Amid many events hindering the globalization of the world economy, the role of APEC comes to the fore. Along with the trend of globalization, the world economy is also divided into many subregions, and there is also the problem of polarization of the world economy. Even worse, bird flu, the global war against terrorism, earthquakes, and the tsunami are shaking the world economy. Accordingly, APEC's efforts in pursuit of one economic bloc combining East Asia and North America - the two axes of the world economy - come into the spotlight. The key role of APEC has stemmed from its "open regionalism." It has aimed to liberalize the trade between member economies, strengthening economic and technical cooperation, allowing nonmember countries of APEC to enjoy the fruits of APEC agreements, and consequently supplementing the multilateral trade system. Also, APEC has directly supported the multilateral trade system, stepping up the UR (Uruguay Round) act, supporting the launching of DDA (Doha Development Agenda), and leading the ITA and trade facilitation. In fact, it has been possible because many leading countries in the world trade and economy are joining APEC. In this respect, one of the significant weak points of APEC is many small regionalisms. APEC is, as a whole, opposed to the exclusive regionalism, making contributions to the multilateral trade system, but individual countries have made numerous exclusive bilateral trade agreements. As of August 2005, there are 180 regional trade agreements all over the world. 26 agreements among 180 have been made between APEC member nations, and 55 agreements between OPEC member nations and non-member nations. It means many APEC nations are doublefaced. In terms of this aspect, Korea has relatively fewer weak points. Nevertheless, the fact that the two huge economic blocs - East Asia and North America - have been combined together carries a significant meaning. In this sense, many regional trade agreements of APEC membership countries should be induced to make a contribution to the combination of the whole member nations instead of dividing the region. Because of this, the Santiago APEC meeting last year suggested FTAAP (Free Trade Agreement of Asia - Pacific) in an effort to integrate the Asia and Pacific area. The core task of APEC is the completion of free trade and free investment. In 1994, the Bogor goals were declared to establish a free trade and free investment environment by 2020 (by 2010 for the industrialized countries). Since its inception in 1993, APEC composed of 21 member nations has made efforts to productively discuss major issues of the world economy, while seeking policy cooperation through bilateral negotiations between each member nation. Recently, APEC member nations are cooperating in many important issues such as anti-terror, North Korea' nuclear weapons, SARS, bird flu, earthquakes, the tsunami, and the soaring oil price. However, APEC has limits in terms of its implementation system. Its decisionmaking ought to be based on consensus, and voluntary implementation is a basic rule because of its characteristic as a consultation body. Also the rapidly increasing membership has hindered the speedy effective agreement in the meetings, while loosening the solidarity among the membership. Meanwhile, owing to its open regionalism, nonmember countries outside the region are taking advantage of the fruit of APEC meetings including its free trade agreements. Because of this, APEC member countries are not making serious attempts to step up free trade and put into practice the agreements that had already been made. Another problem is that the agendas have too rapidly diversified into many fields such as politics, security, and social problems instead of focusing on economic problems. As a result, it is pointed out that APEC meetings are producing superficial results rather than really influential ones.