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This paper examines the South Korean people's authoritarian experiences in developing and sustaining a popular New Community Movement since its creation in 1970. By analysing three key features of the initial stage of the NCM under the growth-oriented authoritarian Park Chung Hee state (1961-1979), the paper argues that the NCM experience provided the majority of Koreans, particularly rural peasants and women, hands-on-training in participatory village-community democracy, which in turn provided a wide range of social opportunities, even unwittingly, for their own empowerment. The paper also argues that the Korean people's training in village-community democracy also provided a self-awakening experience, through which they built their own set of ideas of self-identity as the people or minjung and of minjung democracy which was essentially an off-shoot of the NCM, more specifically, Park's idea of "Korean democracy". The paper suggests that the recent resurgence of the NCM may reflect the democratic legacy of the authoritarian Park era, epitomized in its "Can-do" participatory ethos and the fierce nationalism of the Koreans, albeit in a highly sophisticated and yet paradoxical way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, there has been rising interest in candidate quality and characteristics among political scientists. Scholars have analyzed the impact of candidate quality on electorates' candidate evaluations and vote choice. Most of the often-cited work on candidate quality deals with candidates and elections in the U.S. with a lesser amount of work focusing on European countries. It is remarkable that very few of these studies on candidate quality focus on elections in new democracies. As new democracies have had relatively little time to develop candidate recruitment processes, candidate quality is probably low compared to the established democracies of Western Europe and North America. Therefore, new democracies can be fertile ground for the study of the lack of candidate quality and its impact on voting behavior. In this paper, we study candidate quality and elections in one of the new democracies, Korea. Previous studies of voting behavior in Korea and in new democracies, in general, usually look at the vote choice of the electorate along established and/or emerging social cleavages, such as class differences, regionalism, religion, as well as macro environmental factors, such as the national economy. We utilize survey data to analyze the impact of the specific quality of candidates (candidate characteristics) on the vote choice of the electorate. If the quality of political candidates does not keep pace with that of the sophisticated public, we may see apathy on the part of the electorate (low turnout) or a form of negative voting. The election we analyze is the latest presidential election in Korea held in December 2007. Our results show a high level of negative voting in response to the candidates' perceived negative traits. Our work is a testimony that voters in new democracies also pay attention to the individual candidate's quality or characteristics, and make their vote choice accordingly. Therefore, future studies of voting behavior in new democracies should include candidate quality (or characteristics, traits or whatever it is called) as an explanatory variable in their models. We end the paper by offering our conjecture about why the electorate's perception of candidate quality is so low in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on the Roh Moo-hyun government's self-promoted "regional balancer" initiative. Although Roh's exploration of the notion of South Korea as a 'balancer' did not last long after heavy criticism he dropped the phrase almost immediately - its use posed an intriguing question: how, and to what extent, did South Korea identify and locate itself vis-à-vis neighbouring powers at the beginning of the 21st century in Northeast Asia? This paper problematises and discusses how the Roh Moo-hyun government conceived, identified and projected the state identity which drove South Korea's actions in international politics. Theoretically, the paper aims to develop an overarching approach to the study of 'middle power' and 'state identity', introducing a new concept, that of "middle power identity". The term 'middle power' has long been used in political discourse to describe the foreign policies of various countries, but there is little agreement on what constitutes, and how to define, middle power in international politics. The concept of 'middle power identity', therefore, is a contribution which seeks to improve conceptual flaws around 'middle power'. Empirically, the paper sets out a state's multifaceted identities. It demonstrates the impact of the Roh government's middle power aspiration which led to the identity dilemma between conflicting identities and confrontational interests. It describes the tension between an antagonistic and associational Korean national identity on the one hand, i.e. the Korean 'national' identity in which the two Koreas have shared throughout history, and a dependent and independent client identity on the other, i.e. the 'client' identity with which Seoul has long been associated in the ROK-U.S. alliance system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has highlighted the "peaceful rise (heping jueqi)" in its projection of power, and the slogan will be retained during the second-term of Hu Jintao after the 17th National Party Congress. To corroborate the ideas, the country has been adopting various "soft power (ruan shili)" tools, and, in Asia at least, China's "charm offensive" has been working effectively, according to Joshua Kurlantzick.Recently, however, the ascendancy of China's soft power has been challenged in one of its neighboring countries, South Korea. The perception of South Koreans regarding China has been skewed to be negative for the past couple of years. On the other hand, in China, the "Korean Cultural Wave (hanliu)" has apparently started its ebb and has frequently faced "anti-hanliu" discourses, which are an extension of Chinese nationalism, practically employed by the communist party of China. Against this backdrop, my paper will try to 1) elaborate the current mutual perception between Korea and China; 2) address major factors affecting the mutual perception; and, 3) discuss what is the significance of the changing mutual perception to the current and future relations between Korea and China.For this paper, I will mainly rely on archive research and interview. For example, I will exam Chinese and Korean journal articles, reports, and empirical survey data. Also, I will visit China and Korea this summer to conduct interviews with Korean and Chinese professors and bureaucrats. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea has pursued the so-called "sunshine policy" (unilateral engagement policy) toward North Korea for almost a decade. This policy, first enunciated by President Kim Dae-Jung in 1998, was expected to bringabout a new era of inter-Korean reconciliation and Korea's peaceful unification. President Roh Moo-Hyun, the successor to President Kim, carried on the torch. He dubbed his North Korea policy "Policy of Peace and Prosperity," but his policy was substantively identical with the sunshine policy. Despite some publicity stunts in 2000, the sunshine policy has failed to untangle the Korean knots. The North Korean nuclear crisis lingers on and inter-Korean relations are peppered with periodic tensions. It is a high time that we critically reexamined the sunshine policy. This paper will critically assess South Korea's engagement policy toward North Korea. What were the premises and expectations of the sunshine policy? How did it impact North-South Korean relations and US-DPRK relations? What were the inherent problems and contradictions with the policy? Are there any alternatives to this policy? These are the questions this paper will address. