ABSTRACT
Since July 1963, when Korea established diplomatic relations with the EU, political relations between the two have been strengthened to the extent that they have exchanged delegations.1 Economic relations between Korea and the EU have also improved over recent decades. Nevertheless, it is only very recently that bilateral economic co-operation has been added to the agenda of trade diplomacy. However, it is still true that for both Korea and the EU, economic relations with the US and Japan are much more important than those with each other. Since the 1992 Single Market Programme was announced in 1985, both Korean FDI and exports to the EU have increased dramatically, and in particular, as discussed in Chapter 2, Korean FDI in the EU member states has increased since 1986. There were many internal and external factors that brought about this increase. One internal factor was the Korean government's policy supporting Korean firms investing in the EU. In Chapter 3 it was briefly explained how the Korean government controlled firms investing in the EU.
