Korea’s exports stood at $46.61 billion in July, down 3.3 percent from the same month last year. It marked the seventh consecutive month that the outbound shipments dropped on-year.

The bad global economy is primarily responsible for the continuing slump in exports, but the latest data calls upon both the government and businesses to redouble their efforts to cope with the situation.

In addition to exports, the nation’s imports are also dropping -- faster than exports, with the inbound shipments falling for the 10th consecutive month to $38.85 billion in July, a fall of 15.3 percent on-year.

This double decline of exports and imports raise concerns that the nation’s trading volume, which exceeded $1 trillion in 2011 for the first time, may fall below the mark this year. Put simply, trade -- which has buttressed our economy for the past decades -- is losing steam.

The bigger cause for concern is exports. Of course, Korea is not the only major trading country that has been suffering from an exports slump. Almost all major exporters saw their overseas shipments decline in the first half, including Japan, Germany, France, U.K and Italy. In fact, these countries’ exports fared worse than Korea’s.

The global slump in exports is largely attributed to the cut in global oil prices and an oversupply of goods in the global market. Korean exporters’ difficulties were coupled with the continuing depreciation of the Japanese yen and euro, slumps in China and Europe and the Greek financial crisis.

But the problem is that Korea depends much more on trade than other major economies. Korea’s dependence on foreign trade is about two times the average of the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and three times that of Japan and the United States. In short, Korea cannot live on without prosperous trade.

The current situation calls for multifaceted and long-term approach to resuscitate exports, beyond such traditional, short-term policies like the pursuit of a weak won and temporary measures like export subsidies.

The first thing both the government and businesses must tackle is the heavy reliance on a limited number of industries -- IT, consumer electronics, automobiles petrochemicals and machinery.

All these sectors are sensitive to the price of oil and the recent drop in crude prices hit hard Korean exports, especially in automobiles, petrochemicals and machinery. We need to develop new export industries, especially to be led by small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The heavy reliance on the Chinese market is another problem Korean exporters should overcome. China takes 25 percent of Korean shipments, which is almost the same as those of U.S., EU and Japan all combined.

This is too risky, as evidenced by the recent developments in China -- its growth is slowing down and the recent stock plunge shows its capital market is unstable as well. Officials and businesses must team up to develop new markets for Korean exports.

Four years ago, Korea became the ninth nation to join the club of countries whose trading volume exceeded $1 trillion. Dropping out of the group would mean much more to the Korean economy than losing just the membership of an exclusive club.