• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.55-88
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• 2019

Our paper contributes to existing literature by empirically investigate the trade structure and trade performance between Korea and ASEAN. Overall, trade activities between Korea and almost major ASEAN economies have significantly focused on capital goods, medium and high technology goods, while the remaining ASEAN countries' exports over Korea have been mainly primary and low technology goods. There has been a higher complementarity in between Korea's exports and ASEAN's imports compared with between ASEAN's exports and Korea's imports. Estimation results show that ASEAN's GDP and income have larger impacts than those of Korea on aggregate trade flows as well as sectoral level between two sides. Additionally, geographical conditions are critical factors impeding Korea-ASEAN trade. Meanwhile, other factors in the estimation model have mixed impacts on components of Korea-ASEAN trade structure. Finally, there is a significant room for Korea's trade expansion with ASEAN, particularly new and less developed members in future.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.119-145
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• 2018

Celebrating its $50^{th}$ anniversary in 2017, the leaders of ASEAN member sates have adopted a series of declarations and action plans for enhancing its institutional capability and functional cooperation. ASEAN's convening power is expected to underpin its centrality and resilience. Meanwhile, ASEAN's retreat from democracy has increasingly become a hindrance for its further development. This article reviews the process of ASEAN's community building and its external relations. First, it argues that there is increasing concerns over ASEAN's limited capability in dealing with regional issues mainly caused by the deprivation of human rights and the democracy in crisis. Second, this article considers the dynamics of ASEAN's external relations mainly focusing on its relations with China, the United States, and South Korea. The South China Sea issue and China's increasing economic influence in the region have contributed to the complexity of ASEAN-China relations. The ASEAN's responses to the shift in American foreign policy under the Trump administration posits the unity of ASEAN. The New Southern Policy initiated by South Korean President, Moon Jae-in appears to be a new focal point of Korea-ASEAN relations despite considerable challenges, which requires to maintain ASEAN centrality.

• STI Policy Review
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.19-40
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• 2013

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) achieved relatively rapid economic growth over the past decade. Sustainable growth among member states, however, is put into question due to macroeconomic challenges, political risk, and vulnerability to external shocks. Developed countries, in contrast, have turned into less labor-intensive technologies to further expand their economies. In this paper, we review the science, technology, and innovation (STI) policies and statuses of the scientific and technological capabilities of the ASEAN member countries. Empirical results based on STI indicators (R&D spending, publications, patents, and knowledge economy indices) reveal considerable variation between the science and technology (S&T) competence and effectiveness of STI policies of ASEAN members. We have categorized nations into clusters according their situations in their S&T productivity. Under the Korean Innovation Model, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Brunei are classified as being in the institutional-building stage, while Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam in the catch up stage, and Singapore in the post-catch up stage. Finally, policy prescriptions on how to enhance the S&T capabilities of the developing ASEAN countries, based on the South Korea development experience, are presented.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.43-72
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• 2019

This study examines the trends, current situation and implications of non-tariff measures (NTM) and specific trade concerns (STC) on the protection trade measures of ASEAN. ASEAN's non-tariff measures and the share of specific trade concerns are very significant as they are the second and third largest, respectively, of the major countries. This means that protection measures using non-tariff measures are a strong feature of ASEAN's trade policy. Also, in the future, ASEAN should try to prevent unnecessary disputes caused by exporting countries' specific trade concerns in the implementation of non-tariff measures. Activating trade policy cooperation is likely to reduce conflicts and costs caused by these trade disputes.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.289-305
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• 2019

Recently, each country has been using non-tariff barriers (Non-Tariff Barriers, NTB) as a new protection trade policy. In particular, TBT lies at the center of NTB. In this context, we examine the impact of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) on Korea's exports to ASEAN. Using 10-year statistics from 2007 to 2016 that came into effect with the ASEAN FTA, we analyze the impact of TBT on the Korean exports in the electrical machinery industry (HS85), which accounts for more than 30 percent of Korea's total exports to ASEAN. The results of the empirical analysis using a gravity model showed significant and positive effects in the variables of GDP and real effective exchange rate in each ASEAN country on Korea's exports to ASEAN. As expected, the tariff rate has a negative effect. As for TBT, the key variable of this study, the results are as follows. Although many previous studies reported that TBT has negative impacts on exports, this study could not find any significant impact of TBT and found that Korea's exports of electrical machinery to ASEAN countries are not affected by TBT. Various implications of these results are suggested.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.3-25
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• 2022

