1Professor, Div. of Business and Commerce, BaekSeok University, Korea
2Professor Div. of Business and Commerce, BaekSeok University, Korea
*Corresponding author: Young-Chan Lee Professor, Div. of Business and Commerce, BaekSeok University, Korea. E-mail: yclee@bu.ac.kr
Online published on 21 September, 2018.
Korea has entered into an FTA with the EU, the US and China, which are the world’s three largest economies, and expected to enter the wider market including experts in the future.
The factor that hinders the FTA between Korea, China, and Japan is “the issue of historical awareness”. Also, the agricultural products of both Japan and Korea are very sensitive. In addition, China’s financial system is one of the factors that hesitate to take part in Japan-China-Japan FTA mainly due to incomplete market opening and inadequacy of commercial transaction regulation system, which does not correspond to market economy. Geographical accessibility and outstanding cost effective labor are also facilitating factors. Specifically, Korea has developed to a level that surpasses that of developed countries in a specific field, especially IT-related industry, in emerging industrial countries, and Japan has a wide distribution of capital intensive and high-tech industries with high industrial agglomeration. China, on the other hand, is a developing country in the industrialization, which has relatively low level of industrial agglomeration but has a comparative advantage over agriculture and labor-intensive industries. Compared with NAFTA, the global share of world trade in 2011 is 17.8%, which is 2.9% higher than the share of NAFTA in 14.9%. So it is considered that the Korea-China-Japan FTA is better than just NAFTA not only in scale but also growth, which the world considers to be relatively successful.
Korea-China-Japan FTA, FTA Facilitating Factors, FTA Inhibitors, Economic Effects, Trade Structure Interdependence, Trade Agreements
