Shaping a new economic relationship1993

This conference volume examines the causes of the huge trade surplus between the United States and the Republic of Korea in the 1980s (in Korea's favor) and how that trade imbalance was eliminated by 1991 without trade volume declining.

Both countries had enjoyed friendly relations ever since the United States led U.N. troops to save South Korea from being taken over by communist North Korea. From the mid-fifties until the early eighties, their economic relationship was based on a complementary trade relationship instead of an adversarial one.

Korea exported labor-intensive products such as consumer electronics, textiles, and footwear, and the United States exported resource-based and agricultural products and capital goods such as chemicals and machinery.

In these same years Korea...