South Korean activists threatened to escalate protests at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong, with one saying they had not ruled out suicide protests.

South Korean farmers and workers were planning to protest this week against the WTO talks that could see the country"s rice market opened up to international competition.

<##IMAGE##>At least two members of militant South Korean farming groups have committed suicide since 2003 in protest at the liberalisation plans.

A spokesman for the activists in Hong Kong, an alliance of South Korean groups, warned "extreme" action would be taken during the summit starting Tuesday.

Asked if that ruled out suicide protests, Yang Kyeong Kyoo replied: "No, never."

Yang, a farmer and vice president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions interim committee, said, however, he did not know whether a suicide had been planned.

"We have had many questions like that, but we don"t have any plan that this kind of thing will happen," said Tang whose group is a member of the alliance in Hong Kong.

Radical farmer Lee Kyung-Hae stabbed himself to death on the opening day of the last WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico in 2003.

And last month farmer Chung Yong-Pum, 38, was found dead after committing suicide by drinking a bottle of herbicide.

Some 1,500 members of the alliance -- drawn mainly from the militant Korean Peasants" League -- were due in Hong Kong for the summit.

The farmers" anger has been building since South Korea last year agreed to double rice imports to meet a World Trade Organisation accord that allows Seoul a grace period until 2014 before all import restrictions on rice are lifted.

They have planned a series of protests and vigils during the summit but said they would up the ante on the penultimate day of talks on Saturday.

"We will conduct non-violent, peaceful mass struggle. We know that there are differences between the Hong Kong people and the Koreans and because of our differences, we will be coordinating with (the Hong Kong protest organiser)," said Joo Jei-Jun, general coordinator of the Korean delegation.

On December 17, he said, "we will be escalating the level of our struggle".

They also warned of "affirmative" but "legal" action if their activities were hindered by the police although they stressed all their actions would be held peacefully.

"Should there be any hindrance of freedom of expression by the Hong Kong government, the police or the WTO, we will take affirmative action," Joo told reporters.

"We will stop the WTO that devastates the workers and the peasants."

On Sunday, a handful of members of the radical Korean Peasants" League, renowned for staging loud and often feisty protests, showed a friendlier side at a peaceful anti-globalisation rally in the territory, greeting onlookers in the local Cantonese dialect in a bid to win people"s trust.

Past violence by the Korean farmers has made headlines in the Hong Kong press which the group said was unfair to its members.

"It"s a pity that the Hong Kong media is distorting the image of the peasants. I hope the media won"t treat our stories like some sort of gossip, but rather do an in-depth report of why we are here," Kang Byeong-Ki, president of Peasant Committee of Korean Democratic Labour Party.

The Korean organisations oppose the dismantling of agricultural tariffs, which they believe will allow the influx of cheap staples such as rice into South Korea. They said it would kill the Korean farming industry.