Relationship between Dispute Settlement Procedures under Regional Trade agreements and Under the World Trade Organization

Since most Regional Trade Agreements(RTAs) carry dispute settlement mechanism(DSM) of their own, there is a risk in the overlapping areas that dispute settlement under the World Trade Organization(WTO) or the RTA could produce two different results on the same issue and that could be both politically and economically problematic. In this paper, at first, recent discussion on 'choice of forum' will be introduced briefly. Regarding the forum, several questions will be raised like: What is the effect of dispute settlement under RTAs before a WTO panel? Which for a have the parties to RTAs chosen more frequently, regional, or multilateral? What factors affect countries to make decisions to go to a certain forum? Among those elements, this paper will focus on procedural aspect of the WTO and RTA dispute settlement mechanisms. Particular attention will be paid to how the Korea-US FTA dispute settlement mechanism compares to the dispute settlement mechanism in the WTO. After in-depth discussion on the differences between the two mechanisms in terms of time phrase, openness, guarantee of legality and remedies, some recommendations will be provided for a desirable relationship between the two mechanisms.