Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-13-Speech-4-051"
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"en.20071213.5.4-051"2
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"Mr President, I wish to join with the other speakers in congratulating Mr Martin on his report on a free trade agreement with South Korea, which is the EU’s fourth largest trading partner outside Europe and the world’s eleventh largest economy.
I want to deal briefly with two issues. Firstly, the opposition of trade union and farmers’ groups to the free trade agreement with Korea and, secondly, the case of the industrial zone. In the first case, we need to place the opposition in perspective. Thousands demonstrated against the US agreement with Korea and a number of people burnt themselves to death. Rather than thousands, we have only dozens protesting, possibly because we are attempting to include in our free trade agreement an associated political cooperation agreement – social, political and labour clauses that will help protect labour standards in the south and may well enhance them. At the same time, we will not have the discussion over rice which Korea had with the United States.
With respect to Kaesong, we are not arguing that this should be included. We are arguing that we should not automatically exclude it. That is a rather different position, and I hope that on that basis the Liberals will be able to change the way they vote. As the former Prime Minister of Jamaica once said, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited. Some of us had the opportunity to visit Kaesong last month, as part of an EU workshop on economic reform held in North Korea. I saw thousands of happy North Koreans flooding from the zone, smartly dressed, because they have standards of living six times higher than in the North. This is an opportunity, politically and economically, to actually change that regime and move things in the right direction. Kaesong can transform the North and, allowing for the difficulties, should be encouraged and not killed."@en1
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