One of the main purposes of the US in bilateral negotiation is to level up the enforcement of IPRs, especially enhanced enforcement provisions that the US sought but failed in achieving at the TRIPS negotiation. During the KORUS talks, the Korean negotiators were more or less sympathetic to the US’ TRIPS-plus proposals on IPR enforcement. …
We have seen many attempts to censor the Internet under the pretext of copyright protection. Notorious attempts are SOPA and PIPA of 2012, which triggered the largest online protest in history and was eventually withdrawn, and ACTA, a plurilateral trade deal killed by the European Parliament in 2012. Now, Korean government tries to enact a much stronger internet censoring rule. …
Reportedly, Berjaya Land Berhad (BLB), a subsidiary of Berjaya Group of Malaysia brought an ISDS case against South Korea, claiming damages of KRW 4.4 trillion (around 4.0 billion in USD). According to the Ministry of Justice, Berjaya’s Notice of Intent under the Korea-Malaysia BIT of 1989 was submitted on 17 July, 2019. Back in 2008, BLB began to …
Soon after the signing of the Korea-US FTA (“KORUS”) in June 2007, South Korea experienced a dramatic increase of complaints of copyright crime from 2007. Around one hundred thousands of persons were accused of copyright infringement in a year, and juvenile’s victims occupied 24% in 2008.[1] But the actual indictments by the prosecutors were very small: from …
On 12 July 2019, the Prime Minister of South Korea, Mr. Lee Nak-Yon, attended the National Assembly and said that he agreed to abolish ISDS. (Media coverage: Yonhap, Hani, Khan) This remark came out while his responding to a lawmaker, Mr. Song, at the plenary session of the Budget and Accounting Committee. The Prime Minister gave reasons for his consent: an …
The US has disseminated TRIPS-plus rules through FTAs. One of them is a so-called drug approval and patent linkage system. South Korea imported the linkage system in 2012, and the Korean model was fully implemented from March 15, 2015. After four-year experience, the Korean government, specifically the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, tries to revise the linkage system. Still we don’t …
January 5, 2018 Michael BeemanAssistant United States Trade RepresentativeOffice of the United States Trade RepresentativeWashington, D.C. Dear Mr. Beeman: This letter is to acknowledge receipt of your letter of this date, which reads as follows: “In preparation for initiating negotiations on amendments and modifications to the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), I would like to outline …
Transparency is crucial in legitimacy of bilateral trade agreement. The negotiation of the EU-Korea FTA, like other FTAs, was made in secrecy. This letter shows the agreement between the EC and the South Korean government to keep the negotiation documents of the EU-Korea FTA for three years after its entry into force. Conversely, this means …
Dear Ministers of Trade & Negotiators from RCEP Negotiating Countries, The 20th round of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations is taking place from 17-28 October 2017 in Songdo, Korea. [1] RCEP negotiations include chapters on goods, services, investment, intellectual property etc and the proposed provisions in these chapters affect the daily lives of the …