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea has been a forerunner in graduating from the process of modernization and proactively accommodating forces of globalization. Nevertheless, Korean nationalism has remained well and alive and even resurfaced as a dominant domestic discourse, defying post-modernist efforts to deconstruct it. The proposed paper locates the causes of South Korea’s resurgent nationalism in its collective memory and reinterpretation of historical past as rekindled by assertive nationalism in Japan and China. The paper attempts to trace how assertive nationalist moves in China (e.g., its Northeast Project) and Japan (e.g., the Dokdo, tribute to the Yasukuni shrine, history textbooks, and comfort women) have triggered equally powerful reactive nationalist sentiments in South Korea, and elucidates how such reactive nationalism affects its overall perception of, and foreign policy on, China and Japan. The paper finally presents some theoretical and policy suggestions to overcome the trapping structure of parochial nationalism in Northeast Asia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been fifty-five years since the conclusion of the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement (KAA), but a peace regime on the Korean peninsula replacing the KAA with a peace treaty has not yet been achieved. For the last fifty-five years, the two Koreas have attempted to build a peace regime on the Korean peninsula. But their conflicting approaches to a peace mechanism are major obstacles to the Korean peace regime building process. The DPRK has insisted on concluding a peace treaty between the United States and itself to replace the KAA since 1974, while the ROK has equally insisted on a peace treaty between the two Koreas. The six-party talks have been stalled because of North Korea's delayed nuclear declaration of all of its nuclear activities and stockpiles under the October 3, 2007 deal among six nations. When the declaration problem is resolved, the six-party talks will discuss the Phase III (dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear facilities) and a Korean peninsula peace forum. Thus, it is significant to review North Korea's peace regime-building initiative and to make a preparation for a Korean peace forum within the framework of the six-party talks.This paper first will briefly review North Korean peace regime proposals, including re-evaluation of the four-party talks and the six-party talks dealing with a Korean peace regime building, and will look into the major problems of transforming the 1953 Korean armistice agreement into a Korean peninsula peace treaty before it will make policy suggestions for establishing a peace system on the Korean peninsula. The paper will focus on a North Korean perspective on a peace regime building. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the recent passage of the US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, protest emerged in both normalized places of public political activity (parks, streets and government buildings) and in smaller, local community-based efforts (such as rural organizing and non-profit local markets). The disparate spatial and tactical differences of these efforts speak to the uneven, overlapping and gendered performances of contemporary manifestations of anti-capitalist resistance. Through the combination of ethnographic research with Lacanian psychoanalysis, this paper will develop an account of the importance of re-presenting the varied places of contemporary Korean protest, and the deployments of masculinities embodied in alternative tactics and strategies. Focusing on protests by farmers on Jeju Island, local non-profit markets in Hongdae and worker mobilization in Dondaemun, this paper will develop the links between local protest and global capitalist forces. As such, the protest site becomes a situated deployment of capitalism and its immediate resistances, international relations as local manifestation, and a space of political action that constitutes subjectivity through refigurations of gender. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining Korean dirigisme, or system of state-led development, its socio-economic consequences, and its post-1997 reform efforts and trends, this paper aims to suggest how Korea’s fundamentally undemocratic and exclusionary mode of statism threatens the nation’s long-term socio-economic health, laying out what human-centered development entails and why Korea would want to reconstruct the state and redefine its goals and means on the basis of the concept of people-centeredness. Among other things, the present paper critically looks at the increasing polarization of the Korean society, economy and industrial structure; the current inadequacies of the financial intermediaries and city banks in particular in supplying corporate investment funds or in helping to improve corporate governance by making a long-term commitment through debt-equity swaps and by learning to provide credible credit analysis and monitoring based on accumulated information; and the government’s persistent failure in fully enforcing existing laws and rules on insider trading, accounting fraud, and other illegal transactions especially in the wake of the crisis and subsequent reforms. Clearly, reconstructing the state and thereby crafting a democratic and empowering dirigisme constitutes Korea’s pressing task in its quest for a good society. Such reconstruction of the state does not in any way eliminate national sovereignty; it may just transform the means and purposes of the nation-state without weakening or withering its capacity. The reconstructed state can and does play a positive role in transforming state-society relations, providing social safety nets, empowering financial institutions, inventing a vibrant civil society and actively building democratic institutions to allow for orderly bottom-up changes. The key indeed lies in how to forge what mixture of state and market. As the purpose of human-centered development is to enhance the well-being, economic equity, human dignity, liberty and community of the ordinary citizens, indispensable would be empowering people especially at lower levels both in and outside of government bureaucracies. The delegation of authority needs to occur not just between higher and lower institutions and organizations, but also within each and every organization. If the pattern of heads of institutions running their organizations as their own fiefdom gets simply replicated at lower levels, such de-concentration would be inadequate to serve the needs of ordinary people. If heads of lower organizations were to act only as little czars pursuing their own personal purposes, such de-concentration or decentralization may not have achieved much except a fragmentation and localization of the essentially same, if centralized, spoils system. Thus, institutionalization of democratic values such as public trust and rule of law also needs to occur. Still, dirigiste choice of growth over equity at an early stage of development process may not be easily reversible at a later stage. Dirigiste development and undemocratic governance create entrenched, self-sustaining interests and structures that no amount of reform politics as usual can touch. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has examined selected diplomatic communications during the prisoner of war crisis in South Korea on June 18, 1953 near the end of the Korean War. Key actors/institutions in this incident were President Dwight Eisenhower, the U.S. State Department (including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles), the U.S. military (including the United Nations Command) and the U.S. Embassy in South Korea; on the South Korean side, the key participant was President Syngman Rhee assisted by some of his subordinates. The bulk of contacts were telegrams, but memoranda of conversations, telephone calls and face-to-face meetings were also involved. The sequence of communications analyzed here began in April 1953 and ended with communications in the days after the June 18, 1953 release of an estimated 25,000 North Korean anti-communist prisoners of war held in prison camps in South Korea. This paper has also touched on the role of national memory in diplomatic communications. As Lee seemed to suggest, the Korean people have faced such serious difficulties in modern history, that South Korean government officials' actions in office may have been affected by memories of such troubling events. President Rhee's release of the thousands of prisoners--a step taken without adequately informing the U.S. government and the UNC--led to strong criticism of the South Korean president. In fact, the U.S.-South Korean alliance was shaken by Rhee's action. In the end, however, the alliance held and the armistice was signed. Lessons from this crisis include the following: allies must trust and respect each other; allies must consult with each other as much as possible; differences over policy occur, so steps must be taken to deal with such differences; and various forms of communication may be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising anti-Americanism in the winter of 2002 despite the increasing security threats from North Korea, has led some to call the situation a crisis in the ROK-U.S. alliance. However, the opinion polls from June 2003 and February 2004 show that anti- Americanism in South Korea has substantially waned. The main aim of this paper is to examine whether the recent wave of anti-Americanism has the content and intensity to threaten the legitimacy of the ROK-U.S. alliance. By analyzing the changes in public attitude and perception towards the U.S. over the past two years based on three survey data, this paper argues that anti-Americanism in South Korea has not posed any real threat to the alliance. However, the polarized public opinion towards the U.S. remains a potentially serious threat to the future of the ROK-U.S. alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of ethnic migration policy of South Korea toward Talbukja (North Korean defectors). I attempt to examine why South Korea has taken a restrictive migration policy toward its own ethnic group (North Korean defectors or so-called Talbukja). I outline some of the major debates on immigration control policies and within the framework of these arguments, I give some possible explanations of why South Korea has a restrictive migration policy toward Talbukja. I initially follow Myron Weiner's division of the debates on how the migrants or refugees affect either the receiving or sending or both countries as a structure for my arguments. Weiner divides the debates into