It is confirmed that South Korea mentioned that 280 agricultural items would be open to the US, during the fourth Korean-US FTA discussion held on Jeju Island.

A source from the Korean FTA negotiators said, “We altered 50 agricultural goods to become tariff elimination items. Among agricultural items that tariffs will be abolished within five, ten and fifteen years, we decided to advance the period of tariff elimination for 230 items.

It means that 20% of 1,531 agricultural items will be extended for tariff abolishment. The source added, “The revised draft includes 235 sensitive items.” It is reported that the South Korean FTA negotiating team did not present its proposal for tariffs and other concessions in the agricultural sector because it is very sensitive to both.

In conjunction with the results of the talk, another source said, “We made concessions and progress on insensitive items. But we will focus on sensitive issues later in the effort to make as much progress as possible on insensitive items first at the Jeju discussion.” He forecast that the US will be likely to demand additional tariff abolishment on some sensitive items.

He explained that both sides concurred with the principle of introducing a Special Safe Guard on agricultural goods, but more time is needed to finalize it. If both sides make an FTA accord, South Korea will become the seventh largest trading partner for the US and the U.S. will become the second largest export market for South Korea.

입력시간: 2006. 11.01. 08:22