[2nd] February 05, 2008 Home | Full Contents | MOFAT Homepage   Korea-EU FTA Negotiations The 6th round of the Korea-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations was held in Seoul from January 28 to February 1. The Korean delegation was headed by Mr. Kim Han-soo, Deputy Minister for FTAs, while the EU delegation was led by Mr. Ignacio Garcia Bercero, Director of East Asia Bilateral Trade Relations at the European Commission. At this round of negotiations, both sides made considerable progress by reaching an agreement in many fields, including dispute settlement mechanism, transparency, TDI(trade remedies), electronic commerce, competition and sustainable development. In the field of intellectual property, which has been one of the sticking points in the past negotiations, most outstanding issues were agreed other than the issue of geographical indication(GI). In a few areas including technical barriers to trade(TBT), sanitary and phytosanitary measures(SPS) and agreement on trade in goods, both sides have reached an agreement except on a few core issues, which need additional negotiations. It was agreed by both sides that intersessional meeting be held to discuss further issues, such as rules of origin, non-tariff barriers to trade, and services and investment. The next round of negotiations was tentatively agreed to be held in April this year, particularly focusing on the agenda items of tariff offer on goods, non-tariff barriers to trade of automobiles and rules of origin. UN PKO and Korea The United Nations peacekeeping operations : Evolving efforts to maintain international peace and security The six decade-old peacekeeping operations by the United Nations have been under remarkable changes in response to the transformations in world order after the World War II. During the Cold War era, peacekeepers were expected to play a limited role, such as observing the ceasefires or separation of forces arrangement in order to maintain international peace and security. They were deployed unarmed or lightly armed under UN command when a ceasefire was in place and the parties to the conflict had given their consent. At the end of the Cold War, a surge in intra-state conflicts, which derived from religious or ethnic confrontation, claimed increased demand for complex and multidimensional peacekeeping operations. However, with the failure in the operations such as massacres in Rwanda and Srebrenica, reforms of peacekeeping operations came up for discussion regarding mandates and resources of the operation. Current peacekeeping operations are multidimensional ones conducted by police officers, military and civilian staff of a number of countries, in particular assisting nation-building processes in the African countries torn by civil wars. At present, 54 thousand personnels are deployed in Africa with the mandates of providing emergency relief, supporting the local organization of elections and shoring up the judiciary, civil administration and public utilities in the post-conflict society. The current status and the future direction of Korea's participation in UN peacekeeping operations Since the Republic of Korea joined the UN in1991, it has dispatched a total of about 920 troops to UN's peacekeeping operations including a 250-member engineering battalion to Somalia in 1993, UNOSOM II in Somalia, UNAVEM II in Angola, UNTAET in East Timor, UNFICYP in Cyprus, MINURSO in Western Sahara, and ONUB in Burundi. Right now, 38 Koreans are dispatched to UNMOGIP in India/Pakistan, UNOMIG in Georgia, UNMIL in Liberia, UNAMA in Afghanistan, UNMIS in Sudan, UNMIT in East Timor and UNMIN in Nepal.  350 infantry troops were sent to UNIFIL (Lebanon) in July last year, so a total of 401 troops are dispatched to a total of 8 peacekeeping missions, which is the 37th largest number of troops dispatched to peacekeeping operations among the UN Member States. The ROK's participation in PKO mainly consists of assistants and administrative forces such as military engineers, medical assistants and military observers.  There were two cases in which the ROK dispatched infantry troops: East Timor (99-03) and UNIFIL('07-present). However, the role of PKO in the global security environment continues to grow in the 21st century and each country has taken active policies on participating in PKO accordingly.  Therefore, the ROK Government will actively participate in PKO by further promoting the national understanding on the importance and meaning of making contributions to PKO and rationalizing procedures for dispatching troops including the procedure of getting a prior consent by the National Assembly. It is one of the top priorities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to actively participate in and make contributions to UN's PKO, based on the awareness that the ROK must make contributions to the international community befitting its national power in order to secure its status and influence in the international community. Korea’s ODA at a Glance Striving to eradicate poverty Although mankind has achieved economic prosperity at an unprecedented level, 20 percent of the world's population still lives on less than $1 a day. The significance of Official Development Assistance(ODA) is increasingly gaining recognition in the international community as its efforts to eradicate poverty result not only in the protection of basic human rights, but also in the construction of a healthy governance system, the spread of democracy within the recipient country, and ultimately the contribution to world peace.  