cultural, economic and political parts. This paper attempts to cover them all but concentrates more on the debate over political argument which seems the most convincing argument to explain the South Korean restrictive immigration policy toward its own race. Lastly, I give some policy recommendations and concluding remarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares the Malaysia's and South Korea's efforts to restore financial stability and to restructure the banking system since the onset of the financial crisis in July 1997. Bank reform and restructuring have been undertaken to address weaknesses in the sector that had rendered them vulnerable following huge currency depreciation sparked by sudden and massive international capital outflows. As a consequence of its reduced exposure to private bank borrowings from abroad, Malaysia was not in a situation of having to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or to others for emergency international credit facilities. Unlike South Korea, where state capacities were often undermined by neo-liberal reforms and policy conditionalities imposed by the IMF, Malaysia enjoyed the freedom to prescribe its own recovery plans, hence avoiding some of the problems associated with the IMF rescue packages. This has motivated the paper to examine what lessons can be drawn from Malaysia's and South Korea's experience with bank restructuring in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis. Most importantly, the preceding study of the circumstances prior to the introduction of the bank restructuring measures as well as the specific nature of the measures and their apparent consequences suggest caution in making gross generalizations. Instead, their different experience urges greater attention to context and detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss Korean society's response to foreign migrant workers. The employers, workers, trade unions, civil organizations and individual citizens have met and known them as employees, fellow workers, and neighbors since 1987. The Employment Permit Program for foreigners, the government's new foreign labor policy since 2004 is understood as a product achieved by a decade of interaction between Korean citizens and foreign migrant workers. This paper examines the Korean citizen's responses' impacts on the government's foreign labor policy from 1987 to 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, South Korea were going through democratic chages while North Korea has also experienced moderate political opening. Major focus in this research is on whether and to what extent those domestic political change could impact on the inter-Korean relations. It would also take into considerations the surrounding atmospheres in the Northeast Asia, especially led by U.S, China, Japan, and the Russia. In short, this paper attempts to examine the prospects for the North-South Korean relation in terms of domestic poltical changes and change of international politics surrounding the Peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. military alliances with Japan and South Korea have been the mainstay of US security interests and the region’s security balance for much of the second decade of the 20th century. On the one hand, U.S. hegemony kept forces of Japanese militarization at bay while on the other, it sustained military authoritarian rule of South Korea. In recent years, we are seeing a dramatic shift in alliance relations due to international, regional and domestic changes in the region. The paper addresses three aspects of these changes: 1) a new ‘requirement’ for Asian allies’ moral and rhetorical support of U.S. militarism, even if their own publics are opposed (e.g., US war in Afghanistan and Iraq); 2) reinvogoration of Japanese nationalism and militarization; 3) the growth of Korean nationalism and anti-militarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature surveys how democracy changes the government?s spending priorities in Latin America. This paper extends study to the Asian-Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) to evaluate how specific democratic procedures ? elections and legislative fragmentation ? affect military and civilian allocations. It also considers how the sequence and rules of the budgetary process affect results. The analyses of government spending in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore from the 1960s to 2000 reveal two important findings. First, the budgetary process significantly influences how the effects of elections and legislative fragmentation are manifested; indeed, the effects of elections and legislative fragmentation on the government?s spending priorities are clear and robust only when the sequence and rules of budget making are modeled. Second, democracy does not affect government spending separately from elections and legislative fragmentation in South Korea and Taiwan ? it has a distinct effect only on spending in Singapore. These findings add nuances and new perspectives to the study of democracy?s effects on the government?s military and civilian allocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates the prevalent view that a free trade agreement (FTA) between Seoul and Washington would markedly strengthen their security alliance. For that purpose, we examine the impact of economic ties on U.S. alliances with Australia, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, as well as South Korea, over the past quarter-century, while drawing relevant insights from the theoretical literature on international commerce and alliance cohesion. The research finds that the conventional wisdom has questionable theoretical and empirical foundations. There are several logical reasons for rejecting the prevalent view. First, the FTA would not markedly increase mutual dependence between the U.S. and Korean economies. Second, expanding economic ties with potential adversaries such as North Korea and China may cancel out any marginal alliance-enhancing effect of the agreement. Third, the FTA could adversely affect the vested interests of influential societal actors, which might blame their economic losses on the alliance and turn against it. Fourth, the alliance could become more asymmetrical and further lose its public appeal. Also, the empirical analysis shows no clear positive association between the level of economic interdependence and the strength of alliances. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea is one of the few countries that are making a transition from a "limited access order" to an "open access order." This paper explores how the transition has taken place and what has made this transition possible, comparing South Korean experience with those of Taiwan and the Philippines. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates South Korea’s corporate sector reforms after the 1997 financial crisis. Over the last three decades, under the guidance of the government’s export-led developmental strategy, the chaebol, big business conglomerates, highly contributed to rapid economic growth. However, the failure of corporate governance of the chaebol, which contains highly indebted financial structures, lack of accounting transparency, and over-investment in similar business areas, drove the country to financial crisis. During the decade since the financial crisis, the Korean government introduced a broad corporate reform that bans intra-group transaction, imposes a reduction of debt-equity ratio, and regulates the chaebol’s oligopoly by transforming its economy to a free-market system. Yet, the chaebol, which grew up as the largest interest group, sometimes resisted the government’s economic reforms to secure their parochial interests. This research examines corporate governance from the power struggle between the government and chaebol, and evaluates the current status of reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea is Japan’s most natural ally in East Asia. Both nations share the same primary military benefactor, the United States. Their geographic proximity makes them natural allies in offsetting China’s growing power and unknown intentions. In spite of this natural need to ally, relations remain strained primarily over Japan’s historical occupation of Korea. This paper examines the political issues that need to be resolved in order for Japan and South Korea to work together and the potential for such reconciliation in light of South Korea’s drift away from its American ally and Japan’s open embrace of the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the political economy of market reforms in Korea since the 1997/98 financial crisis. We focus on the political and fiscal capacity of the state to implement these reforms, and challenge the view that successfully implemented market reforms follow a technocratic "best practice" approach. On the contrary, we argue that reforms in Korea were relatively successful because they were political projects, and join the ranks of those who challenge the view that market reforms equal less state interventions. We show that market reforms in Korea went hand in hand with an expansion of the state. The formation of interest coalitions constituted the reform machinery while government expenditures have been the grease to make the machinery run smoother and prevent it from breaking. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a conference paper titled "Korean Chinese migrant workers and the politics of Korean nationalism" prepared for the "2005 ISA Annual Convention" in Honolulu, Hawaii. It discusses the nature of the Korean nationalism that has played as the sole legitimacy of the Korean state. It argues that the dominating perspective viewing Korean Chinese as migration workers has underestimated the nationalistic discourses as a real political force in the political landscape.