East Asia's Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force in 2022 as the world's largest free trade agreement. RCEP was concluded, signed and brought into force in the face of major international uncertainty and is a significant boost to the global trading system. RCEP brings Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand into the same agreement with the ten member ASEAN group at its centre. It keeps markets open and updates trade and investment rules in East Asia, a major centre of global economic activity, at a time of rising protectionism when the WTO itself is under threat. The agreement builds on ASEAN's free trade agreements and strengthens ASEAN centrality. One of the pillars of RCEP is an economic cooperation agenda which has its antecedents in ASEAN's approach to bringing along its least developed members and builds on the experience of capacity building in APEC and technical cooperation under the ASEAN Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. There is an opportunity to create a framework that facilitates deeper economic cooperation that involves experience-sharing, extending RCEP's rules and membership at the same time as strengthening political cooperation. The paper suggests some areas that might be best suited to cooperation - that is confidence and trust building instead of or before negotiation - and discusses how non-members may be engaged and the membership expanded. Options such as multilateralising provisions and becoming a platform for policy convergence and coordinating unilateral reforms are canvassed.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.177-184
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate the competitiveness of container ports in ASEAN(Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and Korea, which plays a leading role in basing the hub of international logistics strategies at the onset of the 21st century. Its ultimate purpose is to consider the relevant policy-making by comparing the competitiveness of ASEAN and Korea's container ports. This paper adopted the HFP method, which is an empirical analysis that evaluated the port competitiveness by quantifying it a, a qualitative attribute in the aforementioned area, where both ASEAN and Korea vie with each other for increasing container throughput. The results of this study showed that Singapore ranked the first in the subject of study in view of the competitiveness, followed by Busan(2) and Manila(2) as a leading group of the relevant ports in international logistics strategies. This analytic evaluation contributes to the empirical approach applied to policy-making by the HFP method, which is the newest research technique in social science through the comparative study of port competitiveness between ASEAN and Korea.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.205-228
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• 2024

The ASEAN and ROK have played a crucial role in fostering regional peace and economic development. Nevertheless, the recent strategic competition between the US and China has turned the region into a contested arena. The relationship faces challenges due to the ROK's growing alignment with the US, prompting a rising interest in minilateralism as an alternative collaboration model. This paper scrutinizes the impact of ROK's foreign policy behavior, with a focus on minilateralism as a preferred cooperation model with ASEAN. The study centers on BIMP-EAGA, investigating its effectiveness in sustaining collaboration amid geopolitical rivalry. The paper concludes that BIMP-EAGA, as a manifestation of minilateralism, serves as an alternative platform for ROK and ASEAN cooperation. However, the study reveals that the implementation of BIMP-EAGA falls short of expectations. This paper emphasizes the need for greater subregional focus and comprehensive coverage of BIMP-EAGA to truly reflect the shared interests of ASEAN member states.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2021

The main purpose of this research is to analyze the changes in investment motivation by year through time series and cross-sectional analysis of the factors and investment decisions of Korean manufacturing companies. According to the investment pattern for Asean from the 1980s to the 19th, the first expansion period was 82 to 86, the average increase in overseas investment for securing foreign raw materials due to the second oil shock, and the second expansion period was a gradual increase in exports to the U.S. in 1987 to 1996. During the first stagnation period, direct investment in Asean stagnated in the aftermath of the 1998-05 Asian crisis, and in the third expansion period, part of the production facilities invested in China were relocated to Asean, increasing Asean's investment to become Korea's largest manufacturing investment in 17. Korea's proportion of investment in Asean surpassed that of mass investment since 10 years ago, and the proportion of investment in manufacturing sector has been transferred from China to Asean, and after 17 years, it has served as an overseas production base connecting China. As such, The main purpose of the research will be to extract the determinant factors and key factors for overseas direct investment and investment patterns in conjunction with global manufacturing companies' production base relocation and investment trends through empirical analysis. This research paper gave basic reference to the motivation and determinant of investment 16 years ago, and analyzed the changes in investment motivation by year and content through empirical analysis, contributing some reasonable purpose to the decision of companies and policy makers interested in overseas direct investment.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.215-251
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• 2014

This study explores the main causes that have led Japan to conclude an FTA with ASEAN. This paper appraises Japan-ASEAN relations and shows that closer relations between Japan and ASEAN have provided momentum for the launch of Japan's FTAs with ASEAN. Consequently, this paper explores the origins and progress of Japan-ASEAN FTA, as well as the strategies and initiatives embraced by Japan in its FTA negotiations with ASEAN. By examining the domestic, regional, and global factors that led to the launch of the Japan-ASEAN FTA, this paper concludes that the strategies adopted were primarily aimed at its main rival, China. The rivalry has resulted in both positive and negative consequences for East Asian Regional economic environment. The negative consequences include the creation of a "spaghetti bowl", which increases costs for Japanese firms operating abroad, and "slows down the progress of the creation of an effective single regional institution".