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Trade representatives of the United States and South Korea watch a video conference between US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and South Korean Minister of Trade Kim Hyun-chong at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul on Aug. 22.

The scheduling of a second South Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) special session for Oct. 4 suggests that negotiations could actually begin on the agreement’s amendment. Some experts are becoming increasingly vocal in calls for South Korean trade authorities to work quickly in gathering opinions from local stakeholders and use them in developing a detailed strategy.

The South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) announced on Sept. 24 that a second special session of the KORUS FTA joint committee would be taking place in Washington on Oct. 4. The decision to hold the session was coordinated three days after Sept. 20 talks between South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. While the US initially proposed the special session to discuss the FTA’s amendment, the agreement to hold it came, surprisingly enough, at South Korea’s suggestion.

Having failed to reach any agreement at the first special session on Aug. 22, the South Korean side had been awaiting the US’s response after proposing to “jointly investigate, analyze, and assess the FTA’s effects first.” Some analysts are speculating the change in the negotiation landscape may have come when South Korea moved first to propose a second session after failing to receive an official US response.

“Apparently Mr. Kim made the first move in coordinating the meeting,” a Washington source said of Kim and Lighthizer’s meeting on Sept. 20.

The change may have been the result of a security crisis, including tensions with North Korea’s nuclear program, coming on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s references to backing out of the FTA.

South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong sent a letter to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Sept. 21 requesting that a second meeting to discuss amending the KORUS FTA. The two sides subsequently announced that the meeting would take place in Washington

“The agreement is a free trade framework established between the two sides on a voluntary and reciprocal basis, and both sides need to adopt an open, responsible stance in enforcing and developing it,” a senior South Korean trade official said.

“We can’t just sit here and not take any kind of action just because there hasn’t been a response from the US,” the official added.

The Office of the Minister for Trade kept quiet on the specifics of the second session’s agenda, calling it a “follow-up measure to make progress on areas discussed at the first special session.” But analysts suggested the two sides may have reached some kind of compromise through previous back-channel negotiations. With South Korea calling for a joint investigation and analysis first and the US demanding an immediate start to amendment negotiations, the two sides may have agreed to go ahead with both at the same time rather than worry about which to do first.

But South Korea’s proposal for holding a joint investigation and analysis first is very likely to end up as a meaningless gesture once the amendment negotiation framework is in motion, with each side merely using the findings from them as statistical data to bolster their own amendment claims. Ultimately, this means a greater chance of the negotiations ending up a game in which the two sides extend and concede on specific demands in the merchandise, service, investment, and farming product areas.

“What we need to pay attention to is the fact that South Korean proposed a special session of the joint committee for the second round of negotiations, rather than working-level follow-up discussions,” said attorney and trade expert Song Gi-ho, who heads the trade committee for the group MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society.

“It looks as though it has allowed a start to negotiations for amendments to reduce trade deficits, as the US initially demanded,” Song said.

For this reason, some are now saying South Korean trade authorities need to get to work quickly on gathering wide-ranging opinions from the National Assembly and various stakeholders, including large and small businesses, small-scale merchants, and farmers.

“We can’t have just a handful of trade bureaucrats dictating the process. We need to start work on having an internal societal discussion – including the small-scale businesses poised to bear the brunt – on how far we’re willing to make concessions and what we absolutely need to protect,” Song said.

“By gathering opinions, we can put together a resolute negotiation strategy, where if the US’s demands become too much we can point to our internal consensus and say, ‘We’ll end the agreement if it comes to that,’” he added.

By Cho Kye-wan, staff reporter

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