• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.39-66
• /
• 2018

This paper analyzes the structures and issues of 2018 Korean local elections based on the author's observations on the electoral processes. Even if this paper does not follow a traditional statistical method, it provides the interpretative meanings of 2018 local elections by utilizing an expert's observations of campaign processes. This result of 2018 election can be summarized into two analytical frames. In terms of electoral competition structure, three key factors, such as presidential approval rating, party competition structure, ideological spectrum, tend to affect the winning of governing party. In the light of election issue, the inter-Korean summit, the Washington-Pyeongyang summit, Incheon deprecating remark were positive to the vote gains of governing party, but the negative campaign, the drucking scandal and the swing voters were found not to be significant. The local election in Korea tends to show dual meanings, a proxy war of national-level politics and a composition process of local government. This paper found that the 2018 election has dual meanings at the same time, in a sense that it is the punishment of the ex-governing party's wrongdoing and the power change of local government.

• The Southeast Asian review
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.197-221
• /
• 2018

The Cambodian People's Party swept all 125 assembly seats with 76.78% of the vote in 2018 general elections. The Cambodian National Rescue Party, having been dissolved by court, was excluded from the election and attempted to nullify the legitimacy of the election by demanding its supporters to boycott the election. The Cambodian People's Party launched a campaign encouraging to vote in a desperate need to thwart the boycott movement. The election then became an unprecedented kind of competition the winner of which is decided not by the percentage of the vote but by turnout. The Cambodian People's Party was the winner with the high turnout of 82.89%, securing the means to defend the legitimacy of the election. The potential supporters of the Cambodian National Rescue Party spread out with about a million voters switching to support the Cambodian People's Party. Over a half million invalid votes that unequivocally voiced opposition to the Cambodian People's Party were not sufficient to deny the legitimacy of the election. Having experienced the fierce competition in the 2013 general elections that threatened to end its rule, the Cambodian People's Party decided to secure its power in the upcoming election and executed a tactic designed to remove the rival party through legal means. Competition being removed, the Cambodian political system decayed back to hegemonic electoral authoritarianism from competitive electoral authoritarianism to which it had mad gradual progress through the general elections in the past.

• Maritime Security
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.45-72
• /
• 2021

North Korea's cyber capabilities represent a relatively new threat to global financial institutions and foreign governments, particularly the U.S and South Korean governments. Based primarily on publicly available sources, such as journalistic accounts and scholarly publications, this qualitative paper analyzes the ways in which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has bolstered his country's asymmetric power and advanced his line of byungjin (dual development in the economy and military). Particularly by merging the cyber and maritime domains, North Korean operatives generate more revenue for the regime and helps keep the heavily sanctioned leadership in power. Despite the increased international attention to North Korean hackers, few analysts have examined the important role of cyber in the DPRK's internal political culture, specifically in advancing Kim Jong Un's byungjin line. Cyber fits into the DPRK's longstanding tradition of irregular warfare and guerilla-based armed struggle. Cyber also further advances Kim's personal reputation in the DPRK as an economic innovator and military strategist. This paper pays particular attention to the role of the DPRK's cyber operations in both ideological and maritime contexts. Recently, North Korean hackers have targeted South Korean shipbuilding industries and developed a blockchain scam, known as Marine Chain. North Korean cyber agents have increasingly paid attention to the nexus of cyber and maritime domains in their activities.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
• /
• no.27
• /
• pp.255-292
• /
• 2009

This thesis is to study on the prospect of contemporary and theory of contemporary Chinese Neo-liberalism philosopher in the 1990s. The previous Chinese liberalists focused only on political and cultural liberalism, neglecting economic liberalism. As a result, liberalism has not taken root in China. Therefore, the social problems of contemporary China are caused by immature and unregulated market economy controlled by the government, not by the market economy. On the other hand, the social relationship in China is not capitalistic yet. The Chinese need to take the gradual developing step to modernize China. China needs to begin an effort to reform China by the way and speed of the refolution, which lies between reform and revolution; not by making new value system, but by keeping daily ethics and rediscovering the Chinese value system, which is the same as universal ethnics. Moreover, it can solve the mental, cultural problems of modern society. Modernization will be achieved not by ruining the Chinese traditions, but by adjusting the traditions, keeping, and strengthening. Consequently, China will be able to move from agricultural absolutism to modern democracy. The democracy can exist only based on the market economy. Therefore, the goal will be accomplished by democracy based on the market economy starting from Confucian tradition.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.10 no.5
• /
• pp.307-314
• /
• 2024

For us, as 2023 marked the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice Agreement, it provided an opportunity to reflect once again on the potential for transitioning the armistice into a peace treaty, officially ending the Korean War, and establishing a peace regime that could promote peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. Since the Geneva Conference of 1954, North Korea has made various statements regarding a peace treaty. It can be seen that North Korea aimed to strengthen its own power and achieve a balance of power by entering into a peace treaty with South Korea or the U.S. This paper aims to examine the reasons why North Korea, a signatory of the Armistice Agreement of 1953, became interested in forging a peace treaty and to establish the foundation of how North Korea's discourse on a peace treaty has changed over time. By examining cases of North Korea's proposals for an inter-Korean or a North Korea-U.S. peace treaty since the 1954 Political Conference to the period from the 1950s to the 1990s, this paper seeks to explain the background behind North Korea's peace treaty discourse and to consider the implications of these changes for South Korea and the U.S., which would be parties to such a peace treaty. Additionally, the paper aims to explore the implications for South Korea and the United States, not only in relation to North Korea but also considering the United Nations Command and the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, when entering into a peace treaty with North Korea.

