• Anayses & Alternatives
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.1-30
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• 2018

The concept of soft power presents both theoretical and practical difficulties for researchers and policy makers. This essay examines the practical use of soft power and argues that soft power resources in education are important for attracting individuals to migrate between countries and assimilate to the new language and culture of the new location. Japan's attempts to utilize soft power resources in its educational system have provided mixed results dependent on the target population. Japan has successfully attracted individuals into fields related to higher education much more so than skilled labor programs. This essay discusses the importance of educational soft power resources in Japanese strategy to increase educated working population that is assimilated to Japanese language and culture. After reviewing the literature on soft power in Asia, and Japanese cultural integration policies, the essay examines three cases of Japanese educational soft power - the JET Programme, the caregiver-training program, and internationalization of university programs. In addition, the essay shows that Japan is more successful attracting higher educated individuals seeking higher paying employment rather than skilled labor through these programs.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.21-29
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• 2012

The popularity of the Internet has affected international politics in many ways; however, it is seemingly overlooked by most scholars, and in particular, realists who view the Internet as low-politics. This article argues that the impact of the Internet on international politics should not be underestimated. By focusing on the capabilities of the Internet in general and P2P networks in particular, this paper shows how the Internet is able to disseminate soft power resources. This is demonstrated by an examination of the dissemination of Japanese soft power resources through BitTorrent. Finally, it is concluded that the Internet is a plausible agent for distributing the resources of soft power; however, once disseminated, soft power resources do not always transform into soft power. In the end, contextual conditions within states always apply.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.15-40
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• 2017

This paper addresses the zero-sum of soft power against the backdrop of the rise of China and the relative "decline" of America. It attempts to find out that whether the "decline" of America's soft power is caused by the rise of China's soft power, and whether China's rise could guarantee with certainty the growth of soft power. In light of the particularity of South Korea, that is, its economy relies on China and its security relies on the US, this paper chooses South Korea as the entry point for the study. Based on the Pew data from a South Korean opinion poll, this paper conducts bivariate correlation and binary logistic regression respectively, to explore the existence of zero-sum "competitions" between China's and America's soft power.

• Journal of Public Diplomacy
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 2021

Remarkably, despite the growing frequency and severity of global problems such as climate change, earthquakes and health pandemics, public diplomacy has remained largely focused on the goals of state actors and threats from other actors. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the consequences of focusing on individual actors of public diplomacy, including their competitive quest for soft power, over the more pressing needs of humanity and public diplomacy's global mandate. The aim of this piece is to expand the vision of soft power from a competitive state-centric perspective to a broader and more collaborative, humanity-centered perspective. Although public diplomacy's link to power may appear recent and linked to Nye's (2004) concept of soft power, research suggests that it may stem from the traditional diplomacy's "diplomacy of imperialism" (Langer, 1935) that immediately preceded public diplomacy's rise. While this diplomatic heritage may currently dominate public diplomacy perspectives, humankind's global heritages and evolutionary capacity for cooperation suggest another vision is possible. The paper draws upon Alexander Vuving's (2009) explanation of how soft power works in a comparative analysis with Nye's original works to sketch out a new humanity-centered perspective of soft power. The paper concludes with implications of a humanity-centered perspective of soft power for public diplomacy's global mandate.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.233-239
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• 2005

In this paper, a new conceptual circuit configuration of a 3-phase voltage source, soft switching AC-DC-AC converter using an IGBT module, which has one ARCPL circuit and one ARDCL circuit, is presented. In actuality, the ARCPL circuit is applied in the 3-phase voltage source rectifier side, and the ARDCL circuit is in the inverter side. And more, each power semiconductor device has a novel clamp snubber circuit, which can save the power semiconductor device from voltage and current across each power device. The proposed soft switching circuits have only two active power semiconductor devices. These ARCPL and ARDCL circuits consist of fewer parts than the conventional soft switching circuit. Furthermore, the proposed 3-phase voltage source soft switching AC-DC-AC power conversion system needs no additional sensor for complete soft switching as compared with the conventional 3-phase voltage source AC-DC-AC power conversion system. In addition to this, these soft switching circuits operate only once in one sampling term. Therefore, the power conversion efficiency of the proposed AC-DC-AC converter system will get higher than a conventional soft switching converter system because of the reduced ARCPL and ARDCL circuit losses. The operation timing and terms for ARDCL and ARCPL circuits are calculated and controlled by the smoothing DC capacitor voltage and the output AC current. Using this control, the loss of the soft switching circuits are reduced owing to reduced resonant inductor current in ARCPL and ARDCL circuits as compared with the conventional controlled soft switching power conversion system. The operating performances of proposed soft switching AC-DC-AC converter treated here are evaluated on the basis of experimental results in a 50kVA setup in this paper. As a result of experiment on the 50kVA system, it was confirmed that the proposed circuit could reduce conduction noise below 10 MHz and improve the conversion efficiency from 88. 5% to 90.5%, when compared with the hard switching circuit.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.231-234
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• 2003

