hankyoreh

Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon’s confirmation that the U.S. government forcefully demanded revisions to the text of the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) during negotiations last week is cause for concern. This confirmation came during a meeting of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee meeting. Kim also said he intended to “continue discussions toward guiding out an alternative that both sides can accept.” In short, he declared his willingness to accept renegotiations aimed at amending the text of the agreement.
Up until this point, the Lee Myung-bak administration, which has led KORUS FTA negotiations, has responded to popular calls for revisions to provisions disadvantageous to South Korea by steadfastly maintaining that there would be “no renegotiation.” It has also led FTA discussions without consulting National Assembly lawmakers, and relevant groups including the auto, agriculture, and textile sectors.
These calls for removing disadvantages grew in force as the Lee administration agreed to discuss additional demands from the United States. After ignoring all the critical public opinion and revision demands from politicians, however, it immediately complied when the U.S. applied pressure. The Lee administration’s attitude suggests that it will close its ears to domestic demands while acceding to those of the United States. The trade minister says that they are searching for a plan agreeable to both countries, but the formalizing renegotiations is nothing more than a procedure for finding additional ways to make concessions to the United States.
By its nature, a free trade agreement involves amending a number of laws, and the administration should therefore not be handling it independently. It is essential that the demands of interested parties be gathered and reflected through the National Assembly during the negotiation process as well as the final approval procedures. This is why the parliament holds negotiation authority in most nations, including the United States. Yet, we have not seen once instance of this attitude from the Lee administration. Its method has been to reach an agreement unilaterally and then ask the National Assembly for ratification.
This method is no longer tolerable. The Lee administration has already gone back on its own promises and made one-sided concessions. In particular, Washington is now forcefully demanding an extension to the deadline for tariff abolition on South Korean cars, the complete abolition of the import duty refund system, and the introduction of new safeguards. The last in particular would be completely to the benefit of the United States. Since very few U.S. cars are imported into South Korea, the target could only be South Korean cars exported to the United States. This essentially tells South Korea to give up all it has achieved in auto sector after handing over various other areas, including provisions regarding agricultural products and state-investor complaints.
We cannot have renegotiations restricted to the auto sector alone. It would be a sacrifice of both principle and profit. If we are to have renegotiations, we should bring up all the existing provisions that are disadvantageous to South Korea and renegotiate those. If that is not possible, then we would be better off abandoning the KORUS FTA altogether.
　　
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