• Analyses & Alternatives
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.151-170
• /
• 2024

This article examines various interdisciplinary perspectives on Korea's free market economy, which has often been taken for granted by economists, and explores ways to identify a desirable market economy within Korean society. It does so by analyzing the transformation of the Bank of Korea's monetary policy from supporting industrial policies to adopting a market-oriented approach. The market economy can take on various forms depending on the degree of government intervention in politics and law. However, in economics, the market economy is often regarded as inherently correct, with many economists believing that greater market freedom will lead to economically or socially desirable outcomes. This faith in the market is deeply ingrained in the training of economists. Nevertheless, it is clear that simply relying on market mechanisms, without government regulation or intervention, has limitations, particularly when responding to unpredictable economic shocks. Historical changes in monetary policy reveal these limitations. The question of which market economy to pursue is ultimately a question of what role the government should play, like two sides of the same coin. To address the imbalances caused by the spread of market economy logic in the historical process of market institution establishment in the Korean economy such as concentration in the metropolitan area and low birth rates, along with other challenges facing Korean society, a flexible approach to market institutions rather than an absolute faith in the market would be more effective.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.215-250
• /
• 2013

The term, "resource curse", is widely used to describe how countries rich in natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and certain minerals, are unable to utilize that wealth to boost their economies. Contrary to previous research on the topic, this study has demonstrated that natural resources have a strong positive correlation with a country's economy. It likewise confirmed that this result is robust with broad sets of exogenous variables, and that the positive impact of natural resources on the economy remains significant with the inclusion of capital stock per worker. In this sense, it is doubtful that resource curse actually exists in the long-run. On the other hand, this study tested whether the quality of institutions has any relation with natural resource endowments if the positive effect of natural resource endowments on the gross domestic product (GDP) is adequately controlled for. In contrast to findings of Alexeev and Conrad (2009), if the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries are included, it seems that there might be a negative and statistically significant relationship between large endowments of natural resources and the quality of institutions. However, this negative relationship loses its significance and some positive albeit insignificant relationships are confirmed in a considerable number of cases when the FSU countries are excluded in the sample. That is, the negative relationship results from the inclusion of the FSU countries. This result is believed to happen by a temporary coincidence of events, a natural resource windfall and political and economic instability during the transition of the FSU countries. Therefore, the argument that resource abundance harms the institutional quality is confirmed to be a little groundless.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.10 no.10
• /
• pp.2873-2878
• /
• 2009

Since Germany was unified in 1990, Korea became the only country that has the division in the world. This division has various bad effects on Korea's status with not reliable security, forfeited national impression, loss of tourism income and so on. Kim Jung-Il national defense committee chairman is the current dictator of North Korea which is a socialist state. Even if he is getting old, his successor is not proclaimed. In this situation, his sudden aggravation of health can cause seriously bad effects on diplomatic relations especially with South Korea. Therefore, the health information about Kim Jung-Il national defense committee chairman will be very important information. In order to deal this problem, we propose the method of extracting the Kim Jung-Il national defense committee chairman's health from his pictures which are recently open to the public by employing the diagnosis Ocular Inspection used in Oriental medicine. n order to get an accurate result, revising the Kim Jung-Il national defense committee chairman's pictures, which are not taken in a controled equal situation, is necessary. Therefore we employed the color analysis process with color revising and color differential comparing process without color revising. With these processes, we can make diagnosis of his diabetes and complications.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.69
• /
• pp.71-110
• /
• 2015

Beyond the technological behaviorism-oriented notion of prosumers, the current study explores the question of digital creative labour of the youth in the interrelated context of post-capitalist crisis and neoliberal ethos of selfhood. This analysis is situated particularly in the social conflicts and struggles in Korea, where the problems related to the precarization of the younger generation have been increasingly aggravated (in the realm of embodied reality) whereas their digital activities have been highly expressive (in the realm of mediated reality). The contradictions embedded in the question of the labour of the youth are delineated in the respect of the subjectivities of young free labour, or 'digital creative labour' in proposed terms: the precarious young free labour in Korea is the compound of social fragmentation, economic polarization, expansion of cognitive and emotion labour, boom of hedonistic consumerism, economic-cultural celebration of creativity and self-entrepreneurship, technological saturation of digital media, subjective/collective affects around excitement and ambition but also of anxiety and fear. The ambivalence and complexity of the young free labour is converged at the emergence of homo-economicus (Michel Foucault) through the subjectivation of the social (con)fusion of post-capitalist crisis and neoliberal governmentality of selfhood.

• Land and Housing Review
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.191-205
• /
• 2016

North Korea(NK) has designated the special economic zones(SEZs) since the first one in Rason. But, why have the SEZs in NK still not been developed successfully? This study comparatively evaluated the SEZs in China, Vietnam and NK, with respect to 'context/purpose', 'development/management system', and 'location/infrastructure.' NK's strategies for the SEZs were different from those of China and Vietnam in terms of historical context and development purpose. China and Vietnam chose the market opening policy aiming to reform their national economy, while NK tried the opening policy without the economic reform. This difference made NK's decentralization and location strategies marginal. In spite of the positive land system and tax benefit of NK, the strategies couldn't make a successful result. The implications of this comparative study are as follows. Firstly, NK needs to establish a strategy for the SEZs in accord with the comprehensive and long-term plan for economic development and 'trustworthy and substantial market-systems' being compatible with outside world. For that, NK has to secure the regime stability in political and diplomatic dimensions. Secondly, NK has to carry out policies of decentralization and location of the SEZs more positively. Thirdly, in order to solve the problem related to lack of infrastructure capital, NK needs to utilize a BOT scheme.