The article presents a draft conference paper titled "The Trek of Foreign Workers to Be Others in South Korea" for the "2005 ISA Annual Convention" in Honolulu, Hawaii. It discusses the reasons behind an increase in the number of foreign workers in South Korea and how are their labor conditions. It shows a comparison of the average wages and working hours of foreign trainees and workers in the country for 2001.

US, South Korean, and Japanese interests in coping with North Korea’s nuclear agenda overlap, but there also are substantial differences. Each country’s policies shall be assessed in terms of its bilateral objectives versus North Korea. Based on that assessment, the historical record of trilateral cooperation vis-à-vis North Korea and the prospects for future cooperation shall be evaluated. In addition, North Korea’s responses to each category and its options shall be analyzed. In each of these instances salient domestic and international factors shall be taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst the issue of changes in the developmental states after the East Asian financial crisis has been hotly debated, there has been scant attention paid to explore the ways in which gender relations have been re/shaped in relation to re/making of the developmental state. It will be argued that the economic development strategies of South Korea has been re/configured with changes in the manners to employ gender relations into the industrial realignment. Herein the focus will be placed on examining how the changes in the role of post-crisis South Korean state have affected the ways in which gender relations has been interacting with the changing South Korean state. Firstly, the paper will look at the periodic features of gendered labour regimes which have been contingent upon the trajectories of economic development in South Korea. Secondly, it will investigate the ways in which women’s movements have evolved over the changes occurring in the process of industrial restructuring and democratisation in the late 1980s and 90s. Then, this leads to the scrupulous study of strategic transformation in the ways for women’s movement organisations to negotiate with the state by widening the scope to engage in the state apparatus. As such, this paper will attempt to demonstrate not only the highly gendered nature of the developmental state, but also the transformative aspects of gender relations over the transition of one nation-state’s economic development path. In so doing, it urges to incorporate a gender perspective into the discourse of the developmental state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written by scholars and pundits casting doubt over the future of the South Korea-US alliance with the end of the Cold War and the ensuing efforts by South Korea to foster cooperation and reconciliation with North Korea through its engagement policy. In fact, many experts have warned that, in order to maintain the alliance into the future, a new mission would have to replace the one that existed under the Cold War. Despite the intense attention that this issue has received, there has been no systematic effort to understand how the South Korean public views the alliance. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to identify and analyze the factors affecting the public’s view of the alliance, using a face-to-face nationwide survey of South Koreans conducted in March 2007 under Fulbright sponsorship. It employs multiple regression analysis to test four core hypotheses, each focusing on a factor that is considered to have an impact on South Koreans’ perception of the alliance. They are: H1: The perception of North Korea as a threat increases the support for the alliance. H2: A positive view of the role of the USFK promotes the support of the alliance. H3: The belief that the US and South Korea share common interests regarding North Korea is associated with the support of the alliance. H4: A wariness of China promotes the support of the alliance. Second, on the basis of this analysis, this paper will also attempt to assess the long-term prospects for the alliance by examining how the evolving security situation in the Korean peninsula impinges on the factors identified in this study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as the idea of 'global citizenship' has gained much visibility recently in public discourse throughout the English speaking world, the term also is increasingly invoked across East Asia, albeit mainly within elite circles. This paper narrows the focus to how 'global citizenship' discourse has emerged in South Korea. Through content analysis of media references to 'global citizenship' as well as interviews with representatives of various organizations that have incorporated the term into their respective agendas, this paper illustrates the many competing strains of thinking underlying 'global citizenship' discourse in South Korea. Most of all, the paper shows how the idea of 'global citizenship' is often employed in South Korea primarily in order to advance national goals and objectives, such as educational attainment, technological proficiency and competitiveness in the world economy; alongside moral visions related to peace, democracy, global responsibility and solidarity across cultures. In this regard, 'global citizenship' discourse in South Korea falls between idealism and pragmatism as well as between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Realist schools of thought that predict that states choose balancing or bandwagoning against potential threat, South Korea is expected to consolidate relations with its allies, the United States and Japan, and emphasize its own military build-up vis-à-vis Chinese growing material capability. In spite of structural influences, South Korea’s behavior epitomizes ‘leaning toward China’ while ‘distancing from the United States.’ On the other hand, Japan, as a key alliance partner of the United States takes a road that the realist schools of thought suggest--leaning toward the United States and increasing military spending. Accordingly, Japan lives up to the expectation of the United States while South Korea does not in dealing with the changes of alliance and the request of the burden-sharing of the U.S. A question as to why Japan and South Korea have contrast responses poses a significant challenge to the main strands of realism. My paper develops a new model by combinding domestic politics and international system. Existing literature focuses on the formation and maintenance of alliances, and yet there is lack of attention on alliance management with changes of domestic politics. My paper, hence, explores conditions that combines international and domestic factors and explain cases of Japan and South Korea. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines South Korea?s threat perception toward the People?s Republic of China (PRC). First, it compares South Korea with East Asian countries including Japan and Southeast Asian states regarding the China threat discourse. It discovers reasons why the Republic of Korea (ROK) has been relatively reticent regarding the China threat, in contrast to other East Asian countries. Second, relying on the Walt?s Balance of Threat (BOT) theory, this paper studies how the BOT theory plays out in the South Korea?s view to the PRC. Lastly, it examines how the threat perception causes the cooperation between Seoul and Beijing. This paper provides two contributions to International Relations theory. First, it provides an opportunity to apply the Walt?s BOT theory to the East Asian case. It discovers why the BOT theory cannot exclusively account for the ROK-China case. Second, in contrast to previous studies that merely discover the balancing behavior in accordance to the levels of threat perception, this paper studies the linkage between threat perception and cooperation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic integration has been progressing rapidly in Northeast Asia, particularly among Japan, China, and South Korea, and a large volume of industrial and cultural products flow across the region. Despite high-level economic integration, the three countries have not developed an institutional arrangement to stabilize regional politics. To the contrary, Japan and the other two countries continue to dispute over issues related to Japan?s wartime past, including controversies over Yasukuni shrine and Japan?s history textbooks. Based on the constructivist approach, this paper explains why the three countries fight over these issues, focusing on state identity and politics of recognition. Japan developed its state identity mainly through interactions with the United States. Japanese leaders emphasize that Japan, as a liberal democratic country, has developed a pacifist stance after World War II. They want other countries to