Abstract
The OECD has assessed Korea as the third highest in trade facilitation worldwide. The paperless trade of Korea is world class based on uTradeHub : national e-trade service's infrastructure for trade community. Over 800 trade-related document standards provide interoperability of message exchange and trade process automation among exporters, importers, banks, customs, airlines, shippers, forwarders and trade authorities. Most one-to-one unit processes are perfectly paperless & online; however, from the perspective of process flow, there is a lack of streamlining end-to-end trade processes spread over many different parties. This situation causes the trade community to endure repetitive-redundant load for handling trade documents. The trade community has a strong demand for seamless trade flow. For streamlining the trade process, processes with data should flow seamlessly to multilateral parties. Flowing data with an optimized process is the critical success factor to accomplish seamless trade. This study proposes four critical digital trade infrastructures as a platform service : (1) data-centric Intelligent Document Recognition(IDR), (2) data-driven Digital Document Flow (DDF), (3) platform based Digital Collaboration & Communication(DCC), and (4) new digital Trade Facilitation Index (dTFI) for precise assessment of K-Trade Digital Trade Framework. The results of new dTFI analyses showed that redundant reentry load was reduced significantly over the whole trade and logistics process. This study leads to the belief that if put into real-world application can provide huge economic gains by building a new global value chain of the K-trade eco network. A new digital trade framework will be invaluable in promoting national soft power for enhancing global competitiveness of the trade community. It could become the advanced reference model of next trade facilitation infrastructure for developing countries.