WTO Dispute Settlements in East Asia

Abstract

East Asian countries have become much more active in utilizing the WTO dispute settlement system to assert their legal rights. The dispute settlement experience so far for these countries has shown strong tendency of domestic governments to defend economic interest of major industries. Their primary counterparts in trade disputes are still major developed countries such as the United States and the European Communities. Thailand is in some sense peculiar in that it brought disproportionately many complaints to the WTO dispute settlement system while it was hardly challenged by other Members. In contrast to the GATT era, Korea has become legally very aggressive under the WTO system. It is also noted that Japan has been rarely challenged since October 1998. Except for China, most East Asian countries lack the national procedure to link private economic interests to the WTO dispute settlement procedures.

Why Not Bargain? The Domestic Politics of Utilizing the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Mechanism

“… 2. While South Korea is by no means the most frequent user of the WTO-DSM (dispute settlement mechanism), its participation substantially increased after the establishment of the WTO. This trend has also been observed in other East Asian countries (Ahn, 2003, 2005) South Korea has been a respondent in 18 dispute cases between 1995 and 2018. Of these, it resorted to bilateral procedures in 7 cases and opted for third-party rulings from either the panel or the Appellate Body in 11 cases. …”