Making APEC's Open Regionalism to Consistent with the WTO Sung-Hoon Park Ever since Open Regionalism was adopted by APEC as its basic approach, it has been discussed extensively in the circle of academics and policy makers. Recently, the European Union officially adopted Open Regionalism as one of priority principles in its external economic policy as well. Furthermore, international organizations, such as the WTO and the OECD, have also been reviewing whether and how the concept can be utilized in overcoming the regionalistic tendency in the world economy. Despite this increased interest in Open Regionalism in the international community, APEC member countries so far failed to agree upon a single definition of the concept, thereby leading to a confusion with regard to concrete measures for its implementation. This implies that the envisaged goal of APEC to overcome ever-increasing regionalism in the 1980s and thereby strengthen the multilateral trading system has to wait long time to be achieved. Fundamental problems arose in the course of APEC's attempts to implement Open Regionalism: On the one hand, unilateral liberalization, which is suggested by the EPG as an option, could not effectively avoid the free-rider problem. On the other hand, the application of conditional MFN would have inevitably violated the 'non-discrimination' principle of the GATT/WTO. In this paper, the following two factors are identified as main inherent limitations of APEC, especially in implementing Open Regionalism. First, APEC lacks a concrete long-term vision. The long-term goal of APEC to achieve "free trade in the region" appears too vague, and there are no specifications regarding the relationship between this goal and the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Second, APEC contains several sub-regionalism, such as AFTA, CER and NAFTA, and they differ substantially in the level and coverage of economic integration. Consequently, APEC has to solve both internal and external problems at the same time: Internally, APEC has to design measures to harmonize several sub-regionalism, while it wants to apply Open Regionalism towards non-APEC members. This paper suggests that developing APEC into an FTA is an option that member countries can resort to, in case APEC further sticks to the concept of Open Regionalism as its basic approach. Once adopted by APEC, this option will contribute to the resolution of the two problems mentioned above: free-rider problem and the violation of non-discrimination. It will also help to minimize the two main inherent limitations of APEC: a lack of a concrete long-term goal and the existence of several sub-regionalism within it. This paper concludes that a three-step approach could be adopted in developing APEC into an FTA. The suggested steps are: (1) establishment of an FTA for the Northeast Asian region and/or an FTA for the Asian APEC members; (2) consistent strengthening of cooperation and harmonization among several sub-regional integration bodies; (3) development of APEC into an FTA as a final step.

서 언 요 약 I. 서론 II. APEC의 대두와 관련된 세계경제적 배경요인 1. 동아시아의 역동적 성장과 아시아-태평양 경제권의 형성 2. 1980년대 중반 이후 신지역주의의 득세 3. 미국의 대외정책기조 변화 III. APEC 개방적 지역주의의 배경 및 기본개념 1. 지역주의와 다자주의의 관계 변화 및 개방적 지역주의의 채택 2. 개방적 지역주의의 기본개념 3. APEC의 개방적 지역주의 실천의 단계적 변화와 평가 IV. 개방적 지역주의의 실천에 있어서의 주요 문제 1. APEC의 내부적 문제점 2. WTO체제와의 갈등관계 V. 개방적 지역주의와 WTO의 정합성 확보를 위한 구상 1. WTO 차원의 조치 - 지역주의 관련 규정의 개정 및 보완 2. APEC 차원의 전략 - 세 가지 대안 3. APFTA의 설립을 위한 구체적 실천계획 VI. 결론 참고문헌