Korea's Readiness for the ASEAN Economic Community

Abstract

On December 30th, 2015, ASEAN Member States (AMS; ten countries in Southeast Asia) announced the launch of the ASEAN Community, including the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). All AMS held high expectations for more extensive and stronger economic integration facilitated by the AEC. Last November, however, ASEAN released a new AEC roadmap for the next decade, called ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together, which could ironically imply the incompleteness of the AEC launch. Although AMS originally agreed, in the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II in 2003, to have established the AEC by 2020, they brought forward its target date to the end of 2015 in the 2007 AEC Blueprint. This implied that AMS were strongly determined, at the time, to achieve ASEAN integration. According to the AEC scorecard, a biennial process to monitor the progress of measures in the AEC Blueprint, 469 out of 506 measures had been undertaken by 2015. Measures to achieve the AEC pillars of ‘Equitable Economic Development’ and ‘Integration into the Global Economy’ have been fully implemented. However, 21 and 16 measures under the pillars of a ‘Single Market and Production Base’ and ‘Competitive Economic Region’, respectively, have not been implemented. AMS agreed to complete the unfinished measures by the end of 2016. The AEC's establishment in 2015, in fact, was progress toward, rather than a completion of, economic integration. Its launch was an opportunity to assess its achievements and identify measures with insufficient outcomes. Although the AEC launch may merely be considered a declarative event, the gradual progress and efforts toward economic integration will continue. It should also be noted that the AEC launch holds significance in that it was driven by the self-awareness of ASEAN countries, which place importance on economic integration and the development of a regional trade agreement among AMS.