China and South Korea have agreed to finally implement their bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Dec. 20. This deal is expected to open up economic opportunities for South Korea. 

Chinese Premier Li Kequiang and South Korean President Park Geun-hye expressed their willingness to roll out the FTA this year when the two leaders met in Seoul during a historical trilateral summit meeting with Japanese Minister Shinzo Abe in November. Following the summit, the two nations continued negotiations to implement the FTA.

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To facilitate the implementation of FTA, China and South Korea accomplished their respective local procedures so that companies can take advantage of the free trade accord, according to Xinhua.

After three years of negotiations, China and South Korea signed the FTA in June. The discussions on the free trade accord started in May 2012 and have been held 14 times before both nations finally reached an agreement.

The new agreement will eliminate tariffs on more than 90 percent of traded goods between Seoul and Beijing within 20 years after its implementation.

With this new agreement, South Korea expects the bilateral FTA with China to increase its real GDP by 0.96 percentage points, create 53,800  jobs and enhance consumer benefits by $14.6 billion. More so, South Korea also foresees a rise in exports to China because of lower tariffs and price competitiveness in one of the largest consumer market in the world.

"China's domestic consumption market is expected to rise to 10 trillion dollars by 2020, and the free trade accord with China will affect the local stock market positively," Kim Kyung-Hwan, an analyst at Hana Financial Investment, said in a report.

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