Korea dispatches a 'mackerel envoy' to Norway as prices spike
Seoul is dispatching a public-private team to secure more imports from Norway and other suppliers as mackerel prices surge amid weaker currency and tightening global supply.
Packs of mackerels are seen in a supermarket in central Seoul on June 21.YONHAP
Imported mackerel has become so expensive in Korea that shoppers have started likening it to gold. Now the government is sending a delegation to Norway to bring the price back down.
The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries will dispatch a public-private "mackerel envoy" to Norway and other major producers from Mondayto July 17 to check supplies and secure additional imports, it said Sunday. The team, made up of ministry officials and representatives from the Korea Maritime Institute, the fisheries cooperative Suhyup and importers, aims to lock in about 2,000 tons of Norwegian mackerel and to scout new suppliers in Britain and the Faroe Islands.
Governments rarely send envoys abroad over groceries, but the price of imported mackerel has left officials little choice. A pair of salted imported mackerel averaged 10,960 won ($7) at retail as of Friday, up 27.2 percent from a year earlier and 40 percent above the five-year average, figures from the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation showed. The imported fish has even overtaken the local catch: fresh chilled Korean mackerel sold for 9,312 won a pair the same day, 1,648 won cheaper.
Two forces are behind the jump: a weak won and a supply shock out of Norway. The won has hovered near 1,500 to the dollar this year, raising import costs, while higher oil prices have driven up shipping bills.
The bigger problem is that Norway, which supplies about 80 percent of Korea's imported mackerel, has sharply cut its catch. Acting on advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which warned that warmer seas and shrinking food supplies could collapse North Atlantic mackerel stocks, Norway lowered its 2026 fishing quota to 81,375 tons, down 51 percent from 165,000 tons a year earlier. Through May, its cumulative catch had fallen 84.8 percent from the same period last year, to just 1,254 tons.
Mackerels are seen at a fishery auction house in Pohang, North Gyeongsang, on June 29.NEWS1
The shortage has sent export prices climbing. Norway's average export price to Korea hit $6 per kilogram in May, more than double the $2.80 of a year earlier, the Korea Maritime Institute said. With the won weaker on top of that, the actual cost to Korean importers rose even more steeply.
To ease seafood prices more broadly, the government will run a discount event from Wednesday to July 28 at 24 large supermarkets nationwide, including Emart and Lotte Mart, marking down every domestic seafood item by up to 50 percent. It is the first blanket seafood discount since the program began in 2020.
Seafood prices rose 3.7 percent in June from a year earlier, outpacing overall inflation of 3.2 percent, the Ministry of Data and Statistics said.
"We will mobilize all available policy tools — imports, purchases, stockpiling and discounts — to ease the burden on people's grocery baskets," Oceans and Fisheries Minister Hwang Jong-woo said
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