recognize that their actions, including the prime minister?s visit to the shrine, are consistent with the pacifist stance. In contrast, the memory of Japan?s past colonial rule plays an important part in China and South Korea?s state identity formation. State leaders in each country denounce the colonial rule as unjust invasion while praising past nationalist leaders? fight against it as patriotic. They demand Japan?s current leaders to recognize (acknowledge) wrongdoings of Japan?s colonial rule, opposing any actions that imply Japanese leaders? support for or tolerance of the colonial rule. Through the analysis of the current controversies between the three countries, this paper develops a theoretical discussion of identity and recognition in international relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea?s economic and technology development was achieved based on the infinite supply of energy, which has led to the development of a concentrated energy structure, and the massive production and consumption of fossil fuels (and, thereby, pollution) on an unprecedented scale. The Climate Change agreement (combined with the unstable energy supply in the global market since the late 1990s) has pressured the Korean government to change its energy structures. In response, the government has devised comprehensive countermeasures for the climate change agreement since 2000, including various initiatives to develop new and renewable energy, promote energy conservation, and improve energy efficiency. These energy policies contain effective ways of implementing concrete projects. The new energy polices have a certain limit in responding to the climate change agreement, however. The government?s willingness to pursue sustainable energy policies has great positive implications, considering that policy implementation in Korea tends to be efficient and effective, once adopted. This paper aims to analyze Korea?s new energy policies and their feasibility in responding to the climate change agreement. The article begins by examining Korea?s energy consumption structure and the current GHG emissions based on available statistical data. The nation?s energy structure is still based on the traditional energy paradigm of mass production and mass consumption of energy. Then the paper moves to examine the government?s countermeasures for the climate change agreement. The following section analyzes the new energy policies for sustainable development, focusing on the development of new and renewable energy, energy conservation, and the improvement of energy efficiency. Particular emphasis is placed on the government?s initiatives to restructure the electricity industry, which contributes to one third of Korea?s total CO2 emissions. The restructuring of the electricity industry will be a test case for evaluating the sustainability of Korea?s new energy policies. The on-going restructuring process and its progress are discussed in the final section. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data concerning North Korean defectors and human rights compiled by governments and NGOs both in and outside South Korea commonly indicate three characteristics: first, the feminization phenomenon of North Korean defectors, namely, the great majority of recent defectors (over 70%) are women; second, sex trafficking is the most common social problem experienced by North Korean women defectors in the northeastern region of China; and third, gender-specific human rights violations are common both in China and in North Korea. As yet, analyses of North Korean women defectors human rights issues are grossly absent in the contemporary academic forum.This paper will analyze the gender implications of North Korean defectors who crossed the border into China through a systematic analysis of the sex trafficking of North Korean women and the gendered nature of human rights violations. Major inquiry will be focused on three questions: first, how have North Korea social, economic and political structures allowed more women than men to cross the border into China?; second, what are the patterns and destinations of this sex trafficking?; and three what are the life situations of these sex trafficking victims in China and in North Korea as either defectors or forced repatriates to North Korea? Arguments in the paper are made on three points: first, economic hardship and specific gender roles of women as primary caretakers of the family, and their weak political power in North Korea has facilitated the feminization of North Korean defectors; second, poverty and the shortage of women of marriage age in the northeastern part of China have contributed to the sex trafficking of North Korean women; and third, due to illegal border crossing status and women's unique reproduction function (e.g., pregnancy and child birth), North Korean women defectors have been subject to gender-specific human rights violations both in China and in North Korea by respective government authorities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines institutional design and change of financial regulatory systems as one of significant post-crisis financial reform efforts in Japan, Mexico, and South Korea. There has been a plethora of research concerning financial reform not just in the academic works but also in policy prescriptions from international financial institutions such as IMF and BIS. However, while most works emphasize the benefits of prudential regulation through financial reform, their emphasis has been put on its significance per se rather than on the conditions under which financial regulatory systems can be better designed and implemented as planned. Similarly, economic literature on this topic has been basically apolitical, not being able to take into account how diverse actors can strategically initiate, transform or resist reform efforts. Economic crises and subsequent reform efforts in post-bubble Japan, post-1994 Mexico and post-1997 South Korea provide a great opportunity to examine the similarities and differences in financial reform processes and outcomes. This is so since, despite differences in their pre-crisis financial systems, there had been considerable similarities among them such as (a) use of financial regulation as a primary policy instrument for economic adjustment and development, (b) the prominent role of state, especially finance ministries, in financial sectors, and (c) the timing of crises and financial reforms since mid-1990s. However, did Japan, Mexico, and Korea adopt similar post-crisis institutional settings for financial regulation because of pre-crisis similarities and international norms of prudential regulation? If not, why did they choose different institutional designs? To what extent have the post-reform regulatory systems been successful in prudential regulation? In order to answer these questions, this paper challenges previous works that emphasized organized interest groups and their influence on reform politics. Rather, it takes seriously the role of unorganized public that has been largely underestimated because of its lack of information and collective action problem and the conditions under which political leadership had to serve the public. It also questions the role of international actors and norms in financial regulation. Given the fact that even the most arm?s-length financial regulation leaves considerable room for subjective assessment of regulators, international norms and best practices are likely to be mediated by national institutions and conflicts among actors. Finally, this study compares the post-reform institutional changes of financial regulatory system in these countries by looking at the interaction between well-established pre-crisis regulators and newly established regulatory agencies. This study can contribute to a better understanding of how financial regulation is designed and under what conditions it is implemented as designed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northeast Asia (for the purpose of this paper, China, Japan, and South Korea) may be described as the most dynamic region today. Some Asian scholars like Cho Myungrae, Sum Ngai Ling and Tao Lai Po-wah assert that Northeast Asia is a potential bloc. Some Western scholars; Simon and Gartzke, Waltz to some extent, and especially Huntington lend support to the above. This paper attempted to investigate the truth to the above claim using variables like trade, cultural affinities, common memberships in IGOs, and the BOP/fear factor (of the hegemon). The findings of this paper question the strength of the Korea-US and Japan-US alliance. Does peace between China, Japan, and South Korea prove Huntington's "shared foundation of culture"/"cultural-consciousness" ideas or simply prove the liberal peace theory. Or is Northeast Asia a marvelous example of a combination of both ideas. Northeast Asia is a test of this. Can we refute formation of a bloc simply because there is no formal agreement? Could it be invisible, operating on oriental-styled informal, familiarity-based structures rather than western formal ways. If so, is this the beginning of a future alliance? The uniqueness of this paper is it takes into consideration both Asian and western scholars' views and discusses implications of a Northeast Asian alliance. In addition, the paper adresses implications of the above for American foreign policy - should the U.S. prevent the formation or prepare for it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how and to what extent the international norm concerning the prohibition of the death penalty plays a role in East Asian democracies. In stark contrast to the worldwide abolitionist trend, the death penalty remains most entrenched in Asia, where more than 90 percent of all known executions take place. Why does the norm against the death penalty, which is apparently so important for most parts of the world, seem to have no impact on East Asia? How do domestic factors ? political leadership, public opinion, and institutional structures ? contribute to the rejection of the universally promoted human rights norm? With regard to the three major democracies in East Asia at different stages of the anti-death penalty movement (South Korea, most active in the abolitionist movement; Taiwan in the middle; and Japan least active), it investigates what accounts for the current varying impact of the norm in the same region. Analyzing how public and elite opinion interact with each other on capital punishment and what roles domestic institutional structures play, this paper aims to assess norm diffusion and to measure the norm?s capabilities and limitations for helping to shape new death penalty policy in this region. