Lee Kyung-hae, a farming activist who committed suicide in Cancun, Mexico last week in protest of the World Trade Organization farm market liberalization talks, has been laid to rest.

The Korean national flag-draped casket of Lee left Seoul Asan Hospital early Saturday morning for burial in his hometown of Jangsoo in southwestern Jeolla Province.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of farming activists and officials of farming organizations packed the square in front of the Olympic Park in southeastern Seoul for a public funeral service.

The 55-year-old Lee stabbed his chest during a protest rally in the Mexican resort city shouting the slogan ... "WTO KILLS FARMERS!"

In downtown Seoul, a civic group, People's Solidarity, honored Lee in a separate memorial service. Participants urged the government to resist the WTO's pressure to open up the domestic farming markets and the U.S. request to send combat troops to Iraq.