The South Korean government said that it would purchase 200,000 tons of surplus rice on Tuesday in an effort to prevent a further price drop in the domestic rice market caused by oversupply. “Of the surplus amount of 270,000 tons of rice, the government will isolate 200,000 tons from the market in the near future,” the chief policymaker of the ruling Democratic Party Park Wan-joo told reporters after a meeting, reported state media Yonhap News. South Korea’s rice production reached 3.88 million tons in 2021, a 10.7 percent increase from the previous 3.51 million tons in 2020, due to favorable weather conditions during the September to October period, according to the data released by Statistics Korea. The statistics agency said that the increase in rice production is driven by the 9.8 percent increase in the cultivated area. The increased yield has seen excess grain drive a 10 percent fall in rice …