By Na Jeong-ju
The Cabinet approved a revised bill on the country’s free trade agreement with the United States on Friday after fixing translation errors in the Korean text for the deal.
The previous bill was submitted to the National Assembly in October 2008, about a year after the two allies signed the agreement.
However, the Assembly Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade retracted the bill last month after multiple translation errors were found in the Korean version of the pact’s text.
The revised bill includes the corrected version of the text as well as terms of a supplementary deal reached last December to reflect U.S. demands that South Korea soften its standards on the safety of automobiles and the environment.
The deal has yet to be ratified by parliaments of both countries.
At the meeting, Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik urged Cabinet ministers to do their best to ensure an early passage of the deal, officials said.
“The U.S. FTA is an inevitable choice for our country’s economic growth and reform, and is a win-win strategy for both nations,” Kim said.