S.Korea seeks arbitration in WTO memory chip dispute
South Korea is seeking World Trade Organisation arbitration in a dispute with Japan after the two countries failed to agree on a timetable ending Japanese duties on memory chips, trade officials said on Wednesday.The officials said the South Korean request in the high- profile row had been filed with the WTO, whose appeal court last November ordered Japan to remove a 27.2 percent countervailing duties in imports of South Korean random access memory chips.
The case turns on the 2002 bailout of Hynix Semiconductor (000660.KS: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s second largest memory chip maker. News of the WTO ruling contributed to a sharp rise in Hynix shares at the time.
Japan had imposed the duties because it believed the bailout amounted to a subsidy of Hynix, a conclusion rejected by the WTO appellate body.
Japan agreed in January to implement the ruling, and as usual in WTO disputes the two countries then started to negotiate a reasonable period of time for Japan to do so.
“However, no mutually satisfactory solution has been found to date,” South Korea said in its filing. “Therefore, Korea requests that the ‘reasonable period of time’ be determined by binding arbitration.”
If Japan fails to lift the duties within the timetable set by the arbitrator, which could be 12-15 months, South Korea could seek to enforce the ruling in a further WTO case.
Officials at the WTO missions of South Korea and Japan were not immediately available for comment.
reuters.com
Related Posts
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 1:31 am and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
