1. President Roh Moo-hyun and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced the conclusion of 
a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) at the Korea-Singapore summit meeting on November 29, held on the 
occasion of the summit meeting of ASEAN+3, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations with South Korea, 
Japan and China, that took place on November 29-30 in Laos.

O Korea and Singapore have held a total of ten rounds of negotiations from January to November this year, 
and have made efforts to conclude a comprehensive FTA that covers nine areas including trade in goods 
and services, investment, government procurement, Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA), Intellectual 
Property Rights (IPR) and cooperation. 


2. The two countries will finalize the text of the agreement after working-level meetings and legal 
examination, and receive approval from the Ministry of Legislation, the Cabinet Council, the President, and 
then seek ratification from the National Assembly after signing the agreement.

O The FTA will enter into force 30 days after the two sides exchange ratifications, and considering the 
amount of time needed to seek ratification from the National Assembly, it is expected that the FTA will 
become valid sometime in the middle of 2005.


3. The Korea-Singapore FTA will apply the same preferential tariffs on products from North Korean Special 
Economic Zones such as the Gae-sung Industrial Complex as those applied to products from South Korea. 
The KSFTA has set an important precedent in establishing a foreign market for products from North Korea.


4. Furthermore, compared with the Korea-Chile FTA, the Korea-Singapore FTA is a more comprehensive 
FTA, for financial services, e-commerce, MRA, and cooperation have been added, and various methods for 
expanding and facilitating trade have been specified. The conclusion of this FTA marks an important 
occasion for strengthening the strategic relationship between the two countries aiming to become a 
Northeast Asian or Southeast Asian hub.

O Moreover, Korea can expect its service area to become more competitive and investments in Korea to 
increase due to an overall strengthening in cooperation with Singapore, which is one of the largest logistics, 
financial and business centers in the world.


5. Because an FTA between Korea and Singapore was successfully concluded by the end of this year as 
planned, this will serve to facilitate Korea’s simultaneous pursuit of multiple FTAs such as the Korea-Japan 
FTA, and the FTAs with ASEAN and EFTA that will begin next year.

                                                      Spokesperson for MOFAT

* unofficial translation