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This paper contrasts agricultural protection of Japan and Korea with the West and identifies major differences between them. It characterizes agricultural protection of Japan and Korea (net heavy food importers) as "tariff-based and scarcity-sensitive" aimed at promoting survival and the West (net food exporters) as "subsidy-based and surplus-inducing" aimed at enhancing farm income. We then identify factors underlying the coevolution and divergence in the extent of agricultural trade liberalization between Japan and Korea since the launch of the Uruguay Round in 1986. Korea accepted deep cuts in agricultural tariffs in bilateral FTAs with the US and EU during the 2000s while Japan continued to protect farm interests by concluding low levels of FTAs with politically sensitive products excluded from tariff concessions. The two countries' stances reversed since 2013 with Japan becoming proactive in pursuing high levels of FTAs with major agricultural exporting countries and Korea decelerating its opening of agricultural markets. To explain such divergences, this paper develops a political economy framework in which the incumbent political leadership would consider both national interests and sectoral (farm as import competing industries and business/manufacturing as exporting industries) special interests. Our analysis shows that President Roh (2002–2007)'s embracing of neoliberal paradigm in formulating foreign trade policies that would promote national interests underlies the unprecedented level of agricultural trade liberalization in Korea during the 2000s, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's determination not to be outcompeted by the rising China and Korea's ambitious FTA strategies underlies Japan's proactive bilateral and mega-FTA drives since 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of international finance for coal power plants have intensified since the 2015 Paris climate agreement was negotiated. Over the past few years, Japan and South Korea have signaled their intent not to fund new coal projects overseas, leaving China and its Belt and Road Initiative as the 'financier of last resort.' In September 2021, China too announced its intent to stop providing finance for overseas coal projects. What accounts for their decision to cease financing overseas coal projects despite prominent differences in political systems, degree of internationalization of their financial systems, and economic size? Drawing on datasets of coal projects and financing supplemented by case material and interviews, this paper explores the dynamics of coal export finance and how the combination of international reputational pressures and declining demand for coal finance diminished the domestic support for incumbent coal exporters in all three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1965, Japan has issued numerous apologies to Korea, which however failed to resonate with the Korean public. To investigate this puzzle, this paper analyses the structure of these apologies and empirically examines their reception in Korea. Blatz et al.'s (Political Psychology, 2009, 30, 219) classification of components of political apologies was applied to conduct a qualitative analysis of 63 official apology statements by Japan to Korea and identify the most frequently used components (Study 1). Korean participants (N = 210) were randomly presented with an experimental vignette consisting of a major apology component to examine their psychological responses, and they also ranked the importance of each major apology component (Study 2). Results showed that while Koreans viewed admission of wrongdoing as an essential and the most demanded component of apology, it was paradoxically the least frequent component offered by Japan in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potentially scandalous truce between the front-line Ming and Japanese commanders in the last days of the sixteenth-century Korea War. Mao Guoke, a Ming officer, was "dressed up" as the younger brother of his senior commander Mao Guoqi and sent to Japan as a hostage. He returned after almost two years (1598–1600) expecting to be received as a hero but was dismissed as more of a "self-made hero." This was because the Ming court preferred the "correct" version of the war: that it was ended not by negotiation but by the military victory of the Ming and Chosŏn Korea. Mao Guoke's odyssey is an illuminating case of the interflow and mixture of information, true and false, amid the fog of war. The case also highlights the unique pattern of war and diplomacy in premodern times wherein front-line agents enjoyed and exercised autonomy to an extent that is unthinkable to modern minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public's negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public's priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that "history" trumps security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues the perceptions of relations between two nations involve not only the institutionalized national-boundary but also the perspectives of multiple symbolic boundaries. Based on a qualitative study, this paper aims to explain how different symbolic boundaries impact Japanese experts' perception of interrelations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The paper includes an analysis of opinion surveys, 20 semi-structured interviews with experts, and three focus group interviews with university students of Peace Studies Departments conducted throughout June and July of 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. These results advance existing scholarship by showing that Japanese experts use the following four symbolic boundaries to comprehend relations between Japan and South Korea: boundaries between (1) victims