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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the short-term and long-term causes of the candlelight demonstrations and the ensuing presidential impeachment in South Korea, as well as the characteristics of the organization that planned the candlelight demonstrations and the participants of them. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on the previous literature, news articles, as well as various surveys on the randomly selected participants of the demonstrations and on a representative sample of Korean electorate, including non-participants as well. Findings The candlelight demonstrations, although “triggered” by a news report, would not have occurred, without angers and discontents accumulated over the president’s whole term by the irregularities and wrongdoings of the administration. The system of checks and balances in democratic system did not work properly. In that regard, the candlelight demonstrations and the ensuing presidential impeachment were just an unanticipated expression of the problems and defects built in the Korean democratic system of 1987, which would have found a way out in any form eventually. Originality/value Based on the analysis of the candlelight demonstrations and the ensuing presidential impeachment, the paper suggests instructive implications on a new democracy as well as on modern representative democracies that are in jeopardy now.

이 글은 2017년 제19대 대통령 선거에서 각 후보자가 사용한 선거비용의 조달과 지출의 과정과 결과를 분석하고 그 결과를 2012년의 결과와 비교함으로써 현행 정치자금제도의 문제를 진단하고 개선을 위한 방향을 제시하고 있다. 분석의 결과는 우리의 현행 정치자금제도가 후보자의 당선가능성에 따라 각 후보자가 처하게 되는 정치자금의 조달과 지출의 환경이 매우 다르게끔 설계됨으로써, 지지율과 가용할 수 있는 정치자금 사이에 ‘빈익빈 부익부’ 현상이 발생하고 있으며, 선거비용을 구체적이고 협소하게 규정함으로써 기존 정당에게 유리한 경쟁의 양상을 만들어내는 동시에 기존 정당 역시 선거비용 조달의 압박으로부터 자유롭기 어렵게 하고 있음을 보여주고 있다. 이러한 분석을 통해서 이 글은 현행의 정치자금제도가 사회·경제적 불평등이 정치적 불평등으로 전이되는 연결고리를 끊는 데에 기여해 왔지만, 그 반작용으로 시민들의 정치적 의사표현의 통로를 제한하는 부정적 효과도 아울러 보여주고 있으며, 이러한 부정적 영향은 계속 확대될 가능성이 크다고 진단한다. 이에 따라 결론은 보다 자유롭고 경쟁적인 선거환경 속에서 시민들이 정보에 근거한 판단을 내리는데 기여할 수 방향으로 제도를 개선할 것을 제안하고 있다.

Many economic and social conditions shape public welfare spending. We are able to show, however, that after taking account of these conditions, the expressed left-right preferences of the median voters significantly affect comparative welfare spending. These new findings support the representational claims of liberal democracy and the theoretical expectations of the literature on ideological congruence. However, we also show that insofar as the preferences of citizens and the promises of governing parties (which are highly correlated,) can be disentangled, it is the former that affect the long-term redistributive welfare spending equilibrium, while the latter have small, but significant short-term effects. Surprisingly, despite greater representational correspondence between positions of voters and governments under PR than SMD, the impact of the median voter preferences is quite similar under the two systems.

To investigate the therapeutic potential of Mitomycin-C (MMC) in the management of proliferative vitreoretinopathy, the antiproliferative effect of MMC on cultured human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells were investigated in vitro.Drug sensitivities of cultured human RPE cells to MMC were determined using the tetrazolium dye assay. In order to detect the presence of apoptosis, DNA fragmentation was assessed by DAPI staining, and TdT-dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL) assay. The relative amount of DNA fragmentation was quantified by flow cytometric analysis. To analyze the cell cycle response of RPE cells to MMC, flow cytometric analysis of propidium iodide stained nuclei was performed. The levels of proteins related to DNA damage in the RPE cells were then determined by Western blot analysis.MMC inhibited cell proliferation in a dose-dependent manner. The majority of RPE cells following treatment with 10 microg/ml of MMC exhibited fragmented nuclei as observed by DAPI staining and TUNEL assay. Cell cycle analysis demonstrated an accumulation of cells arrested in S and G2/M phase following treatment with 1 microg/ml of MMC. At 10 microg/ml of MMC, a dramatic increase of the cell population in the sub G1 peak, which can be considered a marker of cell death by apoptosis, was observed by flow cytometry. Western blot analysis of p53 and p21 revealed a gradual increase in the level of these proteins when RPE cells were exposed to increasing concentrations of MMC.This study demonstrated that the response of RPE cells to MMC was bi-directional: 1) partial arrest of the cell cycle at S, G2/M phase, and 2) induction of apoptotic cell death.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness after age 55 in the industrialized world. Severe loss of central vision frequently occurs with the exudative (wet) form of AMD, as a result of the formation of a pathological choroidal neovasculature (CNV) that damages the macular region of the retina. We tested the effect of an immunotherapy procedure, which had been shown to destroy the pathological neovasculature in solid tumors, on the formation of laser-induced CNV in a mouse model simulating exudative AMD in humans. The procedure involves administering an Icon molecule that binds with high affinity and specificity to tissue factor (TF), resulting in the activation of a potent cytolytic immune response against cells expressing TF. The Icon binds selectively to TF on the vascular endothelium of a CNV in the mouse and pig models and also on the CNV of patients with exudative AMD. Here we show that the Icon dramatically reduces the frequency of CNV formation in the mouse model. After laser treatment to induce CNV formation, the mice were injected either with an adenoviral vector encoding the Icon, resulting in synthesis of the Icon by vector-infected mouse cells, or with the Icon protein. The route of injection was i.v. or intraocular. The efficacy of the Icon in preventing formation of laser-induced CNV depends on binding selectively to the CNV. Because the Icon binds selectively to the CNV in exudative AMD as well as to laser-induced CNV, the Icon might also be efficacious for treating patients with exudative AMD.