Failure to ratify Korea-U.S. FTA to jeopardize bilateral ties: scholar

By Hwang Doo-hyong

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- Any failure by the United States to ratify the pending free trade deal with South Korea before the G-20 summit meeting in Seoul in 2010 may turn out to be a major setback in the decades-old bilateral alliance, a U.S. scholar said Tuesday.

"While both nations are currently focused on domestic impacts of the financial
crisis, failure to resolve the situation of the KORUS FTA before the 2010 G-20
meeting in Korea could be a major issue for the relationship and send mixed
signals as the G-20 seeks to advance international trade," said Steven Schrage at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a report on the Web site of
the nonprofit think tank based here.
South Korea is the host country of next year's G-20 economic summit, which was
held in Washington in November for the first time in an extension of the G-8
summit amid criticism that the handful of global economic powers and the
International Monetary Fund failed to prevent the economic crisis, the worst in
decades. The second G-20 summit is scheduled to be held in London in April.
Schrage said that the Korea-U.S. FTA "will be a key indicator for the direction"
President Barack Obama will pursue on international economics "as well as for the
broader prospects of international efforts to advance trade and fight
protectionism in the midst of the global economic downturn."
He said he was concerned about strong protectionist sentiments in the Democratic
Congress, citing South Korea's limited imports of U.S. beef and an imbalance in
auto trade as major obstacles.
The FTA, signed in 2007, is still awaiting ratification by both the U.S. Congress
and South Korea's National Assembly, which has not yet begun deliberating it,
citing growing protectionism in the U.S.
"The G-20 agenda in 2010 provides a unique and rare opportunity for building on
and finding new ways to strengthen U.S.-Korea cooperation," the scholar said,
noting that U.S. cooperation with Japan in the G-8 summit played a key role in
deepening and strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance.
"As the economic crisis becomes the world's driving issue and the G-20 becomes
the main forum for addressing it, Korea's role in chairing the G-20 in 2010 and
the United States's role as the world's leading economy will place these nations
and their relationship at center stage as the world looks for solutions to a
deepening crisis," he said.
Obama last week urged the struggling U.S. auto industry to restructure itself to
compete with South Korean and Japanese cars, saying, "If we don't use this crisis
as an opportunity to start retooling, then we will never catch up and be able to
compete effectively against Japanese automakers, Korean automakers, and we will
find ourselves continuing to slide."
While campaigning, Obama opposed ratification of the "badly flawed" free trade
agreement with South Korea as it stands, saying that South Korea exports more
than 700,000 autos to the U.S. annually while importing just 6,000.
South Korea disputes those figures, saying the export numbers include 250,000
units made in the U.S. at an Alabama plant owned by South Korea's largest
automaker, Hyundai, and exclude more than 125,000 automobiles sold in South Korea
by GM Daewoo, a Korean subsidiary of U.S. automaker General Motors.
At a Senate confirmation hearing last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
proposed that South Korea "re-engage negotiations on these vital provisions of
the agreement," urging Seoul to provide "genuine improvements."
Clinton is due in Seoul later this week on the third leg of her Asia tour, her
first overseas trip since taking office last month, and is expected to discuss
the free trade agreement with Seoul officials.