가공식품의 대중ㆍ대일 경쟁력

Korean Processed Foods’ Competitiveness against China and Japan

This paper deals with Korea’s intra-industry trade of the agricultural sector during the period of 2005-2010. This study uses the trade specialization index and the market comparative advantage index to evaluate the competitiveness of agricultural products of Korea against China and Japan. We show the concrete evidence that the comparative disadvantage of Korean processed food is far greater than we expect. The export competitiveness indexes reveal that our processed food items are in a import specialization against China and are in an export specialization against Japan. The horizontal-vertical IIT indicates that most of IIT between Korea and China is the high quality vertical IIT, whereas most of between Korea and Japan is the low one. This result suggests that Korea exports the high(low) quality products to and imports the low(bigh) quliaty items from China(Japan). The Korean governments commenced the negotiation of Korea-China Free Trade Agreement. The Korean government has been engaged in actively pursuing a number of FTAs simultaneously. We know that multilateralism and regionalism have become the mainstream forces of the world’s trading system. We, however, should recognize that free trade means free competition as well as winner-takes-all. Free trade argument is, hence, merely a policy for the strong. The agriculture is a vital key industry for Korea. The declining agriculture will threaten our food security. Something must be taken to help our sustainable agriculture with soft-landing as soon as possible.