Yonhap News reported on January 29th that last year was the third year of the Sino-Korean Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The South Korean Rural Economy Research Center announced that data shows that South Korea has not imported more agricultural by-products from China since the FTA was implemented: on the contrary, it imported less. As for fruit and vegetables, however, South Korean imports grew with 12.6%.
Data further shows that in the first ten months of last year South Korean imports of agricultural by-products from China were worth 3.62 billion USD. This is a decrease of 1.8% compared to the average import value prior to the FTA implementation (3.69 billion USD). The FTA was officially implemented on December 20th, 2015. Prior to that, the average import value between 2011 and 2015 was stable.
Chinese products account for 13% of the overall South Korean import value of agricultural by-products in 2017. That is a decrease of 0.6% compared to the period prior to the implementation of the FTA, and a decrease of 0.9% compared to the previous year.
Source: guancha.cn