Ko seeks to win big by rehashing trade issueBy Wu Hai-ruei 吳海瑞Convincing voters who remember the debate over the cross-strait service trade agreement a decade ago, as well as the flaws in the legislative process surrounding it at the time, will be difficult. South Korea had not even started negotiations until 2012, but it quickly came up with the English version of an FTA with China, and the official signing was just around the corner. The Legislative Yuan approved the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in August 2010, and was still debating the service trade agreement and goods trade agreement. Plus, South Korea’s trade volume reached a record high of US$1.415 trillion last year, which was almost 1.6 times Taiwan’s trade volume of US$0.9075 trillion, instead of the huge differential of 1.9 to three times predicted by Kuan — and has been shrinking. This is why Ma wanted to rush the service trade agreement through without review, sparking the 2014 Sunflower movement.
