Appears to be ten pale characters from the Corn Belt (5)
I believe the answer is:
iowan
'characters from the corn belt' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'appears to be ten pale' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'ten' could be 'io' (IO resembles 10) and 'io' is present in the answer.
'pale' could be 'wan' (wan can mean pale or grey) and 'wan' is located in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for iowan that I've seen before include "Statesman" , "American" , "Someone from the Midwest - a wino? (anag)" , "Midwesterner" , "From one US state" .)