• Korean System Dynamics Review
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.47-66
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• 2011

South Korea has achieved remarkable social and economic development together with the process of democratization over the past 20 years. In the democratic process in South Korea, ordinary people have actively participated in conventional political activities such as elections. But recently, one of the salient phenomena is that the public have been showing political apathy associated with a light poll. Especially, the most serious concern in the political environment of South Korea is that young voters (e.g., 20-30s) have serious political apathy leading to low voter turnout. Regarding this concern, many political scientists argued that this political phenomenon is not only the case in South Korea, insisting that many consolidated democratic countries such as European countries and the US have the same problems. However, South Korea has contained different factors (e.g., historical, culture, social, and political differences) leading to political apathy and light poll. Unfortunately, no one has clearly explain the phenomenon. In fact, in order for scholars to understand and explain these concerns, they should carefully look at the phenomenon with diverse perspectives and approaches. The main purpose of this paper is to explain why the digital generation has political apathy and are reluctant to participate in political activities such as voting. Using causal loop analysis which is based on systematic thinking, we not only analyzed the pattern of the digital generation' political participation with regard to diverse perspectives, but also attempted to draw new political implications from the analysis. Based on our analysis, we tried to suggest some implications for political stability and development in South Korea in the future.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.45
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• pp.187-219
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• 2009

Under the pressure of the selection of topics and the presentation rules of mass media, politics in media society increasingly resort to professionalized forms of theatrical staging as a means of self-portrayal. Although these staging methods are not contradictory to what is actually going on in politics, they strongly advantage the tendency to focus exclusively on the staging of an event. Through their competition for public attention, politicians have been developing sophistication regarding placement and staging of events as well as regarding factual information. In the process of this transformation, politics that are issue-related and based on binding decisions are being gradually transformed into symbolic politics. Moreover, through their appearance on TV, politicians first of all need to possess presentational skills which are not necessarily related to their political achievements. Still, presentational skills decide over the success in politics of those politicians. The reason is that a politician who possesses presentational skills is still being perceived as being successful even if his political achievements notedly lag behind. On the other hand, political achievements are being underrated if a politician lacks the talent to present himself in front of the media. “The staging of politics, “politainment”, on the stage of mass media is evolving into a key structure which is responsible for a new coinage of politics in all different kinds of dimensions: the selection of staff, the role of action programs and their impact for the legitimation of political acting, even in relation to therole of pivotal political institutions such as parties and parliaments in the political process. The TV debates during the Bundestag elections of the year 2002 and 2005 are being analyzed and judged as “staging of politics”(politainment). Self-dramatization in media society concerning media discourses about politics and political self-portrayal has become a basic principle of political communication. Self-dramatization is a vital challenge for adequate political communication and content-based orientation in our present media democracies.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.228-247
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• 2015

Politics is defined as who gets what, when, and how. Communication is defined as the process, outcomes and effects of message transmission through a medium. Thus political communication in Asia, the most dynamic and uncertain region of the world, has been very dense, requiring rigorous scientific analysis and culturally sensitive reflection. Mass media brought about a revolution in political communication in the last century. In the 21st century, complex monitory devices from the state and international organizations and from the society and transnational groups have transformed the features of political communication. It has triggered another revolution in political communication. Illustrations are given focusing on Asia. A theoretical reflection from the angle of political science is attempted focusing on political communication medium and its effects. I compare no medium (face-to-face communication), mass media, and social media in relation to their effects.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.295-309
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• 2020

In 2019, Japan announced trade regulations against Korean products; consequently, the sales of Japanese products in Korea dropped due to a Korean consumers' boycott. This study measured the Korean consumers' political consumption behavior toward Japanese fashion products. Unstructured text data from online media sources and consumer posted sources such as blog and SNS were collected. Text mining techniques and semantic network analysis were used to process unstructured data. This study used text mining techniques and semantic network analysis to process data. The results identified boycotting Japanese fashion products and buycotting alternative products and Korean brands due to consumers' political consumption. Two brand cases were investigated in detail. Online text data before and after the political action were compared and significant changes in consumption as well as emotional expressions were identified. Product related industry sectors were identified in terms of the political consumption of fashion: liquor, automobile and tourism industry sectors were closely linked to the fashion sector in terms of boycotting. More "boycott" and "buycott" fashion brands (reflected in consumer attitudes and feelings) were detected in consumer driven texts than in media driven sources.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.145-175
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• 2011

