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Diplomatic Tasks Toward Building
Economic Hub of Northeast Asia
Bae, Geung Chan
Professor, IFANS
A B S T R A C T
P
resident Roh Moo-hyun has proclaimed Korea's transformation into "an economic hub of Northeast Asia" as one of the new government's key policy goals, and by corollary, laying the diplomatic foundation is surfacing as a crucial task for realizing this goal. Korea should secure its place as a Northeast Asian hub in the future by playing the role of a bridge connecting Japan and China based on a sustainable alliance with the United States and by strengthening its strategic partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). To this end, Korea needs to formulate multi-dimensional free trade agreement (FTA) strategies, seek a new Northeast Asian summit arrangement, and transform the existing ASEAN+3 Summit into East Asian Summit (EAS).
To be more specific, Korea should tailor, as soon as possible, a systematic and comprehensive FTA strategy that includes not only East Asian countries, i.e. ASEAN members, China, and Japan, but also extra-regional countries like the United States, Australia, and the European Union (EU). In other words, Korea must draw up one comprehensive, mid- to long-term road map toward Korea's FTA goals, stipulating, the priority of FTA targets, the scope of negotiations, and the negotiation pace.
It is also difficult to view the existing Korea-China-Japan summits as Northeast Asian summits in the true sense of the word, as they are informal summit meetings held on the sidelines of ASEAN+3 summits. In this light, in order for regional countries to reaffirm mutual political will on Northeast Asian cooperation and hold full-scale discussions on ways to cooperate on regional political, security, economic, and trade issues, Korea should seek to build a new Northeast Asian summit system that is separate from the existing Korea-China-Japan summits.
Meanwhile, one of the diplomatic tasks facing Korea is how it, as a hub of Northeast Asia, takes the initiative in establishing an East Asian summit system. In the course of pursuing this goal, Korea should seek, from various angles, ways to link China and Japan and strengthen its own partnership with the ASEAN.
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