The Korea-China FTA has achieved dismal results 10 years after it came into effect. Korea’s trade with China has been in deficit for three consecutive years.

South Korea's trade with China has been in deficit for three consecutive years.

[Financial Channel/Comprehensive Report] It has been 10 years since the Korea-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect. At that time, South Korea hoped to expand the Chinese market, but now the report card has been criticized as "miserable" by its own members of Congress. Yonhap News Agency reported on the 27th that the share of South Korean goods in China's import market has dropped from 10.4% in 2015 to 7.3% in 2025, equivalent to a shrinkage of nearly 30%; South Korea's trade with China has been in deficit for three consecutive years, with a cumulative total of US$36.1 billion (approximately NT$1.15 trillion).

Yonhap News Agency reported that Choi Soo-jin, a member of the Industrial, Trade and Resources Small and Medium-sized Venture Enterprises Committee of the South Korean National Assembly and a member of the National Power, obtained the "Evaluation Report on the Implementation of the Korea-China FTA in the Five Years from the Effectiveness of the Five Years" released by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in 2022 and analyzed it.

The Korea-China FTA came into effect in 2015. The report shows that as of 2020, the additional growth effect of FTA on South Korea's gross domestic product (GDP) has been only 0.13% in five years.

The South Korean government originally estimated that the South Korea-China FTA could create an additional GDP growth effect of 0.96% cumulatively over 10 years. Cui Xiuzhen pointed out that the actual growth effect was only about one-quarter of the government's expectations.

The performance of the Chinese market is also not optimistic. The proportion of Korean products in China's import market has dropped from 10.4% in 2015 to 7.3% in 2025, a decrease of 3.1 percentage points. If the market share in 2015 is used as the basis, it has shrunk by approximately 29.8% in 10 years, nearly 30%.

The trade balance has even experienced a huge reversal. South Korea's trade deficit with China reached US$18 billion (approximately NT$572.4 billion) in 2023, US$6.9 billion (approximately NT$219.4 billion) in 2024, and expanded to US$11.2 billion (approximately NT$356.2 billion) in 2025. The total deficit for three consecutive years was as high as US$36.1 billion (approximately NT$1.15 trillion).

In contrast, South Korea used to earn huge surpluses from the Chinese market. Yonhap News Agency previously reviewed and pointed out that in 2018, South Korea's trade surplus with China was as high as 55.6 billion U.S. dollars (about NT$1.77 trillion); however, the situation reversed in 2023, and South Korea experienced its first trade deficit with China since the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and China in 1992. The huge surplus advantage of the past is no longer visible.

In addition to goods trade, the follow-up negotiations on the South Korea-China FTA are also at a standstill. When the FTA came into effect, the two sides claimed that follow-up negotiations on services and investments would be completed within two years. However, after the first meeting in 2018, eight years have passed and no agreement has been reached.

Cui Xiuzhen even pointed out that the Korea-China FTA not only failed to bring about the economic growth effect originally expected, but also failed to provide effective protection for South Korea in the face of China's retaliatory controls due to South Korea's deployment of THAAD and China's export controls on seven types of rare earth-related projects.

She criticized the report card of the Korea-China FTA after 10 years, leaving only "tragic results" such as "three consecutive years of trade deficit" and "damage to the manufacturing industry". She demanded that the South Korean government immediately urge China to complete follow-up negotiations on services and investment as soon as possible, and forcefully demand that China eliminate unilateral non-tariff barriers.