The FTA Strategy Policy Of Korea

During the1990s, the economic globalization has achieved rapid development, which has led to a new hotpot of the regional economic integration which was featured by the FTA emerged in the international trade relations. According to the statistics, more than50%of the countries have concluded FTA. As these countries are actively promoting the FTA procedures, Korea also began to participate in the FTA. Although Korea started the FTA lately, the development is rapid.Especially in the context of globalization, Korea is destined to be dropped down in the world economy if they are unable to introduce the FTA strategy which is adaptable to their domestic policies. Since the limited land area, Korea has to rely on foreign markets to develop their domestic economy. Therefore, Korea is supposed to pay more attention to the proper use of the FTA as they widely sign the FTA policy. Since Korea has long time pursued the "trading nation" strategy, only through more active promotion on FTA would they occupy more market share in the world, ease their energy crisis, expand the regional influence, improve their industrial structure and promote sustainable economic development. In addition, the experiences of Korea’s long term FTA progress could benefit the developing countries to develop their own FTA. Therefore, in order to make a foreign trade policy which would maximize Korean economy, great importance should be attached to the research of Korean FTA strategy.This paper analyzes the Korea FTA trade strategy at present, found in the early stages of the signing of the FTA Korea has taken a more conservative strategy policy. According to the principle of "easy things first," firstly choose the countries that are complementary to Korean industry and have weak impact to the Korean industry as their trading partners. At the mature stage after Korea signed the FTA, base on principle of "focus on first", expand the signing range of FTA, select the large economic blocs and adequate-resourced countries as their trading partners. At the same time, the FTA negotiations go with more details. Korea should prepare expanding their FTA scale. Effective FTA policy facilitates the development of Korean economy. Within a short period, Korea not only obtained bigger market share, but also promoted the export competitiveness of their commodity. This leaded to an improvement of Korean industrial structure.The FTA strategy of Korea experienced the initial attempt, medium-term development and post-mature stages, through which, it developed from prototype to mature. By analyzing these stages of the Korean FTA strategy, it’s able to extract the Korea FTA basic strategic policy, which would provide valuable experience for a number of developing countries.