From a recipient to a donorKorea shares with other East Asian newly industrialized countries the unique experience of overcoming poverty and achieving economic growth in just a few decades. Effective use of the enormous amount of foreign aid was crucial to Korea’s sustained economic growth.  Between 1945 and the early 1990s, Korea received a total assistance of 12.69 billion USD from the international community. Korea’s graduation from the World Bank lending list in 1995 marked the de facto end of Korea’s history as a recipient of ODA. As such, Korea was finally able to make a transition from an aid-receiving country to an emerging aid-donor country. The volume of Korea’s ODA to developing countries has steadily grown since 1987. In 2007, the total amount of Korea's ODA was more than 680 million USD, a 31.5% increase from that of 2006 at 517 million USD. Korea's ODA implementation systemGrants, composed of grant aid and technical cooperation programs, are implemented by the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) under the policy guidelines of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. While grant aid program is wholly controlled by the KOICA, some technical cooperation programs are engaged by other government agencies and organizations. Concessional loans are managed by the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) programmed by the Export-Import Bank of Korea (EXIM Bank) under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance and Economy. For effective adjustment and discussion among agencies, the Commission on International Development Cooperation and its Working Committee are in place. Recent efforts to enhance Korea's ODAo Korea is currently in the process of drafting its basic ODA policy document and of legislating its Framework Act on ODA. o In step with efforts of the global community in discovering ‘innovative development financing’ for poverty eradication in least developed countries, the Korean government introduced the ‘Air Ticket Solidarity Levy’ (named ‘Contribution to International Poverty Eradication’ in Korea) in October 2007. It levies 1,000 KRW(roughly $1) on international flight tickets to finance eradication of poverty and disease in developing countries. o To provide rapid assistance activities to the disaster-affected regions, Korea has enacted the Overseas Emergency Relief Act in October 2007 as the foundation for the creation of a pan-government assistance mechanism. o To help developing countries to achieve their development goals with a sense of ownership and responsibility, it is crucial for donor countries to build global partnership for aid effectiveness. In October 2007, Korea sent a delegation to the Second International Conference on Development Cooperation with Middle-Income Countries in El Salvador where special development needs and most appropriate set of policies and instruments for this group of countries were discussed. In addition, Korea held bilateral ODA Policy Consultations with some developing countries, including that held between Korea and Vietnam in January 15, 2008. To strengthen Korea's commitment to strengthening and supporting the multilateral system, Korea is now participating as an observer to the Multilateral Organizations Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN). Future direction of Korea's ODAKorea is striving to help meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as set out by the United Nations. To this end, Korea plans to expand its ODA to achieve the ODA/GNI target of 0.1 percent by 2010 and of 0.25 percent by 2015. Korea will also endeavor to gradually increase the portion of grant aids of total ODA in order to meet the demand of least developed countries and alleviate the economic burden of recipient countries. Untying aid to meet the standards recommended by Development Assistance Committee of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development at 90 percent for grants and 40 percent for concessional loans will be applied to Korea's mid-term ODA plan. Korea will take steps to strengthen its policy-making and implementation capacity as a donor. It will actively support the swift legislation of the Framework Act on ODA to achieve policy coherence among ministries and aid implementation agencies. Strengthening the mechanism for assessing aid performance is also in the agenda for improving Korea's ODA. Furthermore, Korea will formulate an original Korean assistance model that transmits the country's successful development experience aligned to the recipient country's national development strategies. Forming strong partnerships with recipient countries as well as donor countries is essential to increasing aid effectiveness. Active participation in policy dialogues with recipient countries will be sought. Also, to better coordinate with other donor countries in achieving the goal of poverty eradication, Korea is making preparations to join the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD by 2010. 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