South Korea and the Southern Common Market, also known as Mercosur, will hold their first round of free trade talks in Uruguay on Tuesday. 

The negotiations are the first to be held since the two sides announced that they would launch free trade agreement (FTA) talks back in late May in Seoul. 

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said Monday that the five-day talks will touch on goods, services, investment, e-commerce, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, government procurement, dispute settlement and general rules, among others. 

Consisting of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Venezuela and Uruguay, Mercosur is a regional economic bloc that accounts for 70 percent of South America’s population. It has a gross domestic product(GDP) of two-point-seven trillion U.S. dollars, equivalent to 76 percent of the continent’s total GDP.

In the upcoming talks, South Korea will be negotiating with only four of the five Mercosur member states as the regional bloc has suspended Venezuela for failing to meet basic trade and human rights rules.