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In the South Korean society, there are ongoing debates over North Korea¡¯s change. The conservatives and the progressives in South Korean society have conflicting views on this issue. The progressives hold that North Korea has changed significantly, whereas the conservatives argue that it has not changed fundamentally. To end futile and divisive debates over North Korea¡¯s change and to build a national consensus on the Republic of Korea¡¯s engagement policy of national reconciliation and cooperation with the DPRK, it is important to operationally define the concept of North Korea¡¯s change and establish objective criteria for its measurement. The authors of this paper have three specific objectives: (1) to analyze ROK’s engagement policy toward North Korea as a catalyst for North Korea’s change; (2) to set up objective criteria for evaluating North Korea¡¯s change; and (3) to make policy recommendations for constructive inter-Korean relations. The authors attempt to operationalize the concept of North Korea’s change to avoid confusion about North Korea’s change. A clear distinction needs to be made between changes in the North Korean-style socialist system and changes in North Korean leadership¡¯s thinking and policy. We do not expect North Korea will change its socialist system in the short run because North Korean leadership fears a sudden systemic change, which would threaten the very survival of its own system. In this paper we attempt to analyze North Korea’s changes in terms of thinking and policy. We argue that North Korea’s changes in thinking and policy would eventually bring about its systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resurgence of democracies in non-Western world has been the global phenomenon since the mid 1970s. By now democracy has been consolidated in some countries, but some other new democracies remain precarious and unconsolidated. Transitions to democracy began with the institutional rearrangement of what Dahl called ¡*contestation¡± and ¡*participation¡±. Free, fair, and regular elections were introduced to realize these procedural conditions of democracy. Elections, however, did not bring democracy by default. South Korean experiment of democracy has been successful in terms of the introduction and the establishment of the formal and procedural features of democracy. But further democratization is stagnant and limited by the biased pluralism in the civil society. Regionalism and weak working class have been the two major sources of limited pluralism, which in turn makes the majority rule undemocratic in South Korea. This paper will discuss the possibility of the development of pluralism by tracing the recent changes in the social cleavage structure, regionalism, class cleavage, post-material and generation, and ideology. To do this the paper employs some basic statistical analyses of crosstabulation and simple regression. The survey data was prepare by the Korean Association of Party Studies and JoongAng Ilbo in South Korea in January, 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about economic crises is presented which is prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, in Toronto, Ontario, from September 3-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the relationship between the state and market actors, state capacity to manage market fluctuations and bargain effectively with market actors, and examples from the Korean and Argentina experiences in the 1990s.

Bioethical issues have become one of the significant policy issues, but there is a general lack of academic studies in political science to approach the issue—especially, addressing how the governance for such issue has been (and is) established. This paper will discuss the process of establishing governance for regulating bioethical issues, and will use South Korea, which passed "Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Act of 2003" in National Assembly, as the primary case study. The case will examine the three conditions that are required in establishing bioethical governance: (1) technological advancement, (2) issue-framing, and (3) political interest. Technological advancement, e.g., cloning, is a precondition to require regulations of technology. This precondition becomes effective in making bioethical governance when non-governmental organizations (NGOs) emphasize particular issues over the technology advancement. The bioethical governance, however, is completed only when it is related to the political interest of legislators and governmental officials. Finally, this paper will show how these conditions can be applied to other biotechnological issues, such as genetically modified (GM) food issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the politics of banking reform in developing countries during the 1990s. Electoral competition helps to explain whether countries were likely to implement regulatory reforms after banking crises. The potential for wide swings in electoral support in highly competitive democracies should favor consumers, who benefit from reforms, and harm vested producer groups that prefer forbearance. Where electoral competition is muted, producer groups - such as a bankers' coalition - should benefit more than consumers given their economic and political power. To evaluate these arguments, this paper examines patterns of post-crisis regulatory reform implementation in Mexico, Venezuela, and South Korea during the 1990s. Within and cross-country evidence is consistent with the arguments. Surprisingly, it indicates that in countries with low levels of intra-party electoral competition, i.e. those with disciplined political parties, governments engaged in regulatory forbearance even with fierce inter-party competition. Crony financial capitalism seems less likely in multiparty settings with undisciplined parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have highlighted Japan and South Korea as distinctive models of the 'developmental state', which can share common features in terms of the condensed economic development. The close strategic relationship between the bureaucratic government and big business has been often cited as one of many similarities in the way the two countries pursued rapid economic growth. Another trend in comparing modern economies of Korea and Japan calls attention to the state's embedded autonomy in directing industrial transformation. Overall, scholarly interest in the comparison of modernization in the two Asian countries have been, hitherto, limited to economic and political development, rather than social relations laid behind the political economy of the postwar development. Indeed, comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in the historical patterns of the emergence of 'systems of interest intermediation' in dealing with labor across Japan and Korea is a relatively unexploited topic. Little discussion of the comparison of national bargaining arrangements among major interest groups and the government in these two countries has flowed into print. Although some Japanese pioneering works introduce a corporatist account for its postwar labor relations and a historical analysis of negotiation characteristics of social contracts, they all simply classify the Japanese case as an anomaly with the emphasis on the state's deliberate management of weak labor forces. Likewise, the literature related to Korea's labor politics and civil society tends to emphasize the uniqueness embedded in its social and