The agreement was signed in 2007 but requires approval by Congress, where Democrats have said they will not support it unless barriers to American exports of automobiles and beef are further reduced.
On Monday, the United States trade representative, Ron Kirk, and his Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-hoon, met in Seoul, where their aides have been in face-to-face talks since last week.
And as part of his 10-day trip to Asia, President Obama is scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Thursday to meet with President Lee Myung-bak and attend a two-day meeting with other leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers.
“Hopefully, by the time he comes we will have an agreement,” Mr. Lee said in an interview Saturday in Seoul. “We will send a very powerful and strong message about maintaining open markets and resist the trend toward protectionism.”
Mr. Lee said the agreement would help cement the 60-year-old alliance between the countries.
At the last G-20 leaders’ meeting, held in Toronto in June, Mr. Obama announced a goal of completing the agreement by the Seoul meeting and submitting it to Congress early next year. Mr. Obama, who was critical of such trade agreements when he ran for office, stopped short of calling for the deal to be renegotiated, but called for adjustments in areas like the auto provisions.
The Republican takeover of the House in the midterm elections added momentum to pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. Business groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce support the trade agreements, as do financial services companies.
On Sunday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate, said that he had discussed the trade agreements with Mr. Obama, and mentioned them as a possible area of bipartisan cooperation. “The notion that we’re at each other’s throats all the time is simply not correct,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
An important exception to corporate support for the agreement is Ford, the only one of the big three Detroit automakers that has not gotten a bailout. On Thursday, Ford ran full-page ads in newspapers stating: “For every 52 cars Korea ships here, the U.S. can only export one there.”
While the agreement would lower or eliminate tariffs on cars in both countries, other barriers would remain, including emissions, mileage and safety requirements and tax and insurance rules that automakers and the United Automobile Workers union say discriminate against American cars.
“American-made cars can compete and win globally, but we can’t afford a future with more closed markets to American exports,” Ford said in the ad.
Chrysler has reservations about the agreement in its current form. General Motors, which owns a Korean automaker, Daewoo, has remained neutral.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said last week that the negotiators hoped to amend provisions that were “tilted against auto companies and autoworkers.”
The other major sticking point is beef. Shortly after taking office in 2008, Mr. Lee moved to relax restrictions on imports of American beef, which had been banned since 2003 because of concerns over mad cow disease. That led to protests in Korea, with scores of injuries.
South Korea now permits imports of beef from cattle younger than 30 months, which are the least likely to harbor the agent that causes the disease. But Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade, has called for lifting all restrictions on American beef exports.
Democrats have been skeptical of claims that the deal will create jobs. In a joint letter last month to Mr. Obama and Mr. Lee, 20 House members and 35 Korean lawmakers called for strengthening health, labor and environmental standards in the agreement, echoing concerns raised by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. But neither government seems to want to revisit those terms.
Republicans broadly support the deal the Bush administration negotiated. “Not only does the Korean market offer excellent growth prospects for American firms, but a free-trade agreement with Korea will have huge foreign policy and national security benefits in Asia,” said Clayton K. Yeutter, who was the trade representative from 1985 to 1989, under President Ronald Reagan.
The United States had a $10.6 billion trade deficit in goods with South Korea last year, and supporters of the agreement say it would help close that gap. South Korea signed a free-trade agreement with the European Union last month, and business groups say the United States should complete the deal to remain competitive.
Han Duk-soo, the South Korean ambassador in Washington, who is trying to build support in Congress for the agreement, said in a recent interview that the imported share of the Korean auto market had risen substantially over the last decade and that the United States enjoyed a sizable trade surplus with his country in agricultural products.
Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea.
