Daewoeon "IPEF Must Reflect Korea's Interests to the Greatest Extent"

(Asia Economy DB)

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo So-jung] The Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), a government-funded research institute, stated on the 19th that "it is necessary to actively participate in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to reflect South Korea's interests."

In the report titled 'Global Economic Focus - Recent Trends and Implications of IPEF' released that day, KIEP analyzed that "considering the diversity of IPEF participating countries, there is a significant possibility that new agendas will be added or existing agendas will be modified during future negotiations."

President Yoon Suk-yeol is scheduled to attend the IPEF launch declaration summit meeting held in Japan on the 24th via video conference.

KIEP explained, "IPEF integrates economic and security issues across various agendas, making it a regional economic security consultative body with a new paradigm different from existing trade agreements." It anticipated that seven countries including the United States, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and India will participate in the IPEF launch.

IPEF consists of four pillars: ▲ fair and resilient trade ▲ supply chain resilience ▲ infrastructure, clean energy, and decarbonization ▲ taxation and anti-corruption.

KIEP suggested, "Among the four pillars, the trade pillar is most likely to develop into a binding agreement as a result of negotiations," adding, "It is necessary to focus particularly on the digital economy and technology within that." It also stated, "The supply chain resilience pillar should pursue a decoupling strategy from the universal perspective of responding to supply chain crises, and the infrastructure and clean energy pillar is a field that South Korea should strategically utilize."

KIEP noted, "IPEF is an implementation measure of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy and implicitly has the character of containing a China containment aspect," and predicted, "Since it is based on the U.S. president's executive order and there remain uncertainties regarding the agenda and discussion directions, IPEF will show certain limitations in sustainability and definiteness for the time being."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.