and perpetrators; (2) 'the West' and the Asian cultural and political space; (3) nationalistic and peaceful countries; and (4) a state and people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the striking similarities in strategic environment of Japan and South Korea, US deterrence through nonproliferation policy toward the two allies varied in terms of its measures applied: reward-based deterrence and threat-based deterrence. Using the critical junctures framework, this paper argues that 1) domestic structural circumstances of divided with idealist bias or unified with realist bias in two allies led to different local responses to US policy that signalled the level of credibility of US security guarantee; 2) intermediaries that played a critical role in promoting mutual trust and confidence have influenced the credibility and confidence on intra-alliance level; 3) this credibility and confidence had shaped the direction of the US deterrence strategy of reward-based deterrence for Japan and threat-based deterrence for South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea's persistent enmity towards its erstwhile colonizer Japan has been a compelling topic of East Asian international relations scholarship for decades. This article argues that the historical evolution of South Korea's democracy offers a vital and overlooked piece of this puzzle. Given that it emerged from one of the most virulently anti-communist dictatorships of the Cold War period, in a society facing an ongoing threat from communist North Korea, any left-of-center opposition movement faced an uphill battle against severe anti-communism. In such circumstances, the only way for a leftist opposition party to survive was by pitting its stronger anti-Japan reputation against conservatives' anti-communism. After South Korea's democracy stabilized, liberals tried and failed to overturn the anti-leftist institutions left over from the Cold War and then sought equilibrium through parallel rhetoric targeting pro-Japanese elements. Today, neither left nor right can afford to allow a final amicable settlement with its respective target of antagonism. Through analyses of domestic political rhetoric targeting alleged pro-Japanese or pro-communist elements, this paper demonstrates how these competing antagonisms achieved an uneasy equilibrium that undergirds South Korean political dynamics to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, Korea and Japan have increasingly exhibited different strategic priorities in trade in face of China's rising global economic prowess and worsening USChina trade conflict. Japan's trade policy decisions have worked to reinforce its economic and security ties with the US as a means to counter China. Japan has used both bilateral and multilateral means to secure its ties with the US against China. In contrast, Korea's trade policy positions have been one of 'strategic ambiguity'. Korea has been more conciliatory towards China, reluctant to take actions that would counter China's interest. Korea has mainly resorted to bilateral channels to maintain favorable relations with both China and the US. Korea's reluctance to clearly ally with the US against China has been observed across different administrations with opposing political orientations. This paper examines Korea and Japan's diverging strategic priorities in trade through the 2017 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference; the 2017 US imposition of Section 232 on steel; the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Korea-US FTA renegotiation and the Korea-China FTA Phase Two Negotiation; and the 2019 Japan-US Trade Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have flourished in East Asia since the late 1990s. Japan and Korea were at the forefront of this trend. Nevertheless, most policymakers' preferences orbited around region-oriented FTAs out of reluctance to make a sudden policy shift away from their conventional emphasis on World Trade Organization-based multilateral negotiations. The trend continued in Japan throughout the 2000s. In contrast, Korea took a sharp turn toward a cross-regional strategy in 2003. By the mid-2010s, this had created a significant gap in the two countries' overall FTA partner choices. What caused policymakers' ideas in the two countries to diverge from their initial focus on region-oriented FTAs? This paper focuses on the conditions that enabled policymakers' ideas to explain the divergence by developing the contextual‒dynamic framework of FTA policies. At the dynamic level, individuals are more likely to emerge with new ideas when their expertise comes from outside the decision-making body, accompanied by their social qualities and power. Contextual conditions should also be met: the trade policy environment should reciprocate agent-level qualities to create a supportive atmosphere for policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impacts of carbon pricing policies on firms' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We include two carbon pricing policies: carbon tax and emission trading scheme (ETS) at national and sub-national (province) levels, measured as policy existence (binary variable) and carbon price (continuous variable). Firms' GHG emissions are measured as total emissions and emission intensity. Using unique recent firm-level data from 2010 to 2021 from three East Asia countries (Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the People's Republic of China (PRC)), we obtain the following key findings. First, the national carbon pricing policy significantly reduced firms' GHG emissions and GHG emission intensity in Japan and the ROK. The greater the carbon price, the greater the impact. Second, the subnational carbon pricing policies implemented in two provinces of Japan (Saitama and Tokyo) decreased firms' GHG