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a comparative approach to South Korea's engagement policy toward North Korea (the so-called Sunshine policy) in relation to changes in South Korea's international environments focusing on U.S. security policies and practices toward the Korean peninsula, this paper aims to examine the ways in which international environments shaped South Korea's state identity, national interests, and the implementation of the Sunshine policy during the Kim Dae-jung administration from 1998 to 2003. In particular, concentrating on the effects that external environments and state identity had on South Korea's national security, the paper will address the question of how the ideas held by South Korea related to the ideas that made up the regional security culture. In doing so, it also illustrates conventional constructivist arguments on state identity and national interests in the context of South Korea, what Rationalism ignores in International Relations (IR).Here, this paper mainly presents four sets of arguments: two analytical and two theoretical. The first analytical argument is that although the South Korean-U.S. collective actions that have addressed the North Korean problem have begun to erode their alliance identity against North Korea and have encouraged latent Korean nationalism embracing North Korea, in South Korea there was a delicate and stable balance between those two seemingly conflicting identities during the Clinton administration. The second analytical argument is that, due largely to a change in international environments that began with the Bush administration in 2001, South Korea's state identity became deeply contested between 1) the alliance security bond with the U.S. and 2) the nationalist bond with North Korea, and this tension with changed external environments made South Korea difficult to neatly define national interests and also made the Sunshine policy seem to be untenable during the Bush administration's first term.The first theoretical argument is that, in conducting substantive empirical research based on constructivism, it needs to focus on not what exactly states' environments (or norms) might regulate and constitute interests and identities of states but how we might explain the political phenomena or events widely identified as evidence of cultural or institutional environments' (or norms') effects. In fact, differentiating constitutive effects from regulative effects of environments (norms) is a vexing (if not, unnecessary) task, because they often generate both effects at the same time. The second theoretical argument is that conventional constructivism can only capture half of state's identity formation, owing to its strong structuralist tilt to focusing solely on 'collective identity' among states in a given social system. It is thus required that, as Alexander Wendt calls, 'corporate identity' black box should be opened to make better sense of the formation and diffusion of South Korea's state identity relating to national security, interests, and the Sunshine policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will analyze the US-South Korean alliance and the two countries? approaches towards the North Korean nuclear issue. It aragues that US-American and South Korean strategies towards North Korea and the Korean Peninsula?s security environment are on diverging trajectories and will further deteriorate.The paper will suggest that US foreign policy will continue to use pressure on North Korea in order to get Pyongyang to fully abandon its nuclear weapons program. As in the past, North Korea will not be receptive. Moreover, US policy will continue to slowly erode the close partnership with South Korea as Seoul will continue to pursue a much more cooperative policy towards the North. The net result, it will be suggested, is a slowly deteriorating US-ROK alliance and overall security situation on the Korean Peninsula. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of health biotechnology and research into new health biotechnologies raise important questions for international governance. Health biotechnologies, in particular the "engineering" of human tissue, raise new and difficult regulatory issues. This paper focuses on the issue of regulatory arbitrage in the field of embryonic stem cell research. The first part of the paper focuses on the phenomenon of regulatory arbitrage itself. What are the political and economic drivers behind the variance in national regulatory frameworks, variance that creates the incentives for regulatory arbitrage? What is the impact of international arbitrage on the regulation of research in health biotechnology? The second part of the paper evaluates potential governance options for managing regulatory arbitrage: it sets out a typology of forms of international governance and evaluates recent efforts to build or utilise existing international structures to provide elements of governance for embryonic stem cell research. Regulatory arbitrage occurs because researchers and investors are internationally mobile, able to move between countries to capture the benefits of different regulatory regimes. Regulatory regimes for embryonic stem cell research continues to diverge sharply, even amongst those countries where such research is permitted: the paper compares the regulatory regimes in China, South Korea, the UK and the US. These differences reflect tradeoffs made at the level of the state, compromises between the drive to maintain global competitiveness via investment in the "knowledge-economy", of which biotechnology is a key component, and the complex cultural politics that determine the status of the human embryo in different societies. Societies with relatively permissive regulation may try to leverage their advantage by encouraging regulatory arbitrage, as illustrated by the example of the World Stem Cell Hub. Inaugurated by the Koreans in 2005, the Hub was intended to provide an institutional framework for the international exchange of research materials: scientists from the US and Europe would send human tissue to be processed for research purposes, tissue that had been harvested in jurisdictions where such work would be illegal. However, the fate of the ill-starred Hub underscores the need for regulatory frameworks to manage globalized research: it was effectively destroyed shortly after its inauguration, brought down by revelations about unethical research (and faked results) in the Hwang group, the world-famous South Korean research group at the centre of the Hub. Despite these problems, international initiatives in stem cell research continue: for example, there is widespread interest in "outsourcing" research to China, attracted by its relatively permissive regulatory regime and pool of low-cost skilled research staff. There is, however, increased awareness of the importance of good governance to underpin international cooperative efforts and manage regulatory arbitrage. The second half of the paper focuses on international governance options, outlining a typology of potential governance structures, characterised in terms of geographic scope (global, transnational, regional) as well as organisational remit (how far does it range beyond health biotechnology) and organisational type (formal or informal, centralised or network, public or private). This typology provides the framework for an analysis of efforts to create international governance regimes for embryonic stem cell research... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the linkage between financial liberalization and financial crisis in Mexico and South Korea from a comparative international political economy perspective. Both countries shared various features in the pattern and process of financial liberalization and on the road to financial crisis. Before their financial crises, these two countries experienced international financial capital surges following liberalization in domestic financial markets and their opening to foreign investors, as well as capital account liberalization. These countries also shared similar circumstances: each had presidential elections and entered into the OECD near the years of financial crisis, and both had their policy autonomy strongly affected by foreign pressure favoring financial liberalization. This paper answers explains the political economic background that proceeded financial market opening, and how it encouraged the macroeconomic imbalances and financial crisis in both countries, while providing a research framework to analyze recurrent financial crises in other successful emerging market economies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2003 the South Korean government began to intensively crackdown on the presence of legal and illegal migrant workers, detaining and deporting migrant workers through the revision of immigration policy and the use of brute police force. The rhetoric of a ?war on terror? is used to provide justification and a legal modus operandi. This move came about as a response to the increased public organization of migrant workers, as well as other Korean grassroots groups, and their protest of human and labor rights abuses. Tensions achieved new heights in May 2005 when the government arrested and indefinitely detained Anwar Hossein, the president of the informal Migrants Trade Union, which was established to rebut government hostilities. The Immigration Bureau has attempted to frame the event within the context of the national security argument by calling the news media?s attempts to critically cover the story as ?anti-Korean? and, as it has done over the last couple of years, paint migrant workers as terrorists.This paper examines the debate on migrant worker rights in South Korea as a site for examining the workings of a post-colonial, national politics that attempts to manage the paradoxical demands of economic globalization within the context of the post 9-11 ?war on terror?. It is particularly interested in the ways in which state discourses have and continue to produce racial tensions to re-secure the concept of national security/homogeneity against the idea of foreign incursion. How and why does the South Korean government frame the conflict between migrant workers, the state, and public as a matter of national security? How does the racialized construction of the migrant worker play upon an already pervasive social xenophobia that is rooted in anti-colonial/imperial resistance and nationalist myths of ?racial purity?? How does the racialized construction of the migrant worker also re-define the popularized fear of the ?foreigner? (particularly ?third-world? foreigner) by framing the migrant worker debate within the context of the post 9-11 need for anti-terrorism measures? This paper is concerned with the South Korean state?s recent attempts to recast the concept of ?national in/security? within the political context of the threat of ?international? terror. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain the different attitudes of North and South Korea toward nuclear weapons. As well known, North Korea recently announced that they developed nuclear weapons. Regardless of whether their claim is true or not, it is generally agreed that North Korea is taking very risky behavior. They withdrew from NPT and are developing or have already developed nuclear weapons against other power states? will. Furthermore, they are suspected to have transferred materials and technology for nuclear weapons to other states that are willing to be nuclear power. Even though international cooperation at six party talks is occasionally taking place, it does not seem to influence North Korea to change their attitude up to now. In a word, North Korea keeps taking risky actions, denying international cooperation.By contrast, South Korea appears to abide by the international standards in terms of WMD. It is a member of NPT and other major nonproliferation regimes. The cooperative attitude of South Korea traces back to its decision to abandon nuclear weapons in late 1970s. During the late Park administration, South Korea once tried to develop nuclear weapons in response to the Carter administration?s attempt to withdraw the US troops from the soil of South Korea. The risky behavior by South Korea provoked an intense opposition from the US, and Seoul eventually gave up the project and went under the US nuclear umbrella.How can we explain the opposite policy choices by the North and South Korea at the critical moments? It seems that each of major theoretical perspectives has difficulties to explain the two cases with one theoretical framework. While realism explains may explain the case of South Korea, it fails to explain the case of the North. Neither the South nor the North can be explained by the liberalist explanation. Constructivism does not seem to be adequate in explaining the two cases at the same time. I would argue that cognitive approach such as prospect theory successfully explains both of the cases.According to prospect theory, states in gains frame are expected to engage in risk averse behavior, while states in losses frame are likely to engage in risk taking behavior, depending on their status quo evaluation. In this paper I hypothesize that their status quo evaluations determined the different proclivity of North and South Korea toward risky behavior. I also hypothesize that the positive (the South) and the negative (the North) economic sanctions provided by the United States formed their status quo evaluation to large extent, leading to the opposite policy choices.This paper aims to make contributions not only theoretically but also practically. Theoretically, it aims to demonstrate the adequacy of cognitive approach, especially prospect theory, in explaining state behavior in international relations. Practically, this paper attempts to produce policy implications in terms of how to evoke cooperation from stubborn states. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hope for Korean reunification is a topic that has elicited a great deal of attention by both Koreans and the international community. If reunification were to happen, it has been widely assumed by North and South Koreans as well as international relations analysts that the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the two Koreas would bring them the unity and harmony they have so longed for. It is the assumption of Korean homogeneity that this paper questions through the use of interviews and questionnaires to learn more about South Korean attitudes towards reunification and their North Korean brethren. National identity is not as unproblematic as many international relations analysts take it to be. The ideal of a Korean nation exists alongside distinct North and South Korean identities, and although many on both sides of the peninsula may have a vision for a single Korean nation, they often look very different from one another. This paper focuses on how these competing images of national identity are perceived and talked about by ordinary South Korean people. Do they see themselves as part of a single Korean nation or part of a distinct South Korean nation? What impact might all of this have on the process of Korean reunification? While this paper does not posit any clear answers to these questions, it does intend to demonstrate the complexity of these issues in order to further understanding of the difficulties that the reunification process faces on the Korean peninsula.Interviews and questionnaires with South Korean expatriates living in the Netherlands formed the key empirical component of my research. Because their status as expatriates and their ability to communicate in English sets these participants apart, the conclusions drawn from the interview and questionnaire material is not intended to represent the views of all South Koreans. It is valuable, however, in obtaining some glimpse into the complex identity issues inherent within reunification. This paper intends to contribute to the ongoing discussion on what it means to achieve a successful Korean reunification. It also hopes to shift the focus from macro-level analysis of the many political and economic hurdles to Korean reunification in order to garner attention for the substantial and no less important issue of how experiences of national identity formation is rendered in the daily lives of people on the Korean peninsula. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Comparative Analysis of the Migration Policies in Singapare, South Korea, and Japan: Political Economy and Institutionalist ApproachesThis paper mainly aims to explain the variance of the labor migration policies in three countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. As most Asian countries imported a model for labor migration policy from the German work permit system, which can be categorized as ?exclusionary model,? those three countries also adopted the exclusionary model of migration policies, which admits migrant workers only for limited economic sectors, and never provides them with civic and political rights. Even though they share the German-styled exclusionary model, each country?s model on migrant workers is a little bit different. Whereas Japan is strictly maintaining the exclusionary model of migration policies under the belief of ?homogeneous society?, Singapore is holding the relatively open position within the exclusionary model. The South Korean model is located in the middle of Singapore and Japanese systems. Therefore, I would like to raise the question, how we can explain the difference of migration policies in three countries in this paper. While lots of comparative analyses of migration policies have been made, these literatures overwhelmingly focus on Western countries. Few studies based on Asian countries have been achieved. Thus, I will attempt to extend the comparative migration studies based upon Western cases to the Asian cases by following Gary P. Freeman?s work on migration politics of Austrailia, Canada and the United States. Freeman introduces the approach of political economy and institutionalist perspective, and applies them to three Western cases. According to him, political economy perspective deals with who become winners and losers from migration, and how these benefits and costs have impacts on various actors including states with regard to migration policies, while institutionalist approach can be argued that the concept of rights and values as a result of the historical evolution both in nation-states and international organizations affect the migration policies in democratic states. I do not assume that the assessment of two approaches is dichotomous, for example entirely correct or incorrect. The one of goals in this paper is to assess the relative significance of two approaches in explaining the difference of the migration policies in Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. In addition, I will try to examine to what extent the main approaches used in Western cases can explain non-Western cases. By doing so, I believe that this study will broaden the understanding of the migration policies in non-Western countries. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While currency crises have occurred in developing and developed countries alike during the past decade, there have been no systematic comparisons made between them in terms of discerning similarities between their onset and resolution. Though there are good reasons that the vast majority of analyses have concentrated on a single region when looking at their respective financial crises, some theoretical leverage may be gained by examining similarities common to countries across the three regions (Europe, Latin America and Asia). Economic fundamentals alone do not explain the onset, severity and duration of these crises. Political factors like the strength and coherence of the governments in charge can help us understand why such differences occurred. Political instability encourages markets to question a government’s willingness and ability to maintain an exchange rate. The most obvious repercussion of elections is that a new government with new interests may take power, but the electoral process can also be destabilizing in other ways. It can reveal instability within a party and activate previously dormant veto players, affecting a government’s response to a crisis and its ability to form policy in the aftermath. Electoral incentives also create the desire to emphasize policy differences rather than similarities in order to appeal to specific constituents with potentially competing interests, thus emphasizing conflict rather than stability and continuity. Elections are a time to consolidate power of your faction as the results determine your faction’s impact on future policy. As a result, market doubts lead to the onset or exacerbation of currency speculation. A government is unable to effectively deal with long-term policy issues until election is decided, perhaps for sometime afterwards, encouraging speculation. Furthermore, a government is unable to act coherently in the short-term, exacerbating market instability. In this paper I look at how the political uncertainty caused by elections in France, Mexico and South Korea contributed to their currency instability and their inability to credibly and effectively cope with the initial crisis. These three countries are typically described as having a strong executive, and the upcoming elections in these countries posed a threat to their normally decisive governments. In France, the legislative elections in the spring of 1993 contributed to the exchange rate instability in the region by exposing the divisions within the conservative coalition regarding France’s participation in monetary union. The demands placed on the European countries to comply with the EMU criteria meant that a reluctant legislature could prevent France from achieving EMU membership. In Mexico, the assassination of the ruling party’s presidential candidate led to the exposure of serious divisions within the PRI. Zedillo lacked a strong independent base of support, and when the devaluation was undertaken, it was done without a broader adjustment package. This reflects the lack of coherence of the ruling party and their inability to push forward decisive policy measures to cope with the crisis. In South Korea, not only was the identity of the next president uncertain during the crisis, previously dormant veto players within government slowed down the adjustment process necessary to deal with the Asian currency crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will explore how ethnically homogenous country such as South Korea deals with foreigners, and how the state has constructed a hierarchical membership structure throughout incorporating or excluding certain groups of foreigners in the age ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viewing three specific nationally-based projects in what appears at first glance to be quite contrasting choices for case studies, i.e. South Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, it has become clear that employability is an idea that has become almost a matter of common sense to inform policy making. These three countries each hold a different economic and social history, but their respective national skills revolutions have occurred at a similar pace, and at a simultaneous time. This would not have surprised Meyer (1997), who notes that despite distinct histories, organisations within varying nation-states appear to converge in more ways than they diverge. Meyer cites Jepperson and Meyer (1991), Soysal (1994), Dobbin (1994), and Guillen (1994) to back up his claims for the objective nature of a world culture which would inevitably emerge from a desert island if given the chance. Meyer (et al) admit that this world culture is a Western invention, with a limited admission for locally specific ways of expressing what he interprets to be global norms, which these authors believe will be ultimately beneficial to all states. Meyer’s study is therefore not critical of the impact of related policy on the day to day lives of people who are most immediately impacted by such convergence projects. For the present paper, however, workers are seen as those most affected by employability-enhancing projects that are created in campaigns for globalization. It is claimed that workers are most often overlooked in discussions, and this must be addressed in order to give a complete picture of what has happened as a result of three countries’ modernization campaigns, and in particular, the modernization of the public sector and financial services. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the reasons behind similarities and differences in post-crisis financial regulator regime in Japan and South Korea and the reasons for the variation in the endurance and depth of that reform over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to examine how the Korean government has corresponded to a sudden increase of international marriages. International marriages begun to increase sharply since the mid 1990s, and in 2005 international marriages reached 13.6 percent of total marriage cases. Such trend mostly results from marriages between Korean men and foreign women from China and South Asia. Most of foreign wives have settled in Korea. As a result, international marriages entail the matters of citizenship, national identity and social integration of foreign wives and their families. Therefore, international marriages are no longer a private issue, but a public concern in which the state needs to intervene. To cope with these challenges, the Korean government decided to move toward multi-cultural society despite it could have stuck to a tradition of single race and homogeneous society. The government revised the patrilineal Nationality Law, and began to give the right to vote in local election to permanent residents. Finally in 2006 the government announced the comprehensive policies for multicultural society including language support for foreign wives, support for children of international marriages in school, and provision of social welfare to foreign wives. In order to explain the incremental shifts from controlling policy to integration one, I would like to focus on the domestic political structures in terms of state-society relations, especially the dynamic process among the state and pro-migrant NGOs. I will argue that growth of Korean NGOS, the strong ties between the government and these civic groups as a consequence of democratization are the key factors to explain the changes of the policies ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]