"The (South) Korea-China free trade agreement is now about a bilateral trade, but is anticipated to play a pivotal role that will affect Asia and the whole world," said Han Jae-Jin, a senior research fellow at Hyundai Research Institute.

Han said that the bilateral FTA has a significant meaning in the region as it will not confined to South Korea and China and can be connected to other Asian nations.

KIEP's another research fellow Lee Jang-Gyu also told Xinhua that the free trade accord has a significant meaning as it is the first bilateral FTA in Northeast Asia, saying that it opened door to various possibilities like trilateral FTA between Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo.

If the trilateral free trade accord, including Japan as well as China and South Korea, is inked, it would help further strengthen regional economic cooperation.

Economic cooperation between China and South Korea has expanded in the past 23 years since the two countries set up diplomatic ties in 1992. After the 2008 global financial crisis, Seoul and Beijing strengthened cooperation further via the won-yuan currency swap deal to stabilize foreign exchange market.

Now, China becomes South Korea's largest trading partner while Seoul is Beijing's third-biggest trading partner as a single country.

The parliamentary voting was conducted during a plenary session after wrangling between rival parties about the sensitive issue on how to protect farmers from possible damage following the FTA implementation.

Before leaving Seoul to participate in the 2015 United Nations climate change conference in Paris, South Korean President Park Geun-hye repeatedly urged lawmakers to ratify the deal rapidly, saying that the delayed ratification would make South Korean exporters lose an export opportunity worth about 4 billion won (3.5 million U.S. dollars) every day.

The rival parties finally reached a common ground on Monday, agreeing to 1.6 trillion won (1.4 billion U.S. dollars) worth of supplementary measures, including a 1-trillion-won fund to support farmers.