Korea-U.S. FTA

Korea-U.S. Media Collaboration

If you're learning about it here, you missed today's forum on the 2007 Gyeonggi-Hollywood Connection: Creative Convergence through Collaboration (UCLA's Center for Korean Studies) too:

This mini-conference & mixer is intended to exchange expertise and values of U.S. & Korean American entertainment professionals to promote synergistic collaboration. By looking into successful Korean American content business models along with diverse & innovative distribution strategies, it seeks out the ways to generate creative convergence between Korea and Hollywood.

It's still worth going to the agenda and browsing through the lists of speakers and topics.

Gyeonggi-Do is Korea's most populous province.  It surrounds Seoul, borders North Korea, and includes the port of Incheon.  The forum was sponsored by the Gyeonggi Digital Contents Agency.

Korean Cultural Exports

Korea is an important exporter of popular culture - songs, movies, tv shows - particularly in Asia.  The phenomenon is striking enough that there is a term for it, "Hallyu" or "Korean wave."

Sociologist Eun Mee Kim is going to try and explain how Korean cultural exports became such a hit across Asia in a talk sponsored by UCLA's Center for Korean Studies next Friday: South Korean Culture Goes Global?: K-Pop and the Korean Wave.  Here are the details:

Gyeonggi-Do Province's Governor Looks Forward to the FTA

Gyeonggi-Do is Korea's most heavily populated province (location shown on the map).  Jane Han has written a story for the Korea Times highlighting Governor, Kim Moon-soo's efforts at attracting foreign investment: Gyeonggi Province Beckons Foreign Investors (Oct 25, 2007).  Kim thinks the FTA will help, and looks forward to U.S. ratification sometime before next July:

The recently sealed Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (FTA), which still awaits ratification from both sides, will also give a boost in bilateral trade, said Kim.

U.S. companies invested about $1.7 billion in Gyeonggi in 2006. The province is optimistic that figures will turn upward when the trade accord goes into effect.

Concerning when the ratification will take place, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler _ who was Washington's chief negotiator, said during her recent visit to Korea that the approval process is estimated to be over in the U.S. by the early half of next year.

The CRS Kaesong Report

 

The South Korean's had hoped that the FTA would provide access to the U.S. for goods made in the Kaesong industrial zone it is helping to develop in North Korea.  The agreement didn't.  The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report on the issue in July: The Kaesong North-South Korean Industrial Complex (Dick Nanto and Mark Manyin, July 19, 2007; hat tip to John Feffer, Japan Focus, Oct 24, 2007).  Here's the executive summary:

What'll it take to get Congress to ratify the KORUS FTA?

Take care of beef, and the U.S. could ratify after next February - that's the message from the Korean Ambassador to a delegation of visiting parliamentarians: Envoy Urges Prompt Resolution of Beef Dispute  (Yonhap via The Korea Times, oct 23):

How Do They Do It in Korea?

In the United States, the Korea-U.S. FTA doesn't have legal force until it's been approved by Congress.  What's the corresponding requirement in Korea?

Troy Stangarone explains the process in this month's Korea Insight:

Korea's Recovery From the 1997 Crisis

Jong-Wha Lee and Changyong Rhee of the Asian Development Bank and Seoul National University review Korea's recovery from the 1997 crisis, looking for lessons: Crisis and Recovery: What We Have Learned from the South Korean Experience? (Asian Economic Policy Review, June 2007):

ITC Study of Health and Safety Barriers to U.S. Beef Exports

In mid-September the US International Trade Commission (ITC) started an investigation into the barriers to U.S. beef exports created by foreign health and safety regulations: Global Beef Trade: Effects of Animal Health, Sanitary, Food Safety, and Other Measures on U.S. Beef Exports .

The ITC expects to report in early June 2008; public hearings will be held on November 15, 2007.  Here is the Federal Register notice.

Korea's Potential GDP Boost from Trade Liberalization

Trade opening - driven by better communications, lower transportation costs, and reduced trade barriers - has Increased average Korean incomes by about $2,000 a person, and further liberalization could add another $1,200 to $1,600. 

That's what Gary Hufbauer and Agustin Cornejo of the Peterson Institute find in an examination of existing studies and from some imaginative "back-of-the-envelope" calculations. 

Here's the draft of a paper they gave at last Spring's Korea Economic Institute workshop on "Static and Dynamic Consequences of a KORUS FTA.": The Payoff to South Korea From Globalization.

Amongst other things, Hufbauer and Cornejo summarize a large number of general equilibrium analyses of the impact of additional trade reforms on the Korean economy.  This box plot gives an overview:

The Wilson Center Debate

Seok-Young Choi, of the Korean Embassy, Timothy Reif, a House Ways and Means Committee staffer, Myron Brilliant of the U.S.-Korea Business Council, and Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO discussed the Korea-U.S. FTA this afternoon: Korea-US FTA debate reveals disputes over theory, interpretation (Yonhap News, Oct 16). 

The panel discussion was sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.  Here's a web page devoted to the debate, with abstracts of the points made by the participants, and a link to the debate video on the web: The U.S.- South Korea Free Trade Agreement: Win-Win, or Lose-Lose?

The Ways and Means staffer suggested that Democratic objections to the agreement could be met to a considerable extent by modifying the agreement's procedures for auto dispute resolution: