[AFL Column] 20 years of the Free Trade Agreement, in the end what remains is the agricultural trade deficit.

Since Korea signed its first free trade agreement (FTA) with Chile in 2004, it has enacted a total of 22 FTAs with 59 countries, including the United States, the European Union (EU), and ASEAN. The government has established and implemented the "Domestic Compensation Measures for the Agricultural Sector in FTAs" to minimize damage to farmers and support competitiveness enhancement. The government has poured over 43 trillion won into these measures. However, this era of massive openness has not made agriculture a "beneficiary of globalization." According to a recent analysis by the National Assembly Budget Office, while the overall FTA trade balance remains positive, the agricultural sector's trade balance is in a continuous deficit structure. As of last year, the agricultural sector's FTA trade deficit amounted to $28.3 billion, with 86% of the total deficit occurring in countries with which FTAs have been concluded. Despite the government's massive compensation measures, ...