Asia Times: Seoul and Tokyo turn to e-trade


	October 11, 2001	atimes.com

Media/Information Technology

Seoul and Tokyo turn to e-trade

SEOUL - South Korea and Japan have agreed to adopt a country-to-country processing system for bilateral trade through an electronic data interchange (EDI) method, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy has said.

At a policy consultation held on Tuesday on Cheju Island to promote e-commerce, government officials from the two countries entered into the world's first such agreement. Under the agreement, Seoul and Tokyo will apply bilateral auto part trade to the system by next February. With a view to linking e-marketplaces for machinery and electronics products in the two countries, both sides also agreed to proceed with the necessary procedures, including the installation of databases.

A ministry official said that the agreement is part of the two countries' efforts to promote "success stories" of e-commerce in the Asian region. The officials at the meeting shared the opinion that it is in the interests of all countries involved to establish an international order for e-commerce, while agreeing to discuss an option to cross-authorize certificates of the two nations as a solution to expand exchanges of information technology exports.

(Asia Pulse)