We analyse an overlapping generation model in which economic agents, especially their income distribution, influence environmental policy and redistributive policy through political decision making process. In an economic equilibrium which doesn't consider political process, the introduction of environmental policy is shown to increase economic growth rate. In contrast to an economic equilibrium, environmental policy can be adopted when economic inequality reduces to a certain threshold in a political economic equilibrium. The adoption of environmental policy, on the other hand, incurs the demand of strengthened redistributive policy, which in turn decreases economic growth in a short run. We discuss broad policy implications based on our political economic analyses.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.131-148
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• 2002

This paper explores how international political factors influence the role of conventional external factors in the course of technological learning. The research goes on to investigate whether the role of the techno-economic factors has changed due to the involvement of international political factors in the technological learning mechanism. To this end, this paper examines how US political intervention affected Korean technological learning in the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The export policy, prior consent policy and international political influence of the US are employed as international political factors. The empirical findings show that international political factors are very likely to restrain the impact of the techno-economic factors on technological learning process. Accordingly, this paper hypothesizes that the role of techno-economic factors in the technological learning mechanism is weaker when international political intervention is involved.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.65-92
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• 2009

Political trust is defined as the degree to which people perceive that government is producing outcomes consistent with their expectations. Political trust as a concept has endogenous as well as exogenous characteristics in that it can cause and be caused by other political factors. The purpose of this study is to introduce and evaluate various theoretical perspectives related to the causes and effects of political trust. With respect to its causes, this study focuses on the following five factors: government policies, unethical behaviors of politicians, citizens' penchant for participatory democracy, the public's misperceptions on government, and political culture. On the other hand, this study discusses the impacts of political trust on each stage of political process by paying attention to the following factors: government's governability, election outcomes, political recruitment, and the directions of government policies.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.22
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• pp.211-247
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• 2003

This study explored how Korean immigrants education, length of stay and English fluency affect their political socialization, mediated through traditional news media and the news Web use. Political socialization included political knowledge, interest, and participation. The media usage patterns included U.S. news media, U.S. news Web, Korean news Web, and Korean news Media use by Korean immigrants in the United State. This study found as follows. First, education, length of stay, and English fluency indirectly increased political socialization(political knowledge, interest, and participation) through their relationship with U.S. news media use. Second, U.S. news Web played a potentially important role in Korean immigrants' political socialization by increasing their political interest. Third, Korean news media partly contributed to Korean immigrants' political socialization by increasing their political interest. Fourth, Korean news Web use did not contribute to Korean immigrants' political socialization in terms of political knowledge, interest, and participation at all. In conclusion, this study found that traditional news media's role was more important than news Web's one in the process of immigrants' political socialization to the host society.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 1999

This study aims at integrating the sociological study of technology and the economic study of technological learning. It is argued that the sociological approaches of innovation have some strong points in criticizing technological determinism, but have some weak points in explaining how the knowledge base for innovation is accumulated. On the contrary, the economic approaches of innovation have strong points in explaining technology accumulation, but ignore socio-political process of innovation. This study suggests the model which integrates the socio-political process and technological loaming process.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.2-12
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• 2017

Research on democratic transitions has relatively ignored the question of why some countries experience a regressive form of political pacts, while others do not. This paper develops a simple game-theoretic model to explain the phenomenon of collusive pacts in the process of democratization. Trasformismo is a term that refers to a system of political exchange based on informal clientelistic politics. The existing studies of the politics of trasformismo have emphasized the timing of industrialization and the tradition of strong state as conditions of the politics of trasformismo. However, not every late industrializers and not every strong states experienced some variants of collusive political pacts in their trajectories of democratization. In this paper, I contend that the politics of trasformismo is rather a generalizable pattern of political elites' behavior under particular circumstances. By developing a simple game theoretic model, this paper suggests the conditions under which political actors are likely to collude to a regressive form of political pacts. The model shows that the likelihood of collusion to a regressive form of political pacts is a function of a set of parameters. First, a higher level of incumbency advantage in electoral competition is likely to be associated with a higher probability of collusive political pacts. Second, a higher degree of the monopoly of political representation of political parties without a close link with a variety of societal forces is likely to induce collusive behavior among politicians. Third, the ruling party leader's expectations about the likelihood of a safe extrication are related to collusive political pacts. This paper then engages in a case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea. The 1990 Korean case is interesting in that the ruling party created a new party after having merged with two opposition parties. This case can be considered a result of political maneuver in a context of democratization. The case study suggests the empirical relevance of the game-theoretic model. As the game of trasformismo and the case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea have shown, the collusive political pact was neither determined by a certain stage of economic development nor by a particular cultural systems. Rather, it was a product of the art of trasformismo based on party leaders' rational calculations of the expected likelihood of taking governing power.