South Korea and the U.S. signed a comprehensive pact on aviation safety in Singapore on Tuesday, allowing Korean aviation product makers to freely export their goods to America, officials here said.
Under the pact, called the Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement (BASA), South Korean aviation product manufacturers will be able to easily gain certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), needed to export their own brands of approximately 150 products such as aircraft tires to the U.S., the Ministry of Construction and Transportation said in a statement.
Domestic aviation product manufacturers have previously exported their products to the U.S. using the original equipment manufacturing (OEM) method, because of their lack of FAA certification.
Any aviation product manufacturer wanting to export their products to a country should receive certificates of airworthiness for them from the country's government, but the U.S. has refused to certify the aviation products made by a country that does not sign the BASA along with it, the ministry added.
The ministry also plans to push ahead with the signing of similar pacts with European countries down the road, it said.
In 2006, the country's exports of aviation products came to $ 472 million, while its imports of them stood at $306 billion, according to data released by the ministry. (Yonhap)