industrial relations - the confrontation between 'strong state and contentious society'. Thus, the poverty of comparative perspective in this area is bound to create the uniqueness as an exclusive dimension to delineate the political and social landscape of Korean and Japanese industrial relations.Joining a comparative study of corporatist governance in Japan and Korea to a review of archival data on recent changes in their industrial relations, this paper will assess different paths of labor's role in the corporatist negotiation of adjustment in their changing societies, and expand the comparative utility of the corporatist thesis to its East Asian variants. To this end, a profile of state-society relations will be advanced as a parameter to determine the degree of organized labor, ranging from confrontation to cooperation, in relation to the state and capital. A shift in the magnitude of organized labor results in transforming the tripartite pattern of interest negotiation, and the state, in turn, would design new institutional incentives to neutralize labor in civil society or embrace capital in big business. What must be explained in this paper is the two distinctive modes of Asian corporatism varying according to organized power of labor unions, under the assumption that the tripartite negotiation in Korea, in which the state faced strong challenges from organized labor, can be conceptualized as 'corporatism without capital', whereas Japan's industrial relations have been widely known as 'corporatism without labor'. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan and South Korea have historically been considered strong and rather autonomous states, particularly in the realms of foreign and defense policy. Recently, however, both governments have faced varying degrees of public criticism concerning the kidnappings of their citizens by North Korea (DPRK) and their policies toward the North. Theories of state autonomy in decision-making predict that the groups articulating such public demands should have minimal influence over policy-making. Yet, particularly since September 2002 when Kim Jong-Il admitted that the DPRK had abducted thirteen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, the organization of Japanese abductees' families has gained significant political influence. Though the analogous association in South Korea represents the bereaved of a much larger group of abductees, that group has not been able to gain equivalent access to and influence over policy-making processes in the South. Why have these groups had such different degrees of success in influencing their governments' policies concerning the abductees and toward the DPRK? This paper uses the lens of the abductions issue to shed light on the nature of state-society relations and interest mediation in these two countries. This project analyzes the variations in success among advocacy groups by focusing on a subcategory advocacy groups: victims' organizations. These are groups of individuals who explicitly blame the deliberate actions or the negligence of their own government or another state for the physical harm they have suffered. By focusing on how changes in domestic political structures have altered the opportunity structure that victims' family associations face, this paper analyzes what the unusual case of the abductee saga reveals about broader questions of institutional change, victims' advocacy, and civil society's role at the intersection of domestic and international politics in Japan and South Korea. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the viewpoint of the US, there is an interesting puzzle in the current North Korean nuclear crisis. That is, judging from public reactions, Americans seems to be much more threatened by North Korean nuclear weapons lying thousands of miles away than South Koreans just 20 or 30 miles from them. Indeed, whenever North Korea escalates its brinkmanship, the stark contrast between the alarm it produces in Washington and the cool response in Seoul highlights the ever-changing attitude of South Koreans who increasingly refuse to see North Korea as their enemy. The main goal of this paper is to bring historical dimension to recent changes in the discursive construction of the image of North Korea among South Koreans. The Korean War (1950-1953) left deep scars between the two Koreas along with enormous social costs and human tragedies. Not surprisingly, there was little room for co-existence, let alone reconciliation, between them. As a result, North Korea was often portrayed as "a dangerous wolf" lurking in the darkness. By the early 1990s, however, it was obvious that the North Korean communist experiment had failed. In the meantime, South Korea had achieved dual goals of democratization and economic development. Under such circumstances, South Korea was able to take a more generous attitude towards its northern "half." That is, North Korea was increasingly described not so much as a dangerous threat as a part of the same nation in desperate need of help from its "southern brother." The data for this paper come from official textbooks for the elementary education in South Korea. Elementary education (grades one to six) is mandatory in South Korea where the government author, authorizes and sponsors the contents of the textbooks so that the entire population studies the same textbook. Since the end of the Korean War, there have been seven textbook reforms in South Korea. By analyzing the major characteristics of these different versions of textbooks over time, we will be able to understand how South Koreans have been imagining their northern neighbor differently, from "a dangerous wolf" who is trying to attack at any moment to "our blood brother" who needs to be embraced for the coming unification. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes policies to raise the age of retirement in the period from 1995 to 2005 in three industrialized countries: Canada, Germany and South Korea. Over the next five decades, the populations of advanced industrialized countries are expected to age. As a result, governments are confronted with important policy challenges: how to provide income security, and how to cover large increases in pension spending. Retirement age increases are one of the key policy responses to these challenges, since raising the average pension age by only 2 or 3 years would enable governments to finance most of the costs of population aging. In this paper, we will analyze cross-national differences in governmental policies designed to raise the age of retirement, such as increases in statutory retirement ages, reductions of the generosity of benefits or closure of the pathways to early retirement. In order to explain differences among Canada, Germany and South Korea, we focus on the roles of the state, market and the family in pension provision and on the role of pension policy legacies. The three countries differ significantly along these dimensions: in Canada, the market plays a key role, in Germany, the state, and in South Korea, the family. In addition, they differ with regards to eligibility conditions, benefit levels and the existence of pathways to early retirement. We argue that these differences significantly conditioned the policy choices that governments made. