May 21, 2009

South Korea, the world's third-largest corn buyer, reduced corn imports by 43 percent on-year to 1.88 million tonnes in the first four months of 2009, according to industry data.

Corn imports for feed production, which account for about 80 percent of the total, fell 45 percent to 1.5 million tonnes, data from the Korea International Trade Association showed.

Corn imports for food also fell 37 percent to 341,294 tonnes.

The largest corn suppliers are the US and Brazil. South Korea imported slightly over one million tonnes of feed corn from the US, and nearly 500,000 tonnes from Brazil.