According to Yonhap News,

(SEOUL=Yonhap News) The trilateral summit between the leaders of South Korea, China and Japan is expected to signal the start of a process aimed at forging close regional economic integration.

The meeting held in Seoul comes at a time when the global economy is experiencing tough challenges that are hurting trade and weighing down growth across the board.

The three Northeast Asian countries account for 22.8 percent of the world's gross domestic product or US$16.9 trillion. The three also control 18.6 percent of all trade in the world worth $6.9 trillion. Despite the impressive size, movement of products among the neighboring countries is actually smaller than numbers for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union.

Highlighting the limitations confronting the three countries in their drive to strengthen economic ties, the Seoul government pointed out that while trade ministers announced they will seek a three-way free trade agreement (FTA) in November 2012, eight rounds of negotiations have only highlighted differences with little progress made so far.

The Trade and Industry Ministry said the partners have discussed such issues as product trade, services, investment, country of origin and customs rules, as well as trade dispute remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary conditions and technical barriers to trade.

Representatives from the three countries touched on intellectual property rights protection, e-commence and environmental protection issues.

"In the working level meeting held in Beijing in July, the partners engaged in discussions on modality related to the liberalization of the service and investment sectors, yet were not able to bridge their differences," an official said.

Against this backdrop, President Park Geun-hye, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang agreed at the summit to accelerate negotiations to conclude a free trade agreement between the three companies.

The leaders said the FTA should lead to a high degree of market openness and benefit all sides.

If the three-way open trade pact is reached, it can facilitate movement of goods and services between the three countries. This can open new horizons for all countries concerned.

South Korea already inked an FTA with China earlier this year, but products sent to Japan are still subject to import duties.

A trilateral FTA can also compensate for Seoul being left out of the Trans-Pacific partnership (TPP) ironed out last month. Asia's fourth largest economy said it wants to join the TPP as soon as it can.

Besides the FTA, Park, Abe and Li agreed to exercise joint leadership to push forward Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

RCEP envisions the creation of a mega free trade bloc that includes the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Korea, China, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand.

If progress is made here, this economic partnership arrangement will account for 29 percent of the global economy and be worth $10.6 trillion. The region is home to 3.4 billion people.

The government said that while the three-way FTA has moved forward slowly, RCEP has been making more progress with some meaningful gains being made in the service liberalization and investment areas in recent months.

China, in particular, has been eager to push forward RCEP to counter the impact of TPP. Like South Korea, China is not a party to the U.S.-led TPP.

Related to the latest agreement reached at the Seoul summit, local policymakers have said both the FTA and RCEP can lead to more trade that can greatly benefit South Korea, which has been weighed down by minus growth in trade this year.

The leaders then concurred on the need to create a single digital market at the talks.

The market calls for unifying rules related to the settlement of accounts, shipments and exchange for products traded online between the countries.

The Finance Ministry said after the summit that the latest agreement can spur growth in online trade, which is already very large.

As of 2014, the Chinese e-commerce market was the largest in the world, with transactions hitting $426.2 billion. That market surged 35 percent on-year.

South Korea's e-commerce market stood at $33.1 billion placing it seventh in the world, with Japan's market standing at fourth with amount traded reaching $70.8 billion last year.

The ministry said that while the potential for cooperation and growth are vast, the three countries have different standards of conducting online business that has restricted trade.

"It is because of such obstacles that Seoul proposed the single digital market at the summit meeting," the ministry said.

It said with leaders from Japan and China agreeing to the proposal, joint research will be conducted to work out details for the plan to move forward.

The ministry emphasized that a single online market system can fuel competition in products and services. Such developments can bring down prices and expand choice for consumers, which is good for all sides.

yonngong@yna.co.kr

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