Korea's Choice for Asia

Abstract

The article discusses the Republic of Korea’s role in multiple already working and being negotiated free trade agreements from the viewpoints of the influence of Korea’s domestic affairs on the role and of the political and economic change among its partners in the free trade agreements. It finds that Korea’s position on the free trade agreements remained stable despite the shift to the domination of right-wing parties in Korea’s domestic politics in 2008 and back to domination of left-wing parties in 2017. Both left- and right-wing parties in Korea supported the free trade agreements, despite their rationale was different: in 2000s left-wing parties perceived the free trade agreements to curb negative consequences of the 1990s Asia’s financial crisis, while in 2010s right-wing parties perceived them as a response to the failure of multilateral trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization. It also finds that Korea’s partners in the free trade agreements sometimes seek to re-negotiate the already existing free trade agreements in response to domestic political and economic changes in those countries. In most cases, Korea and its partners managed to find common grounds at re-negotiations and thus to conclude renewed bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements. At the same time, Korea, China, and Japan have so far failed to conclude a trilateral free trade agreement, thus leaving the ASEAN in the position of the exemplary group of countries in the core of the network of Asia’s free trade agreements.