ERIA Brown Bag Lunch meeting entitled on "East Asian Economic Integration: Role of Northeast Asian Countries" was held at ERIA Annex office on 19 November 2010. The lecturer was Dr. Chang Jae Lee, senior fellow of Center for International Development Center, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

The needs for a region-wide FTA (Free Trade Agreement) in East Asia has been growing against the backdrop that levels of economic dependency are high among these countries, concern of spaghetti bowl phenomenon by complicated bilateral agreements, and the needs for a larger intra-regional market after the global financial crisis as well as its economic benefit.

Dr. Chang Jae Lee explained a gradual approach to achieve the region-wide FTA in East Asia based on findings by several regional FTA studies. He pointed out that the role of China, Japan and Korea in the regional economic integration in East Asia should be crucially important.