英文摘要 |
When it comes to economic integration between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia via FTA, China was the first mover, while Japan and South Korea were late comers. Driven by China’s proactive FTA policy toward the ASEAN, the Roh Moo-hyun government signed FTA with ASEAN in 2004 first and then the ASEAN-Korea Trade in Services Agreement in 2007. Subsequently, given the 2008 global financial crisis and the regionalization of global trade, the CEO-turned President Lee Myung-bak came up with the New Asia Initiative in 2009 as his strategy to cope with changing international milieu and made the ASEAN a major focus of that initiative. More importantly, he not only upgraded the bilateral economic relations to the comprehensive economic partnership by adding investment agreement to FTA and service trade agreement, but also brought about two new and creative mechanisms into ROK-ASEAN bilateral economic relations, namely CEO summit and the ASEAN–Republic of Korea Commemorative Summit. During her presidency from 2013 to 2017, President Park Geun-hye highlighted service trade and Korea’s soft power exemplified by Korean Wave as well as injected creative economy concept and contents into the bilateral relations. This paved way for South Korean companies to tap into ASEAN new economy characterized by e-commerce, fin-tech and start-up innovation in the later Moon Jae-in era. President Moon made the New Southern Policy (NSP) one of his signature foreign policies along with the New Northern Policy (NNP). The 1st Mekong-ROK Summit w as held in Busan in November 2019 under Moon Jae-in. What worth mentioning is that during the Moon presidency South Korea has expanded its presence in Southeast Asia from a Vietnam-centered manufacturing hub to dual manufacturing hubs of Vietnam and Indonesia. Furthermore, the NSP has helped boost South Korea’s investments into Southeast Asia and India by 73 percent since its launch in 2017 despite the pandemic, totaling $111.9 billion in 2021. As a result, South Korea has greatly narrowed it gap with Japan in terms of their bilateral economic interactions with the ASEAN, with a potential to surpass Japan in the foreseeable decade. |