emissions. Third, heavy industry sectors such as energy, utilities, and industrials experienced a substantial decrease in GHG emission intensity due to the carbon pricing policy. Finally, our main results are robust to different model specifications and various measures of firms' GHG emissions. Although literature studying the ex-post impact of carbon pricing on emissions at country and sector-level is abundant, this paper contributes to the existing literature providing empirical evidence of the impact of carbon pricing policies on firms' emissions using firm-level data, which is highly limited especially in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions are high between Korea and Japan as a result of Japan's export restrictions on three essential semiconductor materials exported to Korea and the removal of South Korea from their White List of countries. The Abe Administration announced that these measures were necessary to "ensure non-proliferation of weapons-related materials." However, it is widely suspected that these measures were adopted as a retaliation against the Korean Supreme Court's decision recognizing compensation for the forced labor victims during the Japanese occupation period. The Korean government filed a complaint concerning these measures at the WTO DSB for resolution under international law. In this research, the authors will critically analyze Japan's export restrictions under international law to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the current conflict. This paper will tackle the relevant issues under the WTO/GATT regulations and the Korea-Japan Claims Agreement to address the issue of who violated international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper joins the debate on Japan's territorial dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets. Informed by the ontological security framework of analysis, this paper seeks to explain the decision to adopt the ‘Takeshima Day’ ordinance by the Shimane Prefectural Assembly and the subsequent ascendance of ‘Takeshima’ to the fore of Japan's identity construction vis-à-vis the Korean ‘other’. In this paper, I distinguish between two processes: one that led to the adoption of the ordinance and another that resulted in the entrenchment of ‘Takeshima’ in Japan's identity construction vis-à-vis the Korean ‘other’. The paper argues that the former process should be understood within the context of Shimane Prefecture's distinct identity construction vis-à-vis Tokyo, while the latter can be attributed to recent changes in Japan–Korea relations unrelated to the territorial dispute per se. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Methamphetamine (MA) abuse continues in East Asia and shows an increasing trend among youths in South Korea, Japan, and China. Although the negative effects of MA abuse on youth are considered as significant problems, few studies have been conducted on the topic in these countries. This paper focuses on the effects of MA on the human body and current MA abuse among youths in South Korea, Japan, and China. To investigate the negative effects of MA on the human body, we searched the keywords "MA," "human," and "effect" for studies published from 2013 to 2017. MA activates the neurotransmitter system and the central nervous system, and when used at high dosage or for long term, MA can cause severe neurotoxicity and cardiovascular problems. Online networks contribute to MA abuse by sharing methods for preparing synthetic MA. Despite efforts to reduce MA abuse, social crimes associated with its abuse continue and numbers of illegal MA users are increasing steadily in Korea, Japan, and China. In young users, diverse factors associated with drug addiction, such as curiosity and peer effect, lead to MA abuse and its attendant personal and social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key trend in the development of the global economy is the informalisation of employment. A number of studies have emerged that capture the growth and characteristics of non-standard employment in Japan and South Korea as two major world economies that are experiencing relative decline in growth. However, limited is understood in the role of institutional actors in shaping the labour markets and how these two neighbouring countries may, despite similarities, differ in terms of forms of non-standard employment and the institutional and cultural reasons that underpin the differences. This review study fills part of the gap by providing a systematic analysis of changes in the labour market in Japan and South Korea, the role of institutional actors in shaping the informal labour market, patterns of non-standard employment and its impacts on individual workers as well as the development of the labour market. The paper concludes that informalisation has led to the decline of job quality on a relatively large scale in these two countries and that a greater level of state intervention is necessary to maintain workforce well-being and economic sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping, the International Maritime Organization has adopted technical and operational measures, and discussed the possibility of adopting market-based measures. China, Japan and South Korea are major shipbuilding nations in the world, and have differing responses towards the IMO's regulatory initiatives. This paper conducts a comparative assessment of these three countries' positions on regulatory principles of the greenhouse gas issue, and concludes that their differentiated perspectives on this matter reflect their different regulatory interests. It is significant to take their differentiated interests into account in the developing regulatory regime to avoid disproportionate burdens being placed on certain countries, in particular developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]