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting in parliaments is a central process in representative democracies, and most parliaments have had at least some recorded ('roll-call') votes since they were first elected. Nevertheless, research on parliamentary voting has lagged behind research on other democratic processes, such as mass electoral behaviour. Part of this can be explained by a widely-held, yet mistaken, view amongst political scientists that studying voting in most parliaments is rather pointless because party cohesion is so high. Another reason is that parliamentary voting data are costly to use, either because they have to be entered by hand or because it requires a super computer to analyse more than a handful of votes. As a result, research on parliamentary voting focussed first on the U.S. Congress, where party cohesion is comparatively low, data is readily available, and where political scientists had access to super computers. Since the mid 1990s, however, there has been an explosion of research on voting in parliaments other the U.S. Congress. This was in large part due to the emergence of a new and easily-useable geometric scaling technology developed by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, known as NOMINATE. This new technology also coincided with the increased availability of voting data from other parliaments as a result of the internet and the development of computer power, which has enabled desktop computers to apply scaling technologies to very large voting matrices.What we do in this paper is contribute to this new research agenda by undertaking a spatial analysis of voting in the Korean National Assembly (KNA). This research is innovative for several reasons. Roll-call votes (called 'electronic votes' in the KNA) were first introduced in the KNA in March 1999, and this paper is the first attempt to study behaviour in these votes in detail. In addition, as far as we know, this is the first spatial analysis of roll-call voting in an Asian parliament. This is also one of the few analyses of parliamentary voting in an emerging democracy, since most existing work has focused on parliamentary behaviour in more established democracies in North America, Europe, or South America. And, the institutional context of the KNA provides an interesting laboratory for investigating some generalisable theoretical and methodological issues related to voting in parliaments.This paper starts with several research questions. At an empirical level, we aim to 'discover' the main dimensions of conflict in the KNA, the relative locations of the parties and individual KNA members, and how these dimensions and locations change between the 16th and 17th KNA. At a theoretical level, we investigate the impact of three types of institutions on parliamentary voting: parties, the electoral system, and agenda-setting powers. Finally, at a methodological level, we assess which of two geometric scaling methods, NOMINATE and Optimal Classification, works best when a high proportion of votes are 'lop-sided', in what Simon Jackman would call an 'extreme' roll-call setting (Jackman, 2005).The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In section two we discuss some general theoretical issues related to how exogenous preferences of parliamentarians translate into a 'revealed' behaviour space. In section three we provide some background on elections and parties in South Korea. In section four we present the results from applying NOMINATE and Optimal Classification to the KNA. In section five we use a regression analysis to look at the exogenous ideological and institutional determinants of voting in the KNA. Finally, section six contains a short conclusion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains why democratization destabilizes some asymmetric alliances more than others. I argue that democratization has the potential to destabilize asymmetric alliances because it unleashes a powerful force of nationalism in the political arena. Nationalist elites who come to power in democratizing states view military dependence and resultant foreign influence as a humiliating encroachment of sovereignty. Therefore, they demand an autonomous, equal partnership often in disregard of power disparity within the alliance. The major ally in turn resents their seemingly ungrateful demands and unreasonable policies, and therefore shows a decreased interest in the alliance. As a result of these frictions, the alliance becomes less stable. Democratization, however, does not evenly affect asymmetric alliances because it occurs in different threat environments and takes divergent paths. These factors mitigate or amplify the destructive potential of nationalist sentiments that democratization unleashes. This paper tests these arguments by analyzing three asymmetric alliances in which a weaker member democratized since the late 1980s: U.S. alignments with South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To South Korea, both industrialization and informatization are essentially the processes of integrating into the global market economy. Becoming a part of global market economy necessarily changes the status quo to which domestic political economic actors and systems have to adjust themselves. Located in-between the international and domestic political economies, the state will try to reduce any negative effects, and/or to maximize potential benefits of this integrating process. The role played by the state in this process is what I call ?the state as a buffer? between domestic and international political economies. It is called ?buffering? because of two reasons. First, the state basically ?buffers? the impacts from outside world upon its national economy and society. Second, structural adjustments on the part of domestic political economy to the changing outside world requires quite a long time, which may be comparable to the process of buffering in computers and networks to outside signals and inputs. The speed, scope, and outcome of ?buffering? may vary from country to country according to such variables as the capacity and autonomy of the state, the nature and impacts of global factors upon domestic political economy and vice versa, domestic and international political economic structures, the legacy of state intervention into economy and society, the accessibility and capabilities of IT networks and industries, and so on. By comparing industrialization and informatization in Korea, this paper will try to explain the structural, institutional, and functional conditions of a specific type of ?the buffer state? as shown in Korea in the era of the knowledge-based global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although in the long term, democratization is expected to exert pacifying effects on international relations, scholars have argued that conflict is more likely during democratic transitions. They argue that politicians in democratizing states are more likely to make jingoistic appeals, and coalitions of political, business, and/or military leaders are likely to form and to ?logroll? for military buildups and other destabilizing policies. This proposition has great significance for East Asia, which faces two potential political transitions: the democratization of China, and Korean unification. This paper tests a theory of democratization and conflict in the cases of three previous East Asian political transitions: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. I test not only for the occurrence of conflict, but also for the presence of the predicted mechanisms through which conflict occurs (nationalistic appeals and logrolling). I find that although there is some evidence of nationalistic posturing that is consistent with the theory?s predictions, for