Korea urges APEC to widen FTAs and use AI to ease trade

South Korea's trade ministry called on APEC economies to expand and deepen regional free trade agreements and to lean on open plurilateral cooperation, as trade minister Park Jung-sung set out the country's priorities at the 37th APEC Ministerial Meeting on Tuesday.

Park, attending the second session alongside Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jin-ah, proposed three tasks for advancing Asia-Pacific economic integration: a practical approach tailored to each economy's circumstances and appetite for cooperation, the use of artificial intelligence as a new engine of integration, and integration that delivers results companies can feel, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said.

On trade rules, Park argued that the region's diversity calls for flexible formats. "There is a need to actively use open plurilateralism, under which economies with the willingness and capacity to cooperate take the lead in areas of common interest while keeping the door open to more economies," he said.

Park pointed to last year's APEC summit in Gyeongju and the May trade ministers' meeting, which reaffirmed the importance of the APEC AI Initiative, and said the initiative should now produce practical results. Customs systems that can interoperate, simpler procedures and better information exchange would make clearance more efficient and predictable and cut the burden on companies, he said, adding that Korea would work with APEC economies so that AI-driven innovation spurs trade and investment.

He also pressed for investment conditions that companies can rely on. Korea supports implementation of the APEC Investment Facilitation Action Plan, adopted in 2008 and revised in Jeju last year, to improve transparency and predictability and to streamline administrative procedures.

On supply chains, Park called for sharing the information companies need quickly and for stronger communication between economies when a crisis hits, building on Korea's earlier push at last year's Gyeongju ministerial meeting and at the May trade ministers' meeting for rapid supply-chain information sharing through an early warning system.

The ministry said it would build on the ministerial discussions to help deliver results on expanding trade and investment at the APEC leaders' meeting on Nov. 18-19.