S. Korea's live fish imports decrease in 2009

SEOUL, Feb. 4 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's imports of live fish decreased in 2009 as the country took a step toward strengthening border quarantines for fishery products, a state-run agency said Thursday.
The National Fisheries Products Quality Inspection Service said quarantine cases
involving the live fishery trade came to 50,904 last year, amounting to some
US$351.68 million. Of these, an overwhelming majority of 50,892 cases worth
$351.34 million involved live fishery imports.
Imports of live fish dropped 20 percent from a year ago to 33,000 tons worth $161
million.
The decrease is attributed to the agency's measures to expand the scope of its
quarantine from live farmed fish products to live edible or ornamental fish, it
said.
During the reported year, the inspection service declared that 62 shipments worth
$62.35 million out of the total number of quarantine cases were unacceptable.
minsikyoon@yna.co.kr
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