Free trade agreement between US and South Korea is a lie
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Friday, March 2, 2007
Free trade agreement between U.S. and South Korea is a lie
SUK MIN YOON
GUEST COLUMNIST
President Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun share many similarities.
First, their unilateral decision-making style occurs in both the White House and the Blue House (South Korea’s presidential building).
Second, both presidents have received harsh criticism for their policies in the Iraq war. As a result, Bush lost the Republican majority in Congress, and in South Korea, the majority U-ri Party will soon be dissolved because of a secession of parliamentary members who blame Roh’s administration for sending Korean troops to Iraq.
Last, both Bush and Roh are lame-duck presidents eager to sign a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement in time to meet the deadline for "fast track" authority this spring. The pact would be the largest free trade agreement since NAFTA. South Korea is the U.S.’s seventh-largest trading partner and export market.
If the free trade agreement passes, U.S. agricultural exports to South Korea are estimated to increase by more than 200 percent, U.S. exports to South Korea by 54 percent, and South Korean exports to the U.S. by 21 percent.
Yet the benefits would not go to the people. Even though a free trade agreement might increase South Korea’s gross domestic product by 2 percent, the majority of the growth will go to large corporations. It won’t be earning income for Korean working people and farmers.
If the agreement were to pass, workers’ rights in both countries would be at greater risk, because hard-won labor protections would be dismissed as "trade barriers."
Free trade would undermine South Korea’s labor laws, cut wages, eliminate jobs and increase the number of temporary workers without benefits or job security. Already, more than half of all workers in South Korea are "irregular" workers, hired on temporary employment status.
South Korea is Washington state’s sixth-largest export market, with purchases of nearly $1.8 billion in Washington products in 2005. South Korea bought $325 million in food and agricultural products from Washington last year.
Also, Washington has a sister-state relationship with Jeolla-buk-do Province, a region of South Korea that is rich in art, culture and history of democratic struggle, traditional food and agriculture — all of which are severely threatened by the free trade agreement.
This means that Washingtonians not only have a stake in the agreement, but also a responsibility to understand what the agreement would mean for Korean farmers, workers, children and the elderly. The people of Washington state must ask about the stories behind the dollar signs.
For instance, if free trade passes, private U.S. health insurance companies would pose a threat to the South Korean national health insurance program, and U.S. pharmaceutical corporations likely would undermine access to affordable, life-saving medicines for South Korea’s elderly. It is a sad fact that the United States now has one of the worst systems of health care in the world, and that that, in turn, has made U.S. health insurance companies rich.
South Korea should not become another example of this cruel irony. Are the people of Washington state willing to accept the benefits of such a trade agreement, whatever the moral cost ?
Seattle local activist Soya Jung Harris, a member of Sahng-nok-soo, a Seattle-based group of Koreans and Korean Americans dedicated to social and economic justice, put it this way : "We do not want free trade for capital ; we want fair trade for all people."
That one sentence is much clearer than the long speeches by both the U.S. and South Korean presidents about the U.S.-Korea FTA, which would benefit only big business, and not working people in both the United States and Korea.
It’s time to give a stringent warning to both presidents to end their lies about free trade.
Suk Min Yoon was an P-I editorial page intern. He is returning to South Korea where he will be in graduate school in East Asia studies.
