Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the legal standards of agreements on the origin of liability and the relevant laws in Korea, to suggest implications for custom authorities and traders wishing to benefit from preferential tariff via FTA, citing the excluded cases of related FTA preferences (court cases and administrative judgments). In order to examine the provisions related to supporting evidence of the origin of liability in FTA, we examined FTAs agreed between Korea and EU, EFTA, ASEAN, U.S., and India relevant to FTA Special Customs Act, court cases and administrative judgements. If verifying the origin to protect the fair trade order impedes to promote utilizing FTA, solutions will need to be suggested. If FTA preference is exempted due to verifying the origin by the import customs authorities, the importer shall pay the income tax calculated in accordance with the general tax rate. This is because the certificate of origin confirmed during verification process is different from the actual origin. In most agreements, the exporter (the producer) shall issue the certificate of origin and since the importer has no other option than obtaining the certificate of origin from the exporter, it may face consequences such as declined credibility from the custom authorities in addition to being disqualified for FTA preferential, if the certificate of origin received from the exporter has flaws. On the other hand, the exporter cannot help but being punished by the customs authorities due to issuing defective origin certificates, but it doesn't have conventionary liabilities for damages incurred to the importer. As a result, importers are forced to pursue legal proceedings to claim damages to exporters or to give up FTA preference. As FTA is increasingly utilized, the number and amount of origin verification in Korea has continuously been increasing while administrative judgements indicates other FTA exporters doesn't seem to gain any support in utilizing FTA like Korea does. It has been 8 years since full-scale supports in FTA launched and now is the time to introduce more efficient and intensive FTA support system In this regard, it is desirable to conduct comprehensive verification on export Next, an institutions that assures FTA-based exports should be established in order to compensate the importer's damages that may occur from disqualified certificate of origin issued by the exporter.