Research on the Influence of FTA between Korea and Japan on Tourism

한.일 FTA체결이 관광산업에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

The study is aimed to analyze the influence of FTA(Free Trade Agreement) between Korea and Japan on tourism and to suggest ways to increase tourists exchange between them by considering countermeasures of Korea's tourism based on the analysis and deriving political significance. The results of the study showed that the expected effects of FTA between Korea and Japan on tourism would overall be positive. There would be increases in employment and a higher rate of foreign-exchange earning, which plays a critical role in the cash flow. Therefore the government is required to prepare for several political measures as follows. First, ways to promote investment in tourism have to be established in a systematic way for FTA. Second, restructuring of tourism has to be considered seriously for tourism to be a high value-added industry after FTA. Third, the tourism information industry needs to be included in the tourism promotion act to promote e-tourism using information technology. In addition to this, an expansive cluster strategy needs to be developed, which relates tourism to other industries like culture and movies and to find ways to re-locate and re-educate manpower currently engaged in the tourism industry. Though the study investigated the influence of FTA on tourism through a practical analysis, it was restricted only to Korea. So the influence of FTA between Korea and Japan on the tourism of Japan should be included in further study. Furthermore, in subsequent studies the CGE(Computable General Equilibrium) model will be applied for objective analysis of the effects. Or measuring the ripple effect with multinational inter-industry relation table will be made for the study to make practical contributions to the development of government policy.