the most part, evidence from these cases does not support the theory. Leaders did not make jingoistic appeals; they were more likely to preach stability. Furthermore, I find that the public, the military, and the business community do have substantial influence over policy makers, but do not find that these groups advocated military buildups or offensive military strategies. This study casts doubt on the relevance of the ?democratization and war? thesis for future East Asian political transitions; it finds support for theories in the liberal school of international relations, including the beneficial effects of democratization, policies of engagement, and economic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the rise and fall of the governing party during the authoritarin rule of Park Chung Hee in South Korea. I will explore the questions including: How and why did the party survive for such a long time? What role did the party play for the regime and for Park? Why did the party eventually fall to periphery within the regime despite its longevity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes political party systems(or the effective number of parties)in terms of votes at the basic unit of competition in the first democratic elections before and after authoritarian interlude in South Korea and Indonesia. Specifically, it deals with the 1960 and 1988 Korean parliamentary elections, and the 1955 and 1999 Indonesian parliamentary elections. This historical comparative and cross-sectional analysis intends to test the key hypotheses in the comparative literature on political party systems:Duverger’s law and hypothesis, Taagepera and Shugart’s generalized Duverger’s rule, Cox’s M+1 rule and interaction hypothesis. I find, first, that bipartism is the exception rather than the rule even under simple and pure plurality rule, which implies that the thesis of strategic voting is misleading. Second, the interaction of high social diversity and weak electoral structure does not necessarily increase the effective number of parties(or candidates). Third, the immediate and most crucial determinant of political party systems is the winner’s(leading political party’s) vote share, regardless of electoral systems or district magnitude. More precisely, the effective number of parties is an inverse function of the winner’s vote share. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a process-centered perspective to empirically evaluating the Korean historical experiment in the late 1980?’s with a division of government power into opposing parties. Examination of various empirical indicators on legislative process detects a positive result under the divided government. During this period, Korean legislature acquired a relatively active role in initiating legislative agenda and no longer acquiescently accepted policy ideas from executive branch. National Assembly also amplified its voice on budget issues and stepped up efforts to oversee executive agencies. The parliamentary ascendancy helped restore a power balance between government branches. Unfortunately, this experience was short-lived by the infamous Three Parties Merger. Korean political history since testifies a persistent imbalance of power between executive and legislative branches. Here lies a historical lesson that a divided rule of government by rival parties might be a good recipe in Korea for alleviating a hegemonic executive and institutionalizing a balanced democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the new left in Taiwan and South Korea and the renewed left in Brazil and Chile. I contend that the left can no longer best understood in terms of antiquated sociological or economic categories. The new left in East Asia and Latin America is a political project and its politics are embedded in the processes of democratic transition. My argument is simple: (i) Democratization, a variable process of change, leads to different patterns of new left organization. (ii) Meanwhile, the introduction of democracy, a form of governance with universally shared features (irrespective of how the transition to democracy took place), promotes the moderation of the new left across all four cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Less than four weeks after Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, Park Chung Hee did the same in South Korea. In each case, incumbent presidents with extensive executive authority claimed that harsh measures were necessary to defend their countries against a range of challenges and promote democratic foundations appropriate to national circumstances. Marcos and Park both enjoyed a strong base of power, but at the same time feared popular electoral rivals and made constitutional changes ensuring their continuance in office. The authoritarian regimes that emerged were based on a high concentration of personal authority and power, and a relatively weak role for the ruling political party. Despite these similarities, the two regimes put in place in late 1972 displayed enormous divergence in both character and outcome. Given very distinct historical foundations, the Park dictatorship was built upon a far more institutionalized civilian and military bureaucracy than was the Marcos dictatorship. Personal goals also distinguish the two dictators: while Park was obsessed with national goals of economic development, Marcos was far more concerned with promoting the economic success of his family and close associates. Through an examination of both divergent processes of state formation as well as the dynamics of each regime, this paper explores why Park’s authoritarianism?unlike that of Marcos?did not degenerate into a morass of crony capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream thinking about democratization asserts that the establishment of free and fair elections forces political actors to compete for votes. Such competition disciplines parties and makes elected leaders respond to popular demands. However, political elites fight not just within the electoral arena but also over terms of entry into that arena. This paper examines struggle over electoral struggle in South Korea, a country widely considered a successful new democracy. High politicians there have turned repeatedly to tools - including regulation through the state, exclusive party nominating practices, and partisan symbols that foster regional monopolies - that circumscribe electoral space. Conflict over access to electoral success has had a profound impact on parties and modes of electoral engagement. This pattern can be traced to the historical relationship between the state and elections, pre-democratic modes of electoral regulation, and the controlled nature of the democratic transition. South Korea democratized, but directly into a state of democratic dysfunction. This conclusion offers a starting point for reflecting on the underappreciated tension between institutions and functions in understandings of democracy that prevail in debates on democratization and political regimes. Since democratic institutions can operate differently in different places, theorization of democracy can be more sensitive to context. An alternative way of thinking about democratization would incorporate such theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratization has often gone hand in hand with decentralization, but how do the two processes relate to each other? To answer such questions one needs fine-grained data on decentralization, and these have been hard to come by in South