Korea-China-Japan MRA Strategy for Activating Labor Force Mobility

Abstract

Owing to geographic proximity of Korea, China and Japan, their mutual political and economic dependency gradually increases making their cooperation in various fields essential. Moreover, with continuous expansion of economic scope and influence on the world market by Korea, China and Japan, conditions will have to be formed for the construction of Korea-China-Japan trilateral cooperation system in North-East Asian region as well. In response to this, Korea has been activating its regional economic cooperation in North-East Asia and further, as part of its efforts for regional economic integration, created a system for formal and informal negotiations among Korea, China and Japan through regular summit meeting of ASEAN+3 held in November 2000. Based on this, at the fifth Korea-China-Japan regular summit meeting held in October 2003 ‘Joint Declaration on the Promotion of Tripartite Cooperation among South Korea, China, and Japan’ was adopted. ‘Joint Declaration on the Promotion of Tripartite Cooperation among South Korea, China, and Japan’ is the first trilateral summit document adopted for promoting cooperation among the three countries, which provide basic framework and direction for economic cooperation in North-East Asian region. In addition, Korea, China and Japan are already constructing the basic foundation for the establishment of free trade area among themselves when considering industrial structure and current situation in foreign trade. De facto labor force exchange is already taking place among Korea, China and Japan. The need for supply and demand of labor force is gradually increasing due to the deficit of domestic middle-and high-level workforce needed for the development of main industries. So far, the three countries have been applying efforts on national level to prepare policies for importing such workforce. Therefore, now the time has come to discuss creation of a plan for promotion of labor force mobility based on the method of FTA or regional economic integration FTA. With this purpose, in order to exchange workforce of higher level on the basis of national qualifications in technological and technical field it is important, based on national technical qualification system, to propose standards for promoting Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) of qualifications and prepare policy basis to enable mutual exchange of better certified workforce. Therefore, in this study, experts from Korea, China and Japan through joint research will analyze the possibility of labor force exchange based on trilateral MRA of qualifications in IT, tourism and automobile sectors in the three countries. Furthermore, basic policy directions for the creation of common regional qualification framework not only for Korea, but also for the Asia and Pacific region through connection with the establishment of the multilateral cooperation system and Regional Qualification Framework (RQF) will be provided. From this perspective, this study will first examine the possibility of labor force exchange in IT, tourism and automobile sectors through conclusion of Korea-China-Japan FTA. Second, by suggesting the plan for MRA and based on it, it will prepare a plan for activating labor force exchanges among the three countries.