This paper presents a novel high frequency transformer linked full-bridge type soft-switching phase-shift PWM control scheme DC-DC power converter, which can be used as power conditioner fur small-scale fuel cell power generation system. Using full-bridge soft-switching DC-DC converter topology makes possible to use low voltage high performance MOSFETs to achieve high efficiency of the power conditioner. A tapped inductor filter is implemented in the proposed soft-switching converter topology to achieve soft-switching PWM constant high frequency operation for a wide load variation range. to minimize circulating and idling currents without using additional resonant circuit and auxiliary power switching devices. The practical effectiveness of the proposed soft-switching DC-DC converter is verified in laboratory level experiment with 1 kW 100kHz breadboard setup using power MOSFETs. Actual efficiency of 94-96$\%$ is obtained for the wide load range

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2006

In this paper, a novel prototype of auxiliary switched capacitor assisted voltage source soft switching PWM Single-Ended Push Pull (SEPP) series capacitor compensated load resonant inverter with two auxiliary edge resonant lossless inductor snubbers is proposed and discussed for small scale consumer high-frequency induction heating (IH) appliances. The operation principle of this inverter is described by using switching mode equivalent circuits. The newly developed multi resonant high-frequency inverter using trench gate IGBTs can regulate its output AC power via constant frequency edge-resonant associated soft switching commutation by using an asymmetrical PWM control or duty cycle control scheme. The brand-new consumer IH products which use the newly proposed edge-resonant soft switching PWM-SEPP type series load resonant high-frequency inverters are evaluated using power regulation characteristics, actual efficiency vs. duty cycle and input power vs. actual efficiency characteristics. Their operating performance compared with some conventional soft switching high-frequency inverters for IH appliances is discussed on the basis of simulation and experimental results. The practical effectiveness of the newly proposed soft switching PWM SEPP series load resonant inverter is verified from an application point of view as being suitable for consumer high-frequency IH appliances.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2003.07b
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• pp.507-510
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• 2003

This paper presents a novel prototype of tile three-phase bridge power block module type a auxiliary resonant AC link snubber circuit, which is effectively used for the three-phase voltage source type sinewave soft switching PWM inverter using IGBTs. Its operating principle Is described for current source load model, along with its practical design approach based on the simulation data. The performance evaluation of the three-phase voltage source type snewave soft switching PWM inverter incorporating a single three-phase bridge mo여le of active auxiliary resonant AC link snubber treated here Is illustrated, which is concerned with power duality efficiency power loss analysis. This inverter is discussed as compared with those of tile three-phase voltage source type sinewave hard switching PWM inverter. The power loss analysis of this soft switching PWM Inverter using IGBT power modules is evaluated on the basis of the measured v-i characteristics and switching power losses of IGBT, and antiparaliel diodes. The practical effectiveness of this inverter is proven by the power loss analysis for distributed power supply.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2005

This paper presents a novel prototype of an active auxiliary quasi-resonant snubber(Auxiliary Quasi-Resonant Commutation Block-Link; ARCB)-assisted three phase voltage source soft switching space voltage vector modulated PFC rectifier, which uses Zero Voltage Soft Switching (ZVS) commutation. The operating principles of this digitally-controlled three phase soft switching PWM-PFC rectifier system with an instantaneous power feedback scheme are illustrated and its steady-state performance is evaluated using computer-aided simulation analysis.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.5-26
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• 2018

Joseph S. Nye defined soft power as the power of attraction to affect the behavior of other states through the use of non-coercive instruments including culture, political values and foreign policy. Over the last two decades, environmental issues have grown in importance on the international agenda and become critical components of states' foreign policy-making. This paper aims to analyze environmental foreign policy as a soft power instrument focusing on two major rising powers: China and India. Traditionally, China and India had been reluctant to make any commitments in the field. However, they have shown greater willingness to act in global environmental governance in the past decade. They started playing more active roles in global climate change negotiations and supported a number of initiatives. Their current rise in global environmental governance has even been praised by the international community as the Paris agreement case demonstrated. This study evaluates China's and India's recent efforts in global environmental governance with a focus on climate change negotiations linking their constructive position to their soft power potential. It is argued that environmental issues are used by these two states as foreign policy strategy to gain more influence in international politics. This study finds out that China's climate-related environmental diplomacy has been more ambitious than that of India and thus has been closer to fulfill its potential as a soft power asset.