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.