It looks like Korea has gone to Plan B after the failed Hyundai farmland deal in Madagascar fell through due to fears of neo-colonialism:

South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries announced on Tuesday that it planned to lease 50,000 hectares of farmland in Russia’s far east.

It was the latest sign of Seoul’s push to increase its food security by outsourcing agricultural production overseas.

A previous South Korean initiative – to lease 1.3m ha of land in Madagascar by Daewoo Logistics – collapsed after the country’s new government cancelled the project.

A heavily populated but resource-poor nation, South Korea is the fourth largest importer of maize and among the 10 largest buyers of soyabeans.

Hyundai said it planned to grow corn and soyabeans on the Russian land “to help Korean livestock farms by freeing them up from sudden price changes and supply shortages”.

Hyundai said as a first step it had paid $6.5m (€4.9m, £4.4m) for a 67.6 per cent stake in Khorol Zerno, a Russian agricultural company which farms 10,000 ha in the far east.

In addition, Hyundai would invest a further $9m to expand the farm to 50,000 ha by 2012. The company said it planned to manage the land “directly by dispatching permanently stationed staff”.

The pursuit of foreign farm investments is a clear sign of how countries are seeking to boost their food security after last year’s crisis, in which commodities such as wheat and rice reached record prices, and trade was restricted when leading exporters such as Argentina, Russia and India imposed export bans.  [Financial Times]

I still love this illustration from the Chosun Ilbo from when the land deal in Madagascar fell through:

Personally I wouldn’t feel to comfortable having my national food security in the hands of the Russians, but that is just me.