S. Korea, China begin new round of FTA negotiations

SEJONG, March 17 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and China launched a fresh round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) Monday with both sides expected to work for much needed progress. Seoul earlier said the two countries will continue to hold discussions on all related issues, including the level of market liberalization for products, services and investment, and ways to synchronize their domestic regulations and promote cooperation. This week's meeting, the 10th of its kind since the FTA negotiations were launched in May 2012, will be held in Ilsan, just north of Seoul. It will end Friday. A major breakthrough came in the seventh round of negotiations held in September, when the two countries agreed on a set of basic guidelines, or modality, for their negotiations that included the level of overall market opening. Under the agreement, the countries will remove their import duties on 90 percent of all products traded between them. The FTA negotiations, however, have since hit a stumbling block as they failed to come up with a list of items to be liberalized or protected under the proposed FTA. Officials at South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Seoul was demanding China remove most of its import restrictions on industrial products while China was asking South Korea to open up its agricultural market. "The countries' positions differ, depending on which area they focus on more," Vice Minister Han Jin-hyun said while meeting with reporters in Sejong. "Things are not that easy." Seoul has said about 1,200 products, including agricultural goods, will be exempt from market opening under the basic agreement reached in September. Still, some 1,000 South Korean farmers gathered in a protest rally just outside of the negotiation venue in Ilsan, demanding an immediate halt to FTA talks. "If the South Korea-China FTA is signed, it is expected to cause about 29 trillion won (US$27.16 billion) in damages over the next 15 years, which is between two to five times more than those caused by the Korea-U.S. FTA," the protesters said in a statement. "The Korea-China FTA talks must be immediately stopped to help realize the country's food sovereignty and provide safe food to its people," they added. South Korea is currently engaged in negotiations for eight free trade deals, including a three-way FTA that includes China and Japan. Seoul has said it is giving top priority to the Korea-China FTA, noting a free trade pact with the world's second-largest economy may affect all other FTA negotiations in which the country is engaged. Han, the vice trade minister, stressed the importance of the Korea-China FTA. "There will be no other FTA that has more impact than the Korea-China FTA. Already, one quarter of our exports head to China and they say the proportion may grow up to one third of the country's overall exports when considering the amount shipped to China via Hong Kong," he said. bdk@yna.co.kr (END)