한미FTA 원산지검증 사례분석을 통한 대응방안 연구

Abstract

A Study on Countermeasures for Verifying the Origin under KOREA․US FTA through Case Research

Lee, Hyeong-dae Advisor : Prof. Jun, Eui-cheon, Ph.D. Department of FTA Business Graduate School of Chosun University

Since the Korea-Chille FTA at the beginning, Korea has signed free trade agreements(FTAs) with a total of 52 countries in the world, with Australia, Canada, Columbia, China, and New Zealand at their last, including those 9 FTAs with 47 nations which already went into effect as of November, 2014. With this, the nation has extended its FTA networks from North America, Europe, and Far East to other continents including Oceania, enlarging its economic territory up to 73.45% of the global economy by the criterion of GDP. Since FTAs focus on merchandise trade, enterprises engaged in international import and export usually choose to take FTA preferential duty track in their customs clearance procedure to minimize their expense and maximize their profit. If they are to get the FTA preferential duty privilege and allow their trade counterparts to benefit the same treatment, they need to be aware of the burdens ranging from the classification of the merchandise to lots of paperwork regarding origin criterion, origin verification forms that is different from FTA to FTA and verification procedures that vary from country to country, lots of bothering paperwork and documentation. In the early times, there were enterprises which benefited from preferential duties through FTA origin merchandise trade, while being subject to afterward origin verification by the authority in their trade partner's country, unprepared. It is especially difficult for enterprises that are directly exposed to superpower countries in Europe and the United States where origin verification has long been developed to weather the rigorous probe and meet the requirements. Likewise, to deal with origin verification efficiently, one should be fully prepared from the initial stage of raw materials to later stages of storing and preserving documents after clearance. What is important is that they need to objectively go through all the methods and procedures in accordance with the treaties mutually agreed by the signing governments as well as domestic laws and regulations where applicable, since uncomfortable situations may occur that cost huge amount of time and expense afterwards if the importing/exporting enterprise tries on its own discretion to prepare itself for the verification. Therefore, the study endeavors to help trade industry in the nation, by reviewing the origin verification procedures focused on the KOR-US FTA and by revealing hardships that may surface in their business through systematic analysis of a few cases of origin verification that has been sought to find if they met FTA origin requirements by customs authorities both domestic and overseas, and then recommending solutions as well as approaches from the dimensions of the very enterprise and the government. The study had its limitations in extracting the problems and its suggestions since there were few studies formerly done on the field of origin verification for the KOR-US FTA. Thus, the study had to look into a small number of practical cases that had been undergone by customs authorities instead of an in-depth positive research. It seems that some standard data handling work is necessary supported by sufficient data on practical verification cases, while taking the characteristics of each industry, item and business into consideration in future studies.