Gyupan Kim

Japan's Participation in TPP Negotiation: Prospect and Policy Implications for Korea

Since March 2010, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations have been taking place, where members have expanded into the 11 Asia-Pacific countries from the original Pacific 4 (P4: Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, and Brunei). The P4 has rooted in the P5, where the United States initiated the liberalization of trade and investment among only P5 countries (the United States, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, and Chile) to overcome the limits of APEC’s open regionalism in the late 1990s. However, the United States and Australia could not join the negotiations because of their respective domestic political problems. The current TPP negotiation is said to have been formally launched in March 2010 when the United States joined the P4 with Australia, Peru, and Vietnam. Meanwhile, Malaysia was approved to participate in the TPP negotiations since October 2010; Canada and Mexico joined in December 2012. The current 11 TPP negotiating countries aim to reach the framework agreement until the APEC summit that will be held in October 2013 in Bali, Indonesia, and the final agreement until the end of 2013. The TPP, as a part of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), has been known as an open and multilateral FTA that aims to be a comprehensive and a highly liberalized agree-ment among the 21 APEC countries.

Regulatory Reform in Japan

Japanese governments have been actively engaged in regulatory reform since the Koizumi Cabinet in the early 2000s. They held a common expectation that the regulatory reform, as a key element of structural reform, would enhance the corporate sectors investment and infuse more competitive factors into their rigid market structure, and by doing so enable them to escape from the long-lasting economic recession. In a similar vein, the Abe Cabinet announced the promotion of regulatory reform as part of its growth strategy, in June 2013. This research, to begin with, examines the theoretical background and significance of the mitigation of social regulations conducted by the Koizumi Cabinet in the early and mid-2000s, and address why the Abe Cabinets growth strategy stresses the mitigation of social regulations and launched regional- and firm-level regulatory reform alongside conventional measures. Based on this framework, we follow up on the progress made in these three types of regulatory reform, to evaluate the Abenomics growth strategy.

Japan's FTA Strategy and Its Implications for Korea

This research examines Japan’s FTA strategies with the focus on Japan’s 13 bilateral FTAs, and ongoing negotiations on the TPP and the EU-Japan FTA. Especially, this research sheds light on the differences between the Japan’s 13 existing FTAs and the ongoing two Mega FTA negotiations in terms of Japan’s FTA strategy. Also, this research analyze GVC(Global Value Chains) using the European Commissions World Input-Output Tables (EC-WIOT1995~2011) to understand the relationship between the Japanese government’s FTA strategy and its domestic manufacturing firms’ role and strength.

In Search of New Economic Path of Japan in the Post-Global Financial Crisis

1. The international competitiveness of Japanese manufacturing 2. Japans policy for fostering new industries 3. Integrated reform in tax and social security system 4. Japans trade and investment policy and Koreas response 5. Japans new energy strategy