East Asia. This paper provides a careful estimation of the formal authority of regional governments in five Southeast Asian countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand - on an annual basis from 1950 to 2010. We estimate nine dimensions of subnational authority and find wide variation both across countries and across time. We detect a close temporal relationship between democratization and decentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development and transformation of farm protectionism, in particular protection of rice farms, in Japan and Korea. While Japan fails to break with the status quo price distortionary and clientelistic farm policy that combines acreage control and pork barrel, Korea is successfully making a transition to direct payment to producers, which is commonly used in other advanced economies. Despite similarities such as the farm sector's loss of comparative advantage, preexisting outright price control schemes, electoral institutions, and strong farm lobbies, Korea has been more aggressive in trade liberalization in concluding FTAs with the US and EU than Japan has. It is shown that the strength of political parties which is a function of the constitutional structure systematically affected the divergent policy paths in Japan and Korea. In Japan, divided government and weak party cohesion in bicameral parliamentarism with strong and rural-biased upper house prevent prime minister from implementing more programmatic policy. On the other hand, elected in one nationwide constituency and limited to one-term, Korean president has the preferences and the capabilities to carry out policies that emphasize the national economy as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the various types of lobbies in Washington, D.C. scholars probably know less about the lobbies representing the interests of foreign nation than any category. There have been just a handful of studies that have examined the foreign lobbies with most of the work done of the Israeli lobby and the Old China Lobby of the 1950s and 1960s. Mearsheimer and Walt's 2007 book on The Israel Lobby produced a firestorm in American politics over whether that lobby had an undue influence on U.S. foreign policy. Other academic work has mentioned the Cuban, Armenian and Irish lobbies as particularly powerful. But, very little is known about the many lobbies in our capitol that represent foreign interests. Other than the Old China Lobby ((1920-1973) and a couple of studies of the Japan Lobby of the 1980s, Asian lobbies have been generally ignored. Very little is known about the lobbies that represent the rising powers of Asia: China, India and South Korea. Probably the biggest story of the past three decades has been the rise of China to great power status. Nations on the rise sooner or later understand that they need effective representation in American politics as the political, economic and security issues begin to mount in frequency and significance. In this paper, we focus on the history and the rise of three of these rising Asian lobbies: the New China Lobby, the India Lobby and the Korean Lobbies. We will close with a discussion on how the foreign nations' lobbies and the American ethnic lobbies work together to represent foreign national interests and what elements combine to make for a significant foreign lobby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of Korean reunification, enshrined in South Korea's constitution, could in principle be achieved in one of two ways: a confederation agreement between the South Korean government and the North Korean regime that preserves Northern elites, and a unilateral absorption of the North in which the North's population and territory would be directly incorporated into the South Korean political system. We posit a general theory of national reunification agreements that begins with the assumption that two regimes - one secure and one insecure - bargain over both a potential political settlement as well as for direct control of resources, and that this bargaining continues if the regimes merge via a confederation but ends if one absorbs the other. Confederation, which occurs when one regime offers a bargain and the other accepts it, both results from bargaining and shapes future bargaining. Our theory has several observable implications: reunification happens via confederation when the divided regimes are both stable, when they have similar political systems, when reunification would not change the weaker regime's ties to an outside ally, and when the stronger regime has a history of credible commitments to previous agreements with the weaker regime. Our theoretical logic explains why South Korea began to propose a confederation to the North from 1989 and why a confederation agreement will be unlikely to be made between the two sides. We conclude that the current South Korean approach appears moving from a policy of seeking confederation to one of preparing for absorption, but that absorption is a dangerous strategy. Therefore, the fundamental dilemma that South Korean governments have faced is the discrepancy between envisioning reunification and choosing available policy options. Earlier versions of parts of this paper were presented at the annual conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 22, 2010, and the annual conference of the International Council on Korean Studies, Washington, DC, September 18, 2009. We gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions on an earlier draft from Hugo Weegook Kim, John Merrill, Matt Murphy, and J.J. Suh, and research assistance from David Banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is government spending used strategically in the emergent Asian democracies of South Korea and Taiwan? As nations generally considered to have weathered democratization, a study of government spending in South Korea and Taiwan is instructive on how allocations may be used strategically without undermining democratization process. This paper evaluates government spending for South Korea and Taiwan and compares pre- and post-democratization patterns. Three interesting results point to the value of longitudinal analyses of individual nations to frame expectations on spending and underpin robust findings: First, defense spending increases in election years in both nations, but not social welfare spending. Second, democratization does not exert an effect independent of elections and legislative fragmentation. Third, government spending is a viable resource for party building; however, this spending has to be targeted at building the nation's or party's strengths rather than aimed at divisive politics. While some of the results appear contrary to the literature, they are consistent with the governing party's efforts to broaden electoral support in emergent democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling corruption is a difficult task for young democracies. Statistical studies show that only mature and stable democracies that are 40 or more years old are significantly less corrupt than autocracies. Young democracies, on the other hand, are on average no less corrupt than authoritarian regimes. This paper attempts to document the trend of decreasing corruption during the last decade in South Korea, a young democracy that has been known for its high level of corruption in spite of sustained economic growth. Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and World Bank Institute's Control of Corruption index, the most popularly used measures of perceived corruption, indicate that South Korea has been making little progress during the last decade. Examination of various available data from surveys of perceptions and experience of corruption reveals, however, that the incidence of petty corruption in public administration and election campaigns has substantially decreased over the last decade in South Korea. Also, there is some evidence that high-level political corruption has been decreasing. Overall, Korea seems to be making a remarkable success story in the control of corruption. This study illustrates low reliability of composite indexes of perceived corruption such as CPI and Control of Corruption for the purpose of trend analysis and the usefulness of data from surveys of experience of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the signing of the ROK-US Missile Note in 1979, South Korea's ballistic missile capability was constrained to a range of 180km with a payload of 300kg, until 2001, when the two parties finally reached an agreement to expand it to 300km with a 500kg payload. South Korea's acceptance of a curb on this attractive advanced weaponry is rather strange given much-publicized missile capability of North Korea. Despite the more than a half century-old alliance structure between South Korea and the US and the US security assurances, it is puzzling for Seoul to abstain from seeking its own missile capability fore more than twenty years amid growing dangers coming from North Korea's missile development efforts. This certainly demands plausible explanation. Yet as soon as the agreement was revised in 2001, Seoul spurted up to develop and upgrade its own missile capability. South Korea now possesses significant ballistic and cruise missile forces. The dramatic policy shift reflects both the changes in external security environment and the growth of domestic confidence in economy and politics. In this paper, I apply medium power theory to understand South Korea's unique position in the regional security environment and its foreign policy behaviors, focusing on its policy towards missile development. After extending the theoretical framework for a non-major's power foreign policy, I closely examine the development of the ballistic missiles in the Korean Peninsula. I interpret South Korea's long-time lack of missile development and its recent energetic efforts to upgrade and develop its missiles as a strategy dictated by South Korea's dual identity as a medium power in a global sense, which has recently found confidence and capability, and as a small state, within the context of its regional security situation. This conclusion carries policy implications for the future security environment in the region, including the ROK-US Alliance, and demonstrates the potential utility of medium-power foreign policy theory. Regardless of domestic political changes in South Korea, any debates regarding the future security relationships between South Korea and the US must take account of South Korea as a medium power ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains one of the central roles of alliance contracts, the prevention of undesirable military entanglement. The existing literature on alliances argues that entrapment—being dragged into a conflict over an ally's interest that one does not share—is a major concern for potential and actual alliance partners. After pointing out some problems with the concept of entrapment, I argue that states carefully design alliance contracts so that they prevent entrapment while not diminishing the value of alliances by preventing entanglement altogether. I present an analysis of the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions dataset (ver.3.0, 1815-2003) that establishes that factors which increase the risk of entrapment also tend to make alliance obligations conditional. Then, I conduct a comparative case study of U.S. alliances with South Korea, Japan, and Spain to show that states design and renegotiate alliances in order to reduce the risk of entrapment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using recent survey data, this paper aims to empirically investigate the state and source of Korean citizens' trust and confidence in the National Assembly. Roughly speaking, the National Assembly is trusted only by one out of ten citizens. Since the country's democratization, citizens' trust and confidence has been eroding. Presently, the National Assembly is the least trusted among the key public or private institutions. A cross-national comparison of liberal democracies in the world shows that only a few national legislatures are less trusted by their citizens than the Korean National Assembly. Furthermore, this study confirms the empirical validity of performance-based explanation about what factors generate citizens' trust and confidence in the National Assembly. At the aggregate level, an erosion of citizens' trustful attitude toward the legislature is matched by their decreased positive evaluation of the overall job performance by the legislature. At the individual level, a citizen's legislative trust and confidence depends mainly on his or her evaluation of the performance of the legislature itself, the executive interacting with it, or the democratic regime as a whole. Most Koreans pass an unfavorable judgment on the performance of the legislature, not because they think it is a simply idle institution but because politicians are seen to pursue their partisan interests too frantically within the institution. Given its drained reservoir of citizens' favorable attitudes toward it, the present National Assembly, even with its heightened constitutional status and emerging policy activism, will not be highly likely to serve as a reliable agent for facilitating democratic consolidation on Korean soil. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of science and technology policies upon information transfers. Such transfers are indicators of greater social returns, particularly when they flow between public and private research entities. The model presented here tests for whether government research and development (R&D) subsidization increases information flows in Korea and Taiwan. Using the unique KORTAI R&D dataset at a number of different specifications, it is shown that, at a general level, transfers are positively affected by the public funding programs in both countries. There are a number of differences between Korea and Taiwan, however, and future analysis on the East Asian developmental state must include institutions related to these funding programs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising anti-American sentiments in South Korea have recently been at the center of much discussion and analysis by scholars and pundits concerned about the deterioration of bilateral relations between the formerly staunch allies. Although differing in their diagnoses, most analyses agree that the current round of anti-Americanism in Korean politics is relatively new and unprecedented, shaped by a confluence of domestic and external factors. The election of President Roh Moo-hyun and his progressive cabinet has directly challenged all corners of Korean politics and society as well as conservative elites. The result has been the unleashing of fierce domestic debates on the future of Korean security, asking Koreans to choose either "alliance or self-reliance." This shift in Korean attitudes toward the U.S. is also seen as part of a new wave of anti-Americanism throughout the world, a global backlash against the