Earticle

Discussions on economic integration including FTA in East Asia have been underway for many years and FTA of KJ (Korea‐Japan) centers in the talks. In the past, multilateralism and regionalism are viewed as reciprocal‐exclusive relationship to disturb the free trade but recently it is viewed as one of complementary cooperation. According to this change, many countries have tried to join the regional trade agreements including FTA so that around 250 agreements are reported to WTO until recently. On the other hand, Korea and Japan have its own economic reasons to take part in the agreement such as obtaining the broad and stable export market, achieving the industry restructure by acquiring the advanced technology and system, attracting the foreign direct investment, and so on. By the CGE simulation analysis, when Korea and Japan enter into the FTA, it is expect that the trade effect of inter‐member countries will be eventually better off for both countries while each country may have a negative effect in trade balance in particular industries respectively. Despite an expected long‐term positive economic effect including macroeconomic factors such a GDP rate, non‐economic factors like a historical relationship between the countries work as an obstacle in making FTA. The pre‐requisite problems in making FTA are able to classify two areas: economic and political. In economic areas, great deficit in trade balance of Korea against Japan, recession of welfare level, and problem of fundamental dependence of Korea on the imports from Japan are expected to be barrier in making FTA. In political area, discord between Korea and Japan due to the historical emotional hatred, and absence of leadership of respective country’s political leaders, FTA between the two countries would be through a very tough procedure to be completed. To solve these problems, gradual progress should be considered in some industries which are expected great trade deficit and technology transfer of Japanese firms and remove of non‐tariff barrier are essential to solve this problem. Furthermore, political cooperation should be accomplished in the area of deregulation, investment cooperation, and so on. In addition to this, Japan should open her market extensively and offer funds for Asian countries development and Korea and Japan show their strong leaderships for peace of the region. Also active culture exchange such as academic exchange, language exchange program, sports, etc should be helpful to make understand each other.

In reality, it is not optional but required that Korea has to proactively cope with ever-changing global economic order and international trade circumstances, and it is inevitable for three major Northeast Asian countries, i.e. Korea, China and Japan - as one of 3 major global economic axes - to conclude FTA with one another. In these contexts, this study aims to analyze actual profile and structure of international trade among Korea, China and Japan, discuss why it is necessary to make politico-economic cooperation system and conclude FTA among these 3 Northeast Asian countries, and analyze potential effects of FTA among those countries upon their economy and international politics, so that it can give certain political implications for Korea.

The United States, Brazil, and Argentina are major exporting countries in the world soybean market. The United States has a more efficient transportation system than Brazil and Argentina, which has contributed to its competitive advantage over Brazil and Argentina in exporting soybeans to the Asian countries. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of alternative inland transportation systems in shipping soybeans from major exporting countries to major importing regions and countries on the United States’competitiveness of soybean exports and the world soybean trade. A spatial equilibrium model for the world soybean industry is developed for this study. Decreases in inland transportation costs in major soybean exporting countries result in increases in competitiveness of the relevant exporting country and reductions in the competitiveness of other exporting countries in the world soybean market. The decreases result in increases in social payoff in exporting countries.

As a result of driving the liberalization policy of capital movement, the Korea's financial market has been perfectly opened to foreigners under the present circumstances. Since the 1998, the Korea's Current Accounts has consistently maintained surplus, and high level of capital mobility has resulted in the excessive change in reserve assets. The floating exchange rate system and the liberalization of capital movement has exerted lots of effects on the effectiveness of Korean monetary policy, which was showed to produce an effective influence on economic equilibrium. However, several monetary policies including sterilization policy was restrictedly affected by free movement of capital in reality. This paper has concentrated on the degree of offset effect on sterilization policy by free capital movements for 2000~2006. The result of empirical analysis shows that sterilization coefficient and offset coefficient are gradually diminished according to improvement in capital movement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practical uses and hardships of farmers’ Electronic Commerce, and propose several suggestions to improve their Electronic Commerce. This paper is organised as follows. Chapter I introduces the necessities and purposes of this paper. Chapter II considers the concepts, significance, requirements and present status of agricultural electronic commerce in Korea. Chapter III examines the realities of the farmers' electronic commerce in the Western Gyeongnam Area. Chapter IV analyzes some problems and suggests strategies for developing the farmers' electronic commerce. And Chapter V concludes with a summary which highlights a number of the key issues concerning farmers' electronic commerce. In conclusion, for developing the farmers' electronic commerce, it is required to make various industrial goods from agricultural products, create the agricultural allied brands, and operate the expert education programs and business consulting programs for e-commerce management through the academic-industrial cooperation.