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FTAs
When one follows Korean news it quickly becomes obvious that free trade agreements are on the top of the news agenda. And now it seems as if will be an issue in the upcoming elections as well as the opposition party DUP has demanded that certain parts of the FTA that was signed with the US in 2007 should be renegotiated. The US position is that the agreement as it is benefiting both parties. Korea Times has an editorial that questions the strategy of DUP, and the public seems not to have been overly impressed with the move.
Meanwhile, the procedures to start negotiations of an FTA with China is about to commence. Which may make Korea into an FTA hub of sorts, allready having FTAs with both EU and US, and planning for an FTA also with Japan in the future.
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Privacy
There's concern in Korea that Google's policy update will risk the safety of personal data. The Korea Communications Commission has abegun looking into the case, focusing on whether the company has received approval from users for the planned data sharing and a minimum amount of personal information has been collected.
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Freedom of Speech
On a different not there seem to be a movement of NGOs rising to support the man who was recently arrested for tweeting pro-North Korean messages (promoting North Korea is illegal in South Korea).
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Net neutrality
KT Corp, Koreas top fixed-line operator, has decided to limit access of some Internet enabled TV application to its network to prevent excessive traffic from slowing the overall speed of the network. This risk hurting the sales of Samsung (who's set to launch smart TVs globally in March and is concerned that the market niche will be crowded by Apple) and other producers of Internet-enabled TV, and the country's telecommunications watchdog called the move "inappropriate," and may slap punishment on the company if they find that the move violates related laws. KT Corps move has brought the debate on net neutrality to the forefront, and Samsung has filed a court injunction against KT.
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The Trans-Pacific Pact is also being discussed in Korean media, right? I know it caused concerns with regards to Japanese domestic farmers last year and just recently it's been given a lot of attention in international press because the points in the agreement that are suspected to be seriously objectionable are the same as those that occur in ACTA.
Look also here: Hongkong NRA bans unlimited dataplans for phones(!!!) Apparently it causes huge protests in HK and no wonder - the industry should be going the other way around like it did with wired connections in the 1990s!!
KT Corp is affiliated with Apple. First iPhone-provider in SK, How ironic that Apple/Samsung fights connect this way.
Also, to connect to the privacy discussion at KCC: Docomo, a Japanese telecoms provider, asks Google to request their app coders to make it so that less data is pulled by the apps since the masses of data requests are clogging their 3g-networks. I found that amusing.
Do you guys follow the news about the EU-India FTA? It has been all over the news the past couple of days, and there are a lot of worries about this agreement regarding access to medicines.
I'm in the India monitoring group on behalf of the Greens due to my commitments in the INTA committee. I think we're having the first meeting in this monitoring group next week, although last I heard they had problems finding meeting rooms for Thursday morning.
The problem with the access to medicines (you probably already know since you follow the issue) is that India and the EU signed an agreement that no further busts were to be made for in-transit drugs. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, there was anyway another bust by the Dutch border of in-transit drugs so now there's doubt about whether or not the EU intends to honour their commitments. If I'm not mistaken the data exclusivity clauses were taken out of the FTA, but some stuff on SpicyIP made me doubt whether this also holds true for data exclusivity on chemicals.
The person in the Green Group who's been following the EU/India FTA most closely is Ska Keller from Die Grünen and she might be able to provide more precise information. She's on twitter as @skakeller and I'm sure she'd be happy if you asked her directly!
Hahaha, and speaking of how I talk about South Korea as an interesting market because of infrastructure saturation and the lack of real spaces for South Korean telecoms operators to expand geographically. KTCorp purchase of Telkom, a telco from Zambia (I guess), questioned by competition authorities.
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