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Great attention has been paid to the bilateral economic relations between India, Vietnam, and South Korea; however, only scant research has focused on the prospects of triangular economic cooperation among the three countries. Given the advantage and demand for the cooperation of each party, there is significant potential for trilateral economic cooperation among South Korea, Vietnam, and India. In this paper, we discover the prospects for their triangular economic cooperation in three aspects. First, this study examines the potential for cooperation in production networks and supply chains between the three countries in the context of reconfiguring the global value chains (GVCs), with a focus on the leading role of South Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs). Second, the study explores trilateral cooperation in the digital economy and connectivity, focusing on how South Korea and India can collaborate on investment projects in Vietnam. Third, this study discusses the rationale and possibility of forming a regional trade agreement (RTA) between the three countries. South Korea, Vietnam, and India have extant bilateral trade agreements between two of the three countries; however, there is no regional integration among the three countries discussed in specific. Considering the bilateral relations and domestic and external factors, the paper reckons that an RTA for starters between the three countries would be mutually beneficial to each of the corresponding economies.

Our paper contributes to existing literature by empirically investigate the trade structure and trade performance between Korea and ASEAN. Overall, trade activities between Korea and almost major ASEAN economies have significantly focused on capital goods, medium and high technology goods, while the remaining ASEAN countries’ exports over Korea have been mainly primary and low technology goods. There has been a higher complementarity in between Korea’s exports and ASEAN’s imports compared with between ASEAN’s exports and Korea’s imports. Estimation results show that ASEAN’s GDP and income have larger impacts than those of Korea on aggregate trade flows as well as sectoral level between two sides. Additionally, geographical conditions are critical factors impeding Korea-ASEAN trade. Meanwhile, other factors in the estimation model have mixed impacts on components of Korea-ASEAN trade structure. Finally, there is a significant room for Korea’s trade expansion with ASEAN, particularly new and less developed members in future.

Taiwan and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) do not have any diplomatic ties, but they have enjoyed significantly economic benefits, especially bilateral investment and trade cooperation. Over the period 2000–2017, trade between Taiwan and ASEAN had significantly focused on manufactured goods embodied with high-skill and technology-intensive content. Using gravity model with a PPML (Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood) estimator, this article explores determinants of bilateral trade flows between them at both aggregate and sectoral levels. We found that economic scale and per capital income of ASEAN have much stronger effects than those of Taiwan at both aggregate trade and the degree of manufacturing. Results also show that bilateral trade between Taiwan and ASEAN has been efficiently performed over recent decades, except for cases of Myanmar and Cambodia. Hence, a dynamic approach should be taken by both sides to promote bilateral trade relations in future.