S. Korea Says It Will Allow Rice Imports : Trade: The move, along with Japan’s likely compliance, removes one of the key obstacles to a GATT agreement.

South Korean President Kim Young-sam said today that his nation will allow rice imports in order to help bring the global, multilateral free-trade talks to a conclusion.

In an apologetic statement made during a special live television broadcast in Seoul, Kim said his government had done everything possible to protect the nation’s 6.5 million farmers and its rice market.

“However,” he said, “we were driven to the dead end of the street, and had to choose between isolation from the international community and co-prosperity with other nations.”

The Japanese government has strongly indicated that it will also yield to a partial opening of Japan’s rice market. Although he faces harsh criticism from Socialist Party members in his coalition government, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa is expected to announce the decision Friday.

Japan and South Korea agreeing to import some rice would remove one of the key obstacles to concluding the Uruguay Round of talks on the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs.

The GATT delegates are working to meet a Wednesday deadline for winding up the negotiations, which President Clinton said Wednesday are tantalizingly close to conclusion.

The President called for swift completion of the GATT talks during a Washington ceremony marking the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

*

Approval of a GATT treaty would yield benefits for the United States “so significant that it could make the material gains of NAFTA for our country look small by comparison,” Clinton said.

If the GATT talks are not completed by the deadline, it will become much more difficult to win congressional approval of any deal.

Most observers believe that if an accord is not reached by the deadline, the seven-year effort to rewrite the rules of international commerce will collapse.

Clinton said he has told aides working on the trade agreement: “Don’t rest, don’t sleep. Close the deal.”

*

But even as the President exerted new pressure for completing the talks within the next week, a senior Commerce Department official demonstrated the degree of difficulty the negotiators will face.

Jeffrey E. Garten, undersecretary of commerce for international trade, said the United States has become isolated from other GATT participants because of its refusal to weaken laws protecting U.S. industry from the trade practice known as dumping.

Even if a recently achieved agriculture accord is accepted in Paris and questions about Hollywood access to European markets are resolved, he said, negotiators will still face a huge hurdle over dumping.

The anti-dumping laws protect U.S. manufacturers and workers from what is considered unfair competition from foreign companies that enjoy lower labor costs and who price their goods below what it costs to produce them in order to gain a foothold in the U.S. market.

Clinton indicated that he would not overlook flaws in the trade pact merely to achieve accord. But he said he will be flexible if other nations are willing to compromise as well.

In Seoul, President Kim said the only alternatives open to South Korea were to withdraw from GATT and be left alone or to play within the rules of GATT and seek globalization of his country’s economy.

“This is the time to have a future-oriented philosophy and to work out plans to help our farmers and agricultural industry,” Kim said.

As Kim addressed the nation, hunger strikes were launched by hundreds of farmers, student activists, religious leaders and social organization leaders to protest the decision. Times staff writers Joel Havemann in Brussels and David Holley in Tokyo and Times researcher Chi Jung Nam in Seoul contributed to this report.