S Korea, China to hold 10th FTA talks next week

South Korea and China will hold a new round of negotiations on the bilateral free trade agreement ( FTA) next week, Seoul's trade ministry said Friday.

The 10th round of the FTA talks will be held in Ilsan, just northwest of capital Seoul, from next Monday to Friday, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

The new round will continue discussing overall areas, including goods, service, investment and rules, the ministry said.

For goods, delegates from the two sides will discuss the level of liberalization, while talking about the combined written agreement which will include goods, rule of origin, customs, sanitary and phytosanitory (SPS), technical barriers to trade (TBT) and trade remedy.

For service and investment, the way of liberalization and the written agreement on the areas will be discussed.

The two sides will also discuss intellectual property rights, competition, e-commerce, transparency, environment and economic cooperation.

South Korea and China completed the first stage in early September for the bilateral free trade pact, with a total of seven rounds of negotiations.

Seoul and Beijing tentatively agreed to abolish tariffs on 90 percent of all products during the first-stage talks, but they opened the door for raising the threshold during the second-phase negotiations.

China is South Korea's No. 1 trading partner, with Seoul's exports to Beijing accounting for a quarter of the total in 2012. Since the two neighbors established diplomatic ties in 1992, their annul trade has grown almost 50 times and reached 256 billion U.S. dollars in 2012.