Signing trade accords with emerging markets could offer a solution for South Korea, which is coping with slowing exports to China, a local think tank said Wednesday.

In the past eight years, China has imported one fourth of South Korean exports in terms of value. 

"South Korean exports to China continued to fall in the past three years due to rising protectionism. It is time to set up new strategies to keep exports as a growth driver," the Korea Economic Research Institute  said in a recent report.

Shipments to China plunged 15 percent to $124.43 billion in 2016 from $145.87 billion in 2013. It was a steeper decline compared to the decrease in the country's overall exports, KERI said.

During the same period, total exports by Asia's fourth-largest economy fell 12 percent to $495.43 billion from $559.63 billion a year earlier, it said.

To reduce its "heavy" reliance on exports to China and find a breakthrough in trade, South Korea needs to sign a free trade agreement with emerging economic blocs such as South American trade bloc Mercosur, EU-Gulf Cooperation, and Eurasian Economic Union, Kim Han-seong, an economics professor at Ajou University, said in the report.

If South Korea signs free trade deals with those three economic blocs, it will increase the country's exports by $6.79 billion a year, the report said. (Yonhap)