The United States and South Korea announced on Thursday that they will launch negotiations on a free trade agreement between the two countries.

The agreement to launch negotiations was announced in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol building by U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman and his Korean counterpart, Hyun-Chong Kim.

Portman said a completed deal would be "the most commercially significant" since the United States reached the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico in 1993.

Analysts said that negotiations between the two countries are expected to take at least a year and could face stiff opposition from critics of the Bush administration's free trade policies.

South Korea has the 11th largest economy in the world and U.S. exports into that market totaled 25.1 billion dollars through November of last year, up 4.6 percent from the same period in 2004.

The United States trade deficit with South Korea totaled 15 billion dollars through November 2005 and U.S. analysts said it could present problems getting a deal through the U.S. Congress.

Source: Xinhua