FTA between the U.S. and South Korea

The trade liberalization deal between the United States and South Korea which called, "Free Trade Area (FTA)" has been continued nearly a year until now. FTA mainly deals with the issue that dropping trade barriers and tariffs between the two in order to trade more freely to each other. However, each of the two wants not only to protect its own market but also to sell its own products more in order to be benefitted for its own nation at the same time. Due to this fact, each nation could not be reached to the agreement yet. As an example, United States want to sell more cars to South Korea in order to solve big trade deficit gap on car market. According to the article that I found at http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-03-31-voa4.cfm, the U.S. sold only 5,000 vehicles while South Korea sold more than 700,000 vehicles to the U.S. Another example is beef. The U.S. could not sell beef to South Korea more than three years after mad cow disease found in the U.S. several years ago. In addition, the most sensitive issue is rice. South Korean government do not want to open its rice market to the U.S. because it does not think it will be competitve against the U.S. In reality, most of FTA protestors in South Korea now are rice farmers who do not want to open their market to the U.S. Because of these sensitive issues, the U.S. and South Korea finally decided to extend their negotiation deadline by this Sunday in order to have an agreement that each party can agree with.

Last year, I visited South Korea two times both in summer and in winter. Whenever I visited S. Korea that time, I heard many news about FTA by T.V.s and newspapers. Also, I saw many protestors against FTA around the U.S. embassy at that time. At first, I was not interested in the issue and did not really think about it. However, as I kept watching news on T.V., I started to realize that FTA is very important and sensitive issue between the United States and South Korea. The main reason why the United States and South Korea could not be reached agreement even though they had talks several times in nearly a year is that each country wants to have more benefit by having the optimal agreement. It is natural thing and it happens all the time when even a small company do its business. It is so complicated issue to say the one solid solution. However, I personally believe that each nation has to be concerned more about the long term relationship between the two. The United States want to sell its beef and more cars to South Korea in order to be benefitted by decreasing trade deficit. On the other hand, South Korea wants to save their rice farmers and want to keep its people healthy from any kind of disease, mad cow disease in this particular case. Each nation has its own goal and wants to have the result that each of them wants. But, the agreement will be achieved by concession. Both the United States and South Korea should be concerned more about the long-term relationship between the two and endure some painful suffers in order to reach the agreement that enables both nations can be benefitted by it. Now each nation is required to have wisdom to make some concessions to have reasonable outcome for both of them rather than lagging the negotiation deadline, not having any point of the issue by having endless conflict between the two without any concessions. I hope the United States and South Korea keep a good realtionship by having an agreement that both the U.S. and S. Korea can be happy with.

A Sad Day for Loyal Workers of Circuit City

In the article, "Circuit City Cuts 3,400 'Overpaid' Workers" which appeared at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802185_pf.html?reload=true, the author Ylan Q. Mui talks about the story that firings of loyal employees in Circuit City yesterday. According to the article, Circuit City fired 3,400 employees who were paid relatively higher in order to reduce its expenses. However, by firing many employees, about 9% of its total employees, many employees feel negative about the situation. As an example, Steven Rash who worked for Circuit City before, fired immideiately without any prior notice. Also, as Circuit City admits, there are no faults to hime at all. He mentions that he has to find another part time job to pay his student loan and he is not sure whether he deserves to have this kind of situation or not. Another example is also shown at the end of the article. Jose Macias, an employee of Circuit city, could barely avoid being fired. However, as seeing firings of other co-workers, he strongly criticized to the decision of Circuit City.

After I read this article, I also got angry about what Circuit City did to its employees. Among 3,400 employees who were suddenly fired yesterday, many of them worked for Circuit City for several years. Personally, I believe it is not an ethical thing to do so. The reason is that it is more important for Circuit City to keep fellow and hard workers of the company rather than firing them all of a sudden in the long term. It is about the credibility between employees and the company. Even though Circuit City can expect some savings of its expenses in the short term, I strongly believe that the possible serious problems can be occurred in the future by losing strong credibility between employees and the company. Those problems could eliminate the postivie effects that Circuit City might have now by firing its loyal employees and would even cause more negative impacts to the company as a whole in further years. It might be impossible to save all loyal employees to Circuity City. And this kind of incident happens all the time in real world. However, I recommend Circuit City to think about the long term effect rather than short term effect when it makes a decision especially regarding firings of its "loyal" employees who contributed many things to the companry during the last several years.