How Democracy Facilitates South Korean Interest in Free Trade Agreements

In recent years South Korea has been unusually active in signingfree trade agreements (FTAs), which is usually seen as a sign of thecountry’s economic interest in expanding trade. We argue thatKorean foreign economic policy also follows a political interest, namely that Korea prefers to pursue FTAs with fellow democracies rather than with authoritarian regimes. This preference for democracieshas three complementary origins: 1) democratic dyads arepeaceful dyads, such that Korea need not worry about empoweringrival nations through FTAs, 2) democratic regimes are more accountable, such that FTAs are more likely to be enforced in a democraticregime, and 3) democratic countries are more likely to see a nationalinterest in FTAs, further increasing the chances of Korea pursuing aFTA. We test this argument with an original dataset on Korea’s FTAconsideration from 2000 to 2011, using Cox Proportional Hazardsmodels.