The 10th round of talks for a Korea-China free trade agreement will start on Monday for a five-day run at the Korea International Exhibition Center in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
The new round will continue discussing overall areas, including products, services, investment, regulations and cooperation, the ministry said.
A major breakthrough came in the seventh round of negotiations held in Beijing in last September, in which the countries agreed on basic guidelines for the proposed FTA, including the level of their market opening for products.
They have since been working to map out a detailed list of products to be liberalized under the FTA, but with little or no visible progress.
South Korea’s Trade Minister Yoon Sang-jick said, however, that the talks were moving forward.
Yoon and other government officials have said the country is giving top priority to the Korea-China FTA, considering a comprehensive impact in trade expansion.
China is Korea’s No. 1 trading partner, with Seoul’s exports to Beijing accounting for a quarter of the total in 2012. Since the two nations established diplomatic ties in 1992, their annul trade has grown almost 50 times and reached 256 billion US dollars in 2012.
The government also expects that cut in tariffs between the two nations may provide a starting point for all other FTA negotiations South Korea is engaged in.
South Korea is currently in negotiations for eight new bilateral and multilateral FTAs, including a three-way free trade pact involving China and Japan. (Yonhap)