hegemonic influence of the U.S. as the lone superpower with the end of the Cold War. Either attributed to a case of Korean exceptionalism or U.S. exceptionalism, the current trend of anti-Americanism in Korea is treated as a unique moment in history. In this paper, I argue instead that Korea's brand of anti-Americanism is actually a manifestation of anti-Great Power-ism, which is not new in the history of Korean politics. In fact, President Roh's election platform of finding autonomy and self-reliance demonstrates close parallels with the anti-Qing mobilization in turn-of-the-century Korea. Anti-Great Power-ism (anti-sadae) emerged as a potent tool of political mobilization in the late 19th century, when the newly created Reform/Enlightenment Party made their criticism of the existing policy of "revering Great Powers" (sadae) the centerpiece of their attack against the conservative establishment. Even though sadae was originally a pragmatic policy of accommodating the powerful Qing, marking a departure from a cultural-ideological emulation of Ming China, it was stigmatized during 19th century politics as subservient and Great Power-dependent. What we see then is the emergence and recurrence of anti-Great Power-ism as a powerful tool for political challengers in their mobilization against the established regime in Korea. By comparing the progressives' political mobilization processes in the late 19th century and in 2002-2006, I show that today's anti-Americanism is actually a continuation of anti-China-ism seen from a broader historical perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate South Korea's new trade strategy that revolves around free trade agreements (FTAs). More specifically, we address the following questions: (1) what has motivated South Korea's rush toward FTAs, departing from its traditional focus on multilateralism?; (2) what are the characteristics of South Korea's FTA strategy in terms of its partner selection, timing, and scope of agreements?; and (3) how has South Korea's FTA policymaking process evolved over the past ten years in terms of the interaction between the president, government bureaucracy, and societal veto players? We aregue that South Korea's FTA strategy has evolved primarily through a top-down policy mechanism that is centered on presidential leadership and government institutions. Under President Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), strong executive power and public support for neoliberal restructuring allowed the introduction of new FTA initiative. Under President Roh Moo-hyun (2003-Present), the Office of the Minister for Trade (OMT) has steadily institutionalized the idea and practice of promoting economic reform and strategic partnership through FTAs, thereby taking over the driver's seat from the president who currently suffers low popularity even among his once-loyal supporters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean security in the next fifty years will be closely intertwined with the future of two very important bilateral relationships: U.S.-Sino relations and Sino-Japanese relations. In some respects, North and South Korea will be bystanders working to position themselves favorably as these relationships unfold. However, for other aspects, the two Koreas may be important players in the future of these bilateral relationships. This paper will address the following questions. What are the possible directions of big power relations in East Asia in the next fifty years and what impact will these have on Korean security? How can North and South Korea influence these big power relationships to help ensure peace and stability in the region while protecting their interests? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Taiwanese and South Korean samples of the 2000-2004 Asian Barometer dataset, this paper confirms the Christian democracy hypothesis that Christianity (including Catholicism) contributes to democratization by indoctrinating democratic values and behaviors to their believers. However, the statistical analyses also support the religious market hypothesis that the logic of competition in pluralistic religious markets compels various religions to converge on dominant democratic values and behaviors within each country, although different religions and different countries continue to vary in the degrees and aspects of democratic commitment. These findings offer a more optimistic view for the prospect of non-Christian "religious democracies" than what the current scholarship proposes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, the U.S. and South Korea remained trustful and firm allies despite periodic frictions. In the post-Cold War era, U.S.-ROK relations have been undergoing qualitative changes, and mutual distrust, suspicion, and uncertainty now characterize their relationship. The ascendancy of George W. Bush and neo-conservatives in the U.S. and the rise of Roh Moo-Hyun and the so-called "386-generation" in South Korea were immediate contributors to this state of relationship. This paper examines how U.S.-ROK relations deteriorated from trusted allies to uncertain partners and why? It begins with a discussion of the changing nature of U.S.-ROK relations in the 2000s. It then examines the salient issues dividing the two allies. This is followed by an analysis of the two allies' diverging policies toward North Korea's nuclear issue. Finally, it concludes that frictions in U.S.-ROK relations are ascribable to the rise of new leaders, emotionalism and simplistic approaches, and diverging goals and perceptions of the two allies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to explain the decline of the conservative party in South Korea. Conservatives failed to win the 1997 and 2002 presidential elections in spite of its merger of forces in 1990. Several factors explain this occurrence, including the party's identity crisis, unruly party mergers, and factions among conservative leaders. However, this paper contends that the loss of conservatives in 2002 reflected the failure of the right to control the civil society.

Political scientists have not clearly articulated the links between democratization and political protest. Many studies have focused on whether or not social movements in a transitional period eventually attain their stated goals. Unlike the expectation that the more a political structure accommodates participation, the less people protest, protests have persisted in South Korea even after the country passed several tests of successful democratization. By defining outcomes only in terms of policy reforms congruent with demands, other outcomes are overlooked that point to structural transformations and changes in the capacity of social movements to remain key political actors after initial policy gains are achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the reasons for the successes of the diplomatic strategy known as nordpolitik in South Korea in the early 1990s. Sanctions and reward power in international politics; Causes of the efficacy of South Korea's nordpolitik toward the Soviet Union; Outcome of South Korea's nordpolitik toward China.

Examines the effect of economic globalization and democratization on the political participation of women in South Korea. Representation of women in the country's formal government institutions; Changes in the attitude of South Korean women; Efforts made by South Korean women to press their country's politics to deals with gender equity; Reason for limiting women's participation in politics.

