• Strategy21
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• s.37
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• pp.177-192
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• 2015

The Chinese government portrays the One Belt One Road Initiative (BRI) and South Korea President Park Geun-hae's Eurasia Initiative as a win-win opportunity which will hurt nobody's interests, but some South Korean commentators have interpreted it as much more than just a trade and development deal: they focus on the geopolitical implications and the possibility that the balance of power in Asia will be disturbed. South Korea depends upon its maritime-oriented Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC) in focusing on its alliance with the US to deter North Korean threats and explore its export-based economic growth and development, and yet cannot afford to be left out of these initiatives which could transform the economic and logistical linkage between South Korea and Europe. Given its negative reception by the some pundits, however, South Korea should be more precautious for expressing only full-fledged supports for the BRI and Eurasia Initiative. Opponents of these two initiatives doubt that its putative benefits can be realized, at least in the short term, arguing that creating the necessary rail interconnections may be too costly.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.648-655
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• 2016

As the FTAs' implementations are accelerated, an Ex-post assessment, such as an analysis of the tariff schedule and agricultural trade has been emerging as an important national issue for an agricultural sector Korea-EU FTA, which was to be implemented in the five years from July 2016 as one of the giant FTA. The purpose of this study was to determine the demand of an ex-post assessment on agricultural sector as a trade negotiation procedural law. In addition, by providing policy direction for the agricultural policy part requiring amendments and supplements through ex-post assessment, the conflicting arguments between agricultural and non-agricultural sector can be evaluated more objectively. The current evaluation method on the economic impact ex-post assessment of a FTA is generally compared using the change in trade balance before and after the time of FTA implementation. On the other hand, this comparison cannot be said to be the pure FTA effects and objective, tightening economic impact assessment of the FTA in all combined situations, such as the effects of exchange rates and international macroeconomic changes and climate change & occurrence of pests. Over the last 4 years, however, Korea-EU FTA's total accumulated agricultural GDP loss was measured to be 2,178 billion by these research attempts with dynamic analysis as ex-post assessment methodology. The greatest impact was mainly livestock and pork followed by cereals and vegetables. In addition, this research is expected to contribute to policy evaluations in the future.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.691-699
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• 2020

South Korea's available water resources per capita is very small compared to global average as there is a high population on small land. Thus, it is imperative to secure water resources for the safe livelihood of the citizens. As an advanced, industrialized country, South Korean economic dependence on agricultural has greatly lowered. Unless South Korea utilizes foreign water resources, it is impossible to provide agricultural and livestock products the same as current levels. However, virtual water-related research in South Korea is still inadequate. When establishing the water resources plan, it does not consider the international trade of virtual water. This research aims to solve this issue by analyzing the international virtual water trends focusing on South Korea. Consequently, the export and import of virtual water trade was identified according to country and item for 248 countries and South Korea. According to the results, South Korea's agricultural and livestock virtual water has much higher imports than exports, which outputs with agricultural by-products being the main import. In 2018, South Korea imported 72.2 billion ㎥, which is 29 times the exported amount of 2.5 billion ㎥. The research results can be used as baseline data for establishing the national water resources plan in the future.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.57
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• pp.283-303
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• 2013

When a trade conflict arises related to an officially supported export credit programme, The World Trade Organization(WTO), decides on whether the programme is a forbidden subsidy stipulated in the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures(the ASCM Agreement). Korea was taken to the WTO panel two times for the export credit programme. One is the semiconductor case in 2002 and the other was the shipbuilding disputes in 2004. And, In 2012, the U.S. Commerce Department ruled K-SURE's export insurance for Korean refrigerator manufacturers as a forbidden subsidy even if the case was not taken to the WTO. This paper examines the significance of export credit programmes on the WTO ASCM Agreement and discusses how to operate these programmes so they would not infringe upon the Agreement by analyzing the actual cases of WTO subsidy conflicts that involved Korean enterprises in relation to export credit programmes for the purpose of determining the related issues and impacts. From this research the results were as follows: First, on whether export credit is a prohibited subsidy, the deciding factor was whether a benefit has been conferred to the beneficiary. On the presence of a benefit, the WTO panel used market benchmarks as the main criteria. Thus, official export credit agencies(ECAs) should be careful not to provide export credit support which had been granted to the beneficiary at better than market terms. Second, in the case of export credit, the special status of ECA as a public body receiving government support itself does not constitute a subsidy. However, caution must be taken not to provide export credit that may lead to WTO ASCM subsidy conflicts involving a certain exporter or industry by setting up clear and valid regulations and fair work processes in the operation of export credit programmes. Third, item (j) of Annex I cannot be interpreted reversely as this item is for interpreting the presence of a prohibited subsidy, not the presence of a benefit. Thus, an export credit program that confers a financial contribution, a benefit and specificity, could qualify as a prohibited subsidy. Fourth, ECAs not only have to maintain long-term account balance but also introduce additional measures to meet this long-term balance such as a clear and systematic premium system. Finally, export credit programmes that are not defined in item (j) of Annex I of the ASCM Agreement would not deemed as an prohibited export subsidy as long as the continued support of the programmes are not being forced.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.701-708
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• 2014

