identified. “It’s difficult to determine what to do to convince the Korean public. It’s going to be a long, slow process.”

Florida producers are debating what to do, and importers here are growing restive.

“The Florida Department of Agriculture promised to carry out marketing activities at the beginning of the new crop season,” Kim Myung Soo, the importer, said. “But they have not kept their promise.”

He predicted that if nothing is done the market this season will be reduced to the 1987 level.

Meanwhile, new trouble from the other side of the Pacific threatens to stir emotions again. In early November, U.S. Customs agents refused to pass 15 tons of South Korean pears out of a shipment of 402 tons. Customs officials said the pears contained chlorothalonil, a chemical banned for agricultural use in the United States.

South Korean growers, who started exporting pears to the United States in 1986, the same year that American grapefruit growers began exporting to South Korea, were warned last year that they could face trouble with the chemical. But they took no action, a U.S. official said. He said the U.S. action was not related to the grapefruit situation.

But the South Korean press immediately interpreted it as retaliation, as did the consumer alliance’s Kim.

“The U.S. government is reacting like a child, retaliating against Korean pears,” she said. “The action is tantamount to inviting us to conduct tests on every agricultural product imported from the United States.”