Canada’s office responsible for promoting beef in South Korea has closed, according to a press release sent by the Canadian Embassy here Monday.

The Canada Beef International Institute, the office charged with promoting Canadian beef products around the world, closed its office in southern Seoul on Oct. 4.

The CBII said it stopped its work here “due in large part by the increasingly preferential access given to beef producers in the United States through the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which is preventing Canadian producers from competing fairly in the Korean market,” according to the statement.

Negotiators have repeatedly fallen short of concluding a Canadian-South Korean trade deal that could level the playing field here for Canadian agricultural products, even while Canadian politicians made promises, such as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who said in March that a free trade deal with South Korea was “very, very close.”

Sales of Canadian beef in South Korea remain below 1 percentage point of total market share.

“The most frustrating thing about the job was trying to compete against other beef imported from Australia and the U.S,” said Philip Ham, 30, former marketing and administrative manager at Canada Beef.

An official at the embassy declined to comment on what the closure of the CBII meant for ongoing FTA talks.

“We are not in a position to comment on the closure,” said Jean Ko, a Korean staffer in charge of media relations for the Canadian Embassy here. “We only distributed that press release as a courtesy to the CBII.”

On July 15, 2005, the Canadian and South Korean trade ministers formally announced the launch of bilateral free trade negotiations. Talks were suspended in 2008 and formally restarted in 2012.

Canadian merchandise exports to South Korea were $3.7 billion and Canada’s merchandise imports from Korea were $6.4 billion in 2012.

Canada’s exports of services to Korea amounted to $788 million, while services imports from Korea were valued at $376 million in 2010, the latest year for which data is available.

In 2011, Canadian foreign direct investment in Korea was $365 million, while Korean FDI in Canada was over $6 billion.

(ephilip2011@heraldcorp.com)