Sorry ... I don't speak Chinese, English please?
I was surprised to read an article saying that should the opposition party in Korea win the upcoming April 2012 elections, they might be inclined to repet the US-Korea FTA which was some at, uhm, sometime ago after (what I recall as) a long series of negotiations. To answer the question whether they should or should not write off their FTA, they must first ask themselves; what made them negotiate and sign an FTA with America in the first place?
I recall reading a discussion on the US-Korea FTA in one of my groups on LinkedIn. As far as I can remember, the argument was even though both parties opened up certain industries for mutual benefit, Korea loses grounds in their agriculture industry; where the evidence can be seen in the government's efforts to give support to their Farmers and Fisherman (also interesting; 15,000 farmers earn more than USD 100,000 annually). Now as much as I am all go for Free Trade Agreements, one thing I would disagree is creating a disadvantageous environment (unfair competition) for key industries, one of which is Agriculture. The reason being is, if you open yourself or create an environment where basic necessities such as food being open to foreign competition, what if the import supply gets cut off?
Now of course, this is quite a contentious issue and the government knows this and is trying to circumvent the issue by giving them subsidiaries. But would that be enough? We all know subsidies can help cushion certain impacts but also creates market distortions. So the question now for this particular issue is; are they making the right move?
Obviously no.
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