Korea, China and Japan officially kicked off the first round of their three-way free trade agreement talks in Seoul on Tuesday, aiming to create the world’s third-largest economic cooperation bloc.

Korea’s chief FTA negotiator Choi Kyung-lim, who was recently named assistant deputy minister of trade, met with his Chinese and Japanese counterparts ― assistant commerce minister Yu Zianhua and deputy foreign minister for economic affairs Koji Tsuruoka.

During the three-day talks held at the Grand InterContinental, southern Seoul, the three representatives plan to tackle the administrative details of the trilateral FTA, including the scope of the negotiation, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy in Seoul.

This is the first FTA-related task since the trade department moved from the Foreign Ministry and merged into the Industry Ministry, based upon the new Park Geun-hye administration’s government reorganization plan.

The Northeast Asian FTA project, if implemented, will create the world’s third-largest economic bloc as the three countries account for 20 percent of global gross domestic product and 17.5 percent of international trade, a Korean research institute said.

The Korea Institute for International Economic Policy also predicted that the trade pact would offer Korea economic benefits amounting to $16.3 billion in the first 10 years of effectuation.

The blueprint was first suggested back in 2003 by the private economic sector but it was only in November last year that the three governments officially declared the start of the free trade talks.

Their move was regarded not only as an attempt to boost trade but also as a gesture to alleviate the heightening territorial tension in the Northeast Asian region, including the Korea-Japan dispute over Dokdo.

It was also suggested recently that Korea, China and Japan should add momentum to their trilateral pact in order to counter the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which the United States and the European Union plan to implement within the first half of this year.

“The TTIP aims at reorganizing or reinforcing the global economic order in favor of the U.S. and the EU,” said the Korea Economic Research Institute through a report.

“The three Northeast Asian states should speed up their FTA talks in order to defend themselves,“ it said.

The outlooks of the three-way trade pact, however, remain uncertain, especially in controversial sectors such as agricultural goods.

China currently enjoys a dominant position in agriculture, livestock and fisheries, whereas Korea and Japan tend to be protective over their local market.

Korea, on the other hand, expects to make substantial gains in petrochemicals, machinery, automobiles, electronics and steelmaking.

Amid the complex stakeholder relationship, Korea and China are currently holding talks over their bilateral FTA. The Korea-Japan FTA talks, however, have been stalled since 2004, due to their disagreement over agricultural goods tariffs.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)