Geographic and structural trade patterns (including 2 figures) of South Korea Essay
Geographic and structural trade patterns (including 2 figures) of South Korea.The Republic of Korea is commonly knows as South Korea, traces its history over half a million years back. With a declining Chinese power and a weakened domestic posture at the end of the 19th century, Korea was open to Western and Japanese encroachment. In 1910, Japan began a 35-year period of colonial rule over Korea. The Republic of Korea is a republic with powers nominally shared among the presidency, the legislature, and the judiciary, but traditionally dominated by the president. The president is the chief of state and is elected for a single term of 5 years.
With a population of 48,846,823 in an area of 38,022 sq. miles which is about the size of Indiana. The capital of South Korea is Seoul. The Korean language is related to Japanese and Mongolian. Half of the population actively practices religion. Among this group, Christianity (49%) and Buddhism (47%) comprise Korea’s two dominant religions. A beautiful country with a history of over 5,000 years is rich in its culture and heritage. The buildings, stone pagodas and lanterns, and other pieces of sculpture are known as National Treasures and are numbered.
Even with its rich cultural heritage, Korea is both progressive and a modern country. The modern buildings of the big cities rival those of any other modern country, yet scenes from the past coexist with the new.Korea’s trade policies are balanced expansion of external trade, internationalization and liberalization of the local economy, trade diversification, and expanded multilateral cooperation. Since the first trade surplus in 1986, Korea embarked on an ambitious plan to liberalize its markets. The government is pursuing a closer balance between production for export and production for domestic consumption. Korea has a numerous trading partners; one of their partners is the European Union. The EU and Republic of Korea are important trading partners and strong proponents of the multilateral trading system. South Korea is EU’s fourth largest non-European trade partner while the EU is South Korea’s third largest exports destination.
South Korea is both geographically and culturally well located for constituting a bridge for investment in Northeast Asia and its leaders consider this a priority. The people of Korea are very friendly and loving and are excited to try their English. All of the younger children are learning English.
They know that their future depends upon being able to speak English. At this time only the bigger hotels have someone who can speak English but this will change. The Korean people want foreign investors to come to Korea to help their economy. South Korea and the US relations have been very extensive since the 1948, when the US helped to establish South Korea in its UN sponsored side of the Korean War. By the late 1980’s the United States was South’s Korea’s most important trading partner. South Korea was the seventh largest market for American products.
Though from the Korean trade surplus there evolved an imbalance between the countries. Agricultural imports play a vital role in supplementing South Korea’s domestic supplies of food, feed, and raw materials for processing. As the country became increasingly industrialized and labor costs rose, South Korean agriculture abandoned production of many crops, such as wheat, millet, sorghum, and cotton. Four decades ago GDP per capita was comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia.
In 2004, it joined the trillion-dollar club of world economies. The export commodities of Korea include: semiconductors, wireless telecommunications equipment, motor vehicles, computers, steel, ships, and petrochemicals. The import commodities include: machinery, electronics and electronic equipment, oil, steel, transport equipment, organic chemicals, and plastics.
The main crops that are produced in Korea are Rice, root crops, barley, vegetables, and various fruits. In the farm business its cattle, pigs, chickens, milk, eggs and fish. South Korea is rich in natural resources.
The main natural resources would be coal, tungsten, graphite, molybdenum, lead, and hydropower. The Republic of Korea is the second largest trading partner with North Korea after China. South Korean farmers have always used the nation’s forests for fuel and household products, but centuries of over utilization and poor resource management had practically denuded the countryside. In 1985 about two-thirds of South Korea was covered by forests. Until the 1970s, reforestation had taken place primarily in national forests; as a result of this situation, the density of government-owned forests was about three times greater than that of private forests. Most forest owners were smallholders with inadequate financial resources to purchase and maintain seedlings.
South Korea’s fishing industry contributed both to the welfare of the consumer and to export earnings. South Korea’s mineral production is not adequate to supply its manufacturing output. Importing bituminous and anthracite coal and crude petroleum also meet energy needs. Energy producers were dominated by government enterprises, although privately operated coalmines and oil refineries also existed. South Korea still had no proven oil reserves.
However, South Korea placed a heavy emphasis on nuclear power generation.In conclusion, this essay looks into detail analysis of the trade patterns in South Korea. The trading segments and the trading countries of South Korea. The geographic location enabling South Korea’s trading sector. Geography plays a very important aspect in trading as more the available resources the more trading capacity by a specific country. Economists are concerned that South Korea’s economic growth potential has fallen because of a rapidly aging population and structural problems that are becoming increasingly apparent.
Foremost among these structural concerns is the rigidity of South Korea’s labor regulations, the need for more constructive relations between management and workers.Bibliographyhttp://www.korea.net/korea/kor_loca.asp?code=E0301http://www.asiatradehub.com/s.korea/trade.asphttp://ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/bilateral/countries/korea/index_en.htm
