Analysis of Trade Pattern Between the EAEU and South Korea

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is a relatively newly-formed regional integration bloc. It evolved on the basis of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus in 2015 with Armenia and Kyrgyzstan joining the agreement. The foreign economic aspirations of the EAEU as a single market, in the context of tense relations with Western partners, are turned towards Asian countries. The pivot to the East is supported by the ideological concept of “Greater Eurasia” (sometimes translated as “Big Eurasia”), which implies more extensive cooperation with the economies of Central, East, and South Asia. At a time when political efforts to bring the Union and Korea closer together have been put on hold, the paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of the bilateral merchandise trade pattern between the EAEU and the Republic of Korea to verify if statistical evidence on bilateral trade provides ground for the development of guiding actual policy deliberations in the future. Trade Intensity Index (TII), the sectoral bilateral coefficient of revealed comparative advantages, and the standard Grubel-Lloyd index have been used in order to analyze the bilateral trade between the EAEU and the Republic of Korea