starting february a multilateral trade pact the regional comprehensive economic partnership or
rciv will take effect here in south korea the deal is joined by 10 asean countries as well as
south korea china japan australia and new zealand for more we have professor xin sang
here from kyung hee university live in the studio professor shin thanks for coming on thank you
so first of all the rsa is the world's largest multilateral trade pact could
you tell us more on what the rcep is and how its size yes our server is the largest
trade agreement not only in asia but also in the world in terms of aggregate output uh the
rcep member countries produce about 31 percent out of the of of the global the output
and in terms of population it has 2.3 billions so actually in terms of the population size and the
aggregate output certainly rcep is the largest trade agreement in the world and the
if i tell you the history of the rcep actually the first idea of asian-wide regional trade agreement
this idea was introduced by the east asia vision group in 2001 after 2001 there have been several
trials to establish asian wide trade agreements while japan and china has have introduced some
ideas to establish asian-based i mean white regional trade agreements but on in 2012 asean
member countries actually formally initiated the idea i mean the partnership i mean the rsep
the for the first time and then after eight years of the negotiation in 2022 and 20
15 countries signed under agreement korea is one of the 15 member countries if i do one thing more
the india was originally i mean it was planned to schedule and plan to join the rsa but they
it drew i mean from the uh i said in 2019 because of the the in the trade with china they
thought they could lose too much uh the uh uh in the name of the arsene frame so
the india uh left the asep so at the moment it has the 15 member countries and the uh one thing um
we should remember uh whenever we discuss about ourselves that are rule has been criticized a
lot because it i mean the rules are less ambitious that means that the trade liberalization in rsap
is incomplete and incremental and then major trade obstacles are not subject to
our sub obligations so many people i mean experts uh criticize the uh alcept because
of it's a very low level of less ambitious rules but despite of this kind of criticism
we can say that the rcep has provided a good opportunity for asian countries to achieve
economic growth that was a roundup of what the r said is and what impact will this mega fta have
on south korea's trade and economy well i think that's a very important question i think that
well for korea rsep is a very welcome development um according to one of the korean economic think
tank kiev actually the rcm membership could give a economic growth effect of 0.41 up to 0.62 percent
uh the for korean economy uh this is uh owing to the uh tariff reduction in the trade with 15 i
mean 14 other member countries right and the but i mean uh the whenever we discuss about the trade
with other member countries we should think about trade size trade volume among member countries
well korea has the economic structure heavily rely on external trade out of total korean exports
50 percent experts go to the al assad member countries well 25 percent goes to china and then
another 25 percent goes to the rest of the rsm member countries among these two uh 925 percent
the uh the um i mean out of total korean experts 17 percent uh the experts go to asean member
countries 10 asean member countries and 5 experts go to japan so we can say that china aseans
and then japan are very very important training partners for korea the among the industries
we can have some question which industry will get the most benefits from the membership of the asset
i think that the automobile industries and the steel industries could get the largest i mean uh
most favorable benefits from the membership of ourselves let me tell you some figure in case of
the car passenger cars and trucks the at the moment the asean member countries impose
30 or up to 40 percent the tariffs on korean-made cars but owing to the rcm membership uh those
tariffs will be eliminated of course it will take a time but so korean auto mobile mobile industry
will have the uh a good opportunity to expand their market share in the asean member countries
i mean as a member country's market how about steel products i mean at the moment uh korean
steel products when we i mean still intrigued producers when they export the price to japan
japanese government imposed 20 percent tariffs on it but the owing to the rsa membership
the twenty percent elimination terrorist will be eliminated then the korean steel
producers could be more competitive in japanese market along with these kind of things i mean
i would like to have some several more very important points which we can uh i mean uh
we should remember uh or into the rcep we could have the fta with japan i mean we do not have
uh the fta uh with japan and japan was the only one country which does not have any fta with us
uh owing to the rcep we could have the trade agreement with japan and then considering the
current uh the trade relations the current relations with japan as you know very well
there has been trade dispute uh caused by the uh uh the i mean uh the a historic issue that's right
so yes uh well even though japan is a very important trading partner for us our relations has
been in a bad shape over the last several years so by having our rcep membership we could take
some turning point in the economic relations with japan second point actually you know
uh this uh the uh package i mean the uh the partnership will lead to a significant
korea china fta uh as you know very well the current uh korea china fta is very shallow
so i mean this will be also a turning point in the relations with the uh china and lastly i want to
say that i mean this rcep could have provided some very important opportunity for us the consummation
of the trilateral fta i mean korea china and japan these are the fta will be very important for the
continuous economic dynamism so i think are these other contributions or benefits which we can
expect from the rsm membership all right that was a lot of information thank you professor all right
professor xin sang here from kyongi university thank you for your insights yes my pleasure