hankyoreh

By Lee Seung-jun, staff reporter

The nominee for Minister of Industry, Trade and Resources said he plans to push for renegotiation of the controversial investor-state dispute (ISD) provision in the South Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).

Speaking at a hearing before the National Assembly’s Knowledge Economy Committee on Mar. 6, nominee Yoon Sang-jick said that if confirmed as minister, he would “discuss the matter with the US as soon as the South Korean procedures are finished.” His remarks came in response to a question from Democratic United Party lawmaker Park Wan-ju, who asked if Yoon had any plans to renegotiate the ISD clause.

Yoon went on to say that future discussions would address whether the new discussions would be “renegotiations” to significantly change the clause’s wording, or “talks toward changing the content of the agreement.”

A bipartisan resolution to urge renegotiation of the KORUS FTA was passed in 2011 after the ISD system became the subject of controversy over what observers saw as terms that compromised the sovereignty of South Korean courts. No progress has been made on the renegotiations since then.

Yoon clarified that he was thinking more of reopening discussions than of renegotiating the KORUS FTA.

“Renegotiation means amending the text of the agreement, but I think we can improve the institutional aspects without doing that by reopening discussions,” he said, mentioning the possibility of including a “side letter” in the agreement as one option.

In response to a question about the ISD suit filed against the South Korean government by the US private equity fund Lone Star, Yoon said he would “have to check how much information can be disclosed about that, since it’s currently under international arbitration.”

Yoon also fielded questions about South Korea’s participation in negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP), a multilateral FTA currently being spearheaded by the US.

“Our trade policy focus to date has been on becoming an FTA hub, but the TPP is a bit different in that it would be a regional policy,” Yoon said. “I would have to see how the process goes and what the pros and cons of participating are.”

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