Before Lee Kyung Hae set out to meet his death in Cancun, he visited his wife's grave and mowed his lawn. On September 9th, along with his Korean companions, he carried a symbolic coffin of the World Trade Organization (WTO) along the streets of the "viper's nest" [what the name "Cancún" means in the Mayan language], while delivering his political will and testament. The following day -- Chusok day (the date that commemorates the dead in Korea) -- he climbed the police barricade which separated the multitude from the palatial meeting place of the WTO, addressed the crowd, and plunged a small Swiss Army knife into his chest. He was wearing a sign that said: "The WTO Kills Farmers."

Mr. Lee chose his time to die, in the same way that he chose his mission in life. According to his older sister, Lee Kyang, "the most important things for him were the farmers, his parents, and his three daughters". His immolation was an exemplary act: a dramatic representation of the fact that the WTO actually murders peasants around the world.

Although suicides among family farmers around the world are common, very few members of the mass media seem to be concerned about it. More than a thousand peasants committed suicide in India between 1998 and 1999, for example. Many of them did it by drinking pesticides. In England and Canada the suicide rate among farmers is twice the national average. In Wales one farmer commits suicide every week. In the U.S. Midwest suicide is the fifth largest cause of death among farmers. In China peasants are the social group with the highest suicide rate. In Australia the frequency of farmer immolations is roughly equal to the rate of accidental death. Mr. Lee had to take his own life so that the media would recognize what is happening to farmers in our world.

Sadly his sacrifice has been judged in general with a lack of understanding and consideration. The weight of the Christian tradition has impeded some people from seeing his true generosity.* Just as religious rites began before our own individual existence, and have a life of their own, Mr. Lee's immolation is an act which transcends a simple individual decision. By taking his own life, Mr. Lee has greatly strengthened the global struggle for the survival of a millenarian culture now threatened by free trade policies: the culture of rice.

Korean culture is based on rice. In Mesoamerica we say we are the "people of maize" - thus we can say that Koreans are the "people of rice." Rice is much more than a commodity for the rural people of Korea: it is an ancestral way of life. The Korean word bap is used both for cooked rice as well as for food in general. If you ask a Korean child what they see on the Moon, they will tell you they see rabbits milling rice in a giant mortar. A large proportion of the total labor force in Korea is dedicated to the cultivation of rice. Because of rice, rural villages are located in the midst of the very rice paddies where villagers work. Rice represents 52% of agricultural production.

At the end of the 1980s, South Korea started to reduce agricultural subsidies and open its markets to food imports, thanks to the agricultural reforms of the Uruguay Round [which later became the WTO] which put a culture more than a million years old in grave danger. Just twelve years ago South Korea had a population of 6.6 million farmers. Today this number has dropped to just 3.6 million. Subsidized rice exports to Korea from the U.S. are four times cheaper than the rice produced by Korean farmers. Opening the Korean market under the WTO to Washington's exports is proving to be the ruin of farmers in this Asian country.

Mr. Lee's death must be seen as an attempt to defend his culture. A final attempt after having exhausted many other paths. Earlier he built a demonstration farm of twenty hectares. He wanted to show how farmers could survive, increase their production and compete despite falling crop prices. But in 1999 he lost the farm to foreclosure by the bank. On thirty separate occasions he protested with hunger strikes, and even tried to take his life once before as an act of protest against the WTO and the Uruguay Round. He was elected to his state legislature three times as a farmer representative. Yet none of these efforts succeeded in defending farmers from free trade.

The meaning of his immolation is this: it is an act to stop the further suffering of his people. As part of his last will and testament he left a note saying:

"It is better that a single person sacrifices their life for ten people, than ten people sacrifice their lives for just one."

As the philosopher Carl Jaspers once wrote: "suicide is a testament to the dignity of men, it is an expression of their freedom". Mr. Lee's sacrifice reminds us that, in times of crisis, hope comes from those who, through their example of human dignity as part of a larger movement, become our unique role models.