hankyoreh

The administration and ruling party are pushing to have the National Assembly ratify the South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement and the Democratic and other parties are calling for a renegotiation of the agreement. Those who argue for renegotiation say that regardless of whether Korea ratifies the document, the United States is going to call for renegotiation anyway, so the country should use the opportunity to increase its own interests in that process.

The FTA was from the start an unequal agreement, one in which more is lost than gained, and there was no real reason why Korea had to negotiate one in the first place. Now that there are calls for it to be renegotiated, the document should be reexamined from point one, and renegotiation should be prepared for with ways to make it a better agreement.

The ruling Grand National Party says it is going to have a ratification bill passed during the current National Assembly session, by first having it in the relevant standing committee before November 17. The ruling party and the administration want to preempt any American demands for renegotiation that might come with the arrival of the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, and says the real economy has to be kept from shrinking by having the FTA in place and operating.

Calls for preemptive ratification are short-sighted ignorance of the real situation in the United States and would not be desirable in a strategic sense, either. Obama has been talking about automobiles, but he is mainly talking about the loss of American manufacturing to overseas interests and the subsequent job insecurity. It is very likely the United States will give a new look to the whole of its trade policy, from the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Also, the expectation is that it will take considerable time for the U.S. Congress to vote on ratification.

It is naive to think we can put pressure on the United States by ratifying the agreement first when, in fact, the Americans have other ideas. In international law, a country is not bound by an agreement that has only been ratified by the other side. And it could actually make things more difficult for Korea to hastily play its cards in trying to pressure the United States, without knowing what its moves are going to be. It is a self-serving tactic to say that U.S. talk about renegotiation is evidence the agreement is more advantageous for Korea and that Korea needs to stop the real economy from shrinking by ratifying the agreement quickly. The Korea-U.S. FTA sacrifices agriculture and services to make gains for automobiles and textiles, but the situation is such that it is going to be difficult to expect effects from that because of the stagnate U.S. economy.

It is foolish to experience in full how weak an exposed economy is in the wake of a financial crisis that originated in the United States and push full steam ahead with this FTA. It is siding with the interests of the export conglomerates to want to cut off any renegotiation altogether. We need to prepare for renegotiation that narrows the scale of the opening of the agriculture and services market and the pace by which that happens. Harmful clauses like the section on investor-state claims need to be revised as well.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]