A long and what could be a very difficult process still awaits the free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and China before it can be implemented, despite a joint declaration of a deal by their leaders earlier Monday, government officials said.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, declared a "de facto" or substantial conclusion of FTA negotiations at their summit in Beijing.

Officials here, however, say it could take months before the FTA can actually go into effect.

Before the start of the final and 14th round of FTA negotiations in the lead-up to Monday's summit, South Korean officials said there remained five major issues, which included South Korea's market liberalization for agricultural and fishery imports from China and China's early opening of its market to South Korean industrial products.

"Most of the key remaining issues have been resolved, but there remain a few technical issues that need to be addressed during the process of legal scrubbing," an official from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy told Yonhap News Agency.

The ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the legal scrubbing, or legal review, alone may take months. Only after the technical issues are resolved in the process can the FTA be initialed.

"We will work to initial the agreement before the year's end," the official said.

Once initialed, the agreement, currently written out only in English, has to be translated into Korean and Chinese, which can again take up to three months.

Following a fresh review of the agreement in their own languages, the countries will send the FTA to their respective legislatures for ratification before it can be implemented.

Ministry officials said there was little chance the proposed FTA will be subject to significant changes in the future.

"There are three major levels of conclusion in FTA negotiations. The lowest type is where the countries' leaders acknowledge progress made in negotiations. The second-highest level is where the countries reach an agreement in principle, and the next is where they declare a substantial conclusion of negotiations," Woo Tae-hee, South Korea's deputy trade minister, told reporters.

"A substantial conclusion of negotiations can be seen as a complete conclusion. You may take this to mean that all remaining issues have been resolved at least for now," he added.

Public opposition, especially from farmers in South Korea and Chinese manufacturers, may further delay implementation of the free trade pact between the world's second-largest and Asia's fourth-largest economies.

Woo insisted South Korean farmers should have little or no complaints over the proposed FTA with China.

Under Monday's deal, only some 40 percent of all agricultural and fishery products from China, in terms of value, will benefit from the complete elimination of import tariffs over the next 20 years.

Another 30 percent of products from China will only benefit from a reduction of import duties while the remaining 30 percent will be completely excluded from market opening, according to the trade ministry official.

"Under the country's FTA with the United States, only 11 agricultural and fishery products were excluded from market opening. Under the current deal with China, 614 products will be excluded from market liberalization," he said.

The South Korean government was hit hard by months of violent protests after signing its FTA with the United States in June 2007, as the public charged that the trade pact gave unnecessarily wide market access to U.S. agricultural goods, including beef.

Shortly after the countries' leaders confirmed that rice, one of the most sensitive items in South Korea, will be completely excluded from the Korea-China FTA earlier in the day, the South Korean trade ministry said beef, as well as pork, will be completely excluded from the bilateral trade pact with China.

Still, many believe it's inevitable that South Korea's agriculture industry will be harmed. (Yonhap)

"The damage from the Korea-China FTA will not be too great for now, but after 10 or 15 years, it will likely reach a very serious level," an official from the state-run Korea Livestock Economic Institute said. (Yonhap)