This study is aimed to obtain the influence of port hinterlands on container cargo volumes of Incheon port using System Dynamics(SD). Also, macro economic index such as exchange rates(US dollar), balance of current account, capital balance, Japan trade, China trade, export unit value index, import unit value index, total turnover of Incheon port were used as the factors that influence container cargo volumes of Incheon port. Moreover micro index regarding port hinterlands' operating companies such as total sales, rental fee, number of employees were introduced in the simulation model. In order to measure accuracy of the simulation, this study implemented MAPE analysis. And after the implementation, the simulation was decided as a much more accurate model because MAPE value was calculated to be within 10%. This study respectively examined factors using the sensitivity analysis. As a result, in terms of the effects on cargo volume in Incheon Port, the factor named 'cargo volumes of port hinterlands' operating companies' is most significant. And increasing the rental fee of hinterland was resulted in decreasing the cargo volumes of Incheon port.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.58
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• pp.237-263
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• 2013

Traditionally, a L/C (letter of credit) has been known as a relatively low risk method of payment. This is why L/C has been used in international trade. However, L/C has a number of weak points such as high cost, long processing time, and complicated documents. Using an electronic L/C is one way to solve those weak points. In Korea, there are two types of electronic L/C. One is the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) based L/C and the other one is the XML (Extensible Markup Language) based L/C. The former, established in 1990's, is sent from banks to the beneficiary solely through VAN (Value Added Network, KTNET) operators. On the other hand the latter, started in 2005, is sent from banks to KFTC (Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute) for management of the L/C balance, as well as to KTNET. So far, paper L/C and EDI based L/C have been used overwhelmingly instead of XML based L/C in spite of the aforesaid disadvantages. In this paper, the authors examined empirically why the users of electronic L/C were reluctant to use XML based L/C. The results are as follows. First, the users of paper L/C were more dissatisfied than the users of electronic L/C due to many factors such as cost, the time required, and information reuse. Second, the users who have more experience with XML based L/C wanted to adopt integrated management with EDI based L/C more than the users who had not experienced XML based L/C. Third, the users who had used more than one form of L/C wanted to adopt integrated management to EDI and XML based L/C more than the users who had only used one form of L/C. Therefore, the authority for electronic L/C should consider a change of the policy from the XML based electronic L/C oriented to integrated management of the various types of L/C.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.77-97
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• 2010

Recently, countries on the Caspian Sea were had heavily interested due to instability of international resource market. These countries having been developed basing on energy exports, especially Kazakhstan have drastically grown during a decades. However economy, heavily relied on the exports of energy, is influenced on fluctuation in the international energy price as well as sometimes exposed at Dutch disease. These days, Kazakhstan, increased trade and investment with Korea, has been on the rise as new supplier for energy. Therefore, economic change in Kazakhstan can be an important issue. In this paper, we analyze relations among oil price, interest rate, and real exchange rate during sample period from January 1999 to December 2008 expanding Balasa-Samuelson model. Empirical results present that oil price, interest rate, and real exchange rate mutually keep their balance. Eventually, we find out Kazakhstan has exposed at Dutch disease since oil price and interest rate have negative impacts on real exchange rate respectively.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.83-126
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• 2023

The revenue histogram of venture businesses is shifting from bell-shaped normal distribution to power-law distribution, which implies that the fitness landscape of the venture businesses ecosystem is changing to be more rugged terrain. We argue that the firm should adopt both exploitation (fast follower) and exploration (or first mover) strategies not to get stuck in local maxima in the rugged fitness landscape from the complex system perspective. By designing and performing agent-based modeling simulation experiments which consist of three types of agents (new technologies, entrepreneurs, and consumers), we demonstrated that the ambidexterity strategy showed the highest performance score in three of four different environment except 'Fast Widening' case where the exploitation strategy showed the highest performance score under low technology appropriation and fast disruptive technology development speed. By investigating the financial and other statistics of 617 top venture businesses who have earned 100B won or higher annual revenue, we concluded that 82% and 9% of firms are bent on the exploitation and exploration strategy.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.3-29
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transmission of domestic and foreign real and monetary disturbances into a small country with heavy imports of intermediate goods, and to analyze how the wage indexation in a small country affects the transmission of foreign disturbances into a small country. We consider the two countries, a small country and the rest of the world, two goods, and rational expectations world model under flexible exchange rate system with perfect capital mobility. We find out that foreign disturbances are transmitted into a small country through the price channel, the foreign output multiplier channel, and the nominal interest rate channel, and the foreign real balance channel. We have conducted an empirical investigation by using the Korean data for a small country and the U.S. data for a large country to see how real and monetary disturbances originating from the US affects the Korean economy with wage indexation.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.583-595
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• 2010

Virtual water is defined as the volume of water to produce commodities and provide services, which has been developed by Tony Allan since the early 1990s. This research aims to evaluate a volume of virtual water trade in Korea from 1998 to 2007 by applying the evaluation method of unit virtual water volume to agricultural, live stock and industrial products, which is developed by Chapagain and Hoekstra (2004). Also, the concept of water footprint is deployed to quantify the volume of virtual water trade between countries. The study attempts to assess the appropriateness of the evaluation method of unit virtual water volume by employing the method to calculate the total amount of agricultural products in Korea and comparing this with the amount of agricultural water demand in the Korea Water Vision 2006. The research outcome shows that Korea has a net virtual water import of 32 billion $m^3$ on average in the form of agricultural, live stock and industrial commodities whose volume gradually increases. The gap between the volume of virtual water import of agricultural and live stock commodities and the total volume of agricultural water use reaches approximately 600 million $m^3$. This figure can be negligible considering the total volume of water demand in Korea, around 16 billion $m^3$, which demonstrates the validity of the evaluation method in terms of analyzing water balance.