아ㆍ태 지역에서의 한국의 FTA 추진정책 분석

A CGE Analysis of Korea's FTA Policy in the Presence of Growing Regionalism in Asia-Pacific

Recent years have witnessed the growing fever of regionalism in the form of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) such as free trade agreements (FTAs). Korea and China have begun bilateral negotiations in May 2012 after completing an official joint study on the FTA between them (FTA-KC). Also, the three countries began to launch a trilateral negotiation of an FTA among China, Japan, and Korea (FTA-CJK) in March 2013. As an additional stimulus toward a much wider regional FTA in the Asia-pacific, ASEAN+6(China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand) countries launched an official negotiation for Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in May 2013. This paper intends to comparatively analyze the economic impacts of three possible FTAs, a bilateral FTA-KC, a trilateral FTA-CJK, and a regional-wide RCEP in the Asia-pacific, which Korea has been recently engaged in. This paper first analyzes the effects of the three possible FTAs on GDP and social welfare and then sheds some light on Korea's FTA strategy in the presence of growing regionalism in Asia-Pacific.