Analyzes the usefulness of rational choice and cultural change perspectives in explaining the individual level predictors for unconventional forms of political participation in Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. Determinants from four approaches; Sources of unconventional forms of political participation; Crucial factor in determining protest action in the democracies.

Compares the strategies adopted by South Korea and Indonesia toward decolonization. Characterization of decolonization in both countries; Records of economic development and state-society relations in both countries; History of state building during decolonization in both countries.

Russia and the Republic of Korea have increasingly worked together since the early 1990's, but the relationship is not nearly so profound as the model of the U.S.-ROK security alliance. To date, both Russia and Korea have cooperated militarily and politically on a basis of mutual cooperation -- with much of the cooperation seen primarily linked to arms sales from Russia as a debt relief mechanism. Paralleling the arms sales, both countries have exchanged leader visits and cooperated bilaterally for regional military issues. This study will examine the potential benefits from increased military cooperation to strengthen regional stability -- with a view toward better drawing on Russia's potential partner role in future regional political and military security fora to complement the already strong relationship between the United States and Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developmental state Park Chung Hee built exhibited a strong predatory quality, but it was different from Africa’s and Latin America’s more classic predatory propensity. The Korean state, too, generated rents for its business allies and clients, but unlike Africa’s and Latin America’s more classic predatory states, it explicitly tied rents to its business client’s undertaking a risky Five Year Economic Development Plan (FYEDP) investment project and pioneering export markets. This game of exchanging political support for business performance acquired complexity and subtlety when Park resumed Heavy Chemical Industrialization (HCI) as his top priority after 1973, but it was already in place even in 1961 when Park placed chaebol owners under house arrest to negotiate their terms of participation in his First FYEDP projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to study how the Korean military as an institution and also as a conglomerate of factions had evolved under the Park Chung Hee¡¯s reign since 1963. The former is the military as the last pillar that had tried to build up defense capabilities to cope with security threat and the latter is as factions that became involved in politics through political crises and politicized enough to oppress the civil society. The military as an institution grew as Koreans accomplished a miraculous economic development. Its defense capabilities had been enhanced to the point South Korea could afford 100% of her own defense expenditures in 1978. In a series of security threats such as provocation by North Korea, the Vietnam War, the so-called Nixon Doctrine and eventually the withdrawal of the 7th Infantry Division of USFK, Park¡¯s regime made every effort to get military support and commitment from the United States and seemingly succeeded in modernizing the Korean military. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is a ?perfect dictatorship?? Such a regime provokes little societal resistance at installation. Its leaders act jointly to consolidate the regime and to broaden the support coalition by agreeing upon succession rules to rotate the presidency within the authoritarian regime. They delegate policy-making authority to civilians in areas of their competence. They emphasize consultation, not open contestation, prefer cooptation to repression, eschew ideological appeals, compel social actors into regime-licensed organizations, and deactivate civil society. South Korea under Park Chung Hee is compared on these dimensions to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, all at a time when authoritarian regimes governed them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study quantifies and measures balance of power (BOP) and economic interdependence (EI) of China, Japan, Russia, and North and South Korea for 1985-2000. It figures out general trends of BOP and EI in Northeast Asia for last 15 years. Further, it tries to see how BOP and EI interact with each other with focus on China and Japan. Finally, it draws some theoretical and practical conclusions for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of Confucianism in Singapore, South Korea, People's Republic of China and Taiwan. It explores the widespread attachment to Confucian values in each of the countries and examines the ideology played in the four societies. It highlights the difference in democratization where Singapore and China are authoritarian regimes, while South Korea and Taiwan have made transition to democracy with authoritarian past.

The comfort women case in South Korea has been a polemic issue in the context of inherited responsibility. The Japanese government who emphasizes on state as an agent for taking the responsibility tends either to deny collective responsibility of historic wrongdoings or to limit the scope of its roles to superficial ways such as reparation. Meanwhile South Korea demands not only reparation but official apology, emotional compassion, and material compensation on the ground that nation, not state, should be accountable for historic injustice, but this claim still encounters a difficulty of application to cases originated in multinational countries. Based on these observations, I will develop two arguments: (1) that reciprocal nondomination conceptualized with civic responsibility will better the comfort women case in the context of inherited responsibility because this contains full ground of deliberation in which those who come from regardless of state or nation can participate; (2) that reciprocal nondomination embodied with civic responsibility can be operated as a regulative principle which prompts both victims and wrongdoers to have their deliberative stances and to reach an agreement conducive to transitional justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on nationalism and sentiments against the U.S. in South Korea post-cold war. It states that before the cold war South Korea was pro American as there was a threat from North Korea but the relationship changed after cold war ended. It mentions that anti-American sentiment increased in South Korea after two school girls from the country were killed by military vehicles of the U.S.

The article offers information on the foreign relation of the U.S. with North and South Korea. North and South Korea have been confronting each other since the Cease Fire Treaty of the Korean War in 1953. China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. collectively constitute an important base for peace and a regional system in the Korean Peninsula.

The article presents an evidence of mixed-member electoral systems and legislative behaviour from South Korea. It discusses the two main conditions that determine the influence of political parties over legislators' voting in a chamber in the country, which include how centralized is the process of candidate selection. The legislative voting behaviour of the members of the 17th Korean National Assembly (KNA) is analyzed.