Korean Capital Research Articles

‘The Grand Mass Gymnastics and Artistic Performance Arirang’ (2002–2012): North Korea's Socialist–Realist Response to Global Sports Spectacles

In accordance to Kim Il-sung's Juche philosophy that advocates independence, self-reliance and self-sufficiency, North Korea continues to remain one of the most reclusive and least globalised countries in the world. The country's response to the ongoing globalisation of sport, however, is less dogmatic but pragmatic, and resembles a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, it rejects and resists this process and on the other hand, it appropriates the global sports stage to pursue a complex political agenda. This paper focuses on the Arirang Festival that usually takes place in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and challenges and repudiates the prominence of commodified and globally controlled mega sports events. At the same time, this event offers North Korea a global forum to demonstrate the uniqueness and success of its political system and to foster an alternative discourse about the country. This impressive celebration of physical culture successfully negotiates the Juche philosophy and the forces of globalisation.

The Chinese’s Perspective on the Colonized Korean Capital City who Travelled in Korea

Chinese people are not unfamiliar with the capital city of Korea or Seoul. Chinese envoys have begun their visits to this beautiful city surrounded by rivers and mountains since the capital was settled in Soul in Joseon Dynasty. After opening the port, with the enhancement of Sino-Korean relationship, more and more Chinese came to this city. Among these people, there were many great names in the history of modern China such as Wu Chang qing, Yuan Shi Kai, Zhang Jian and Zeng Ji Ze who however were sent to Seoul with missions as signed by government and common people had few opportunities to travel there but to get to know this city from text records.<BR> During the reign of Japan’s colonization, though Sino-Korean relationship was at themercy of Japan at first, then on governmental communication increased:more and more Chinese with various purposes came to Seoul, especially some Chineses cholars travelled in Seoul for study or research, and for travelling and sightseeing. What they had seen and had heard has been recorded in words which are a great treasure for us to know Seoul under the colonized rule.<BR> In modern Chinese people’s eyes, the colonized Korean capital city was no longer the “Seoul” that they had been familiar to, but the one full of modern flavor. There were bustling commercial streets and well-developed transportation system and perfect municipal man agement all of which presented a modern city before Chinese travelers. The appearance of Seoul had great changes while the owner of the city was also changed. Korean people who had been living there for many generations were replaced by extraneous Japanese, reducing victims being conquered. They have nothing to do with the prosperity or the progress of the capital city. They had to live in the places full of dirty streets, a totally different world.<BR> The 500-year inheritance of Joseon Dynasty, the majestic palaces and the beautiful gardens in Seoul all reveal the time-honored and splendid Korean culture whoses plendor however was enshrouded by the shadow of colonia lrule.<BR> As a traveler staying in Seoul for a short time, some Chinese were amazed at the great changes of the capital city and admired Japanese colonists’ “governance achievement” while most of the Chinese travelers from these changes saw the destroy of colonial rule to Korean people, Korean culture and Korean spirit which made them realize that the only thing brought into by the imposed “progress” and “development” is harm and destroy.

Seven Business Models for Success of North Korea's Economic Reform

IntroductionThe North-South Korean economic cooperation has been expanding since it was made official in 1988. The amount of trade between the two Koreas has increased from $18,724 in 1989 to $190 million in 2009. The sustained development of the two Koreas' economic cooperation is a result of efforts by not only the private sector but also the public sector, academia, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the Korean public. This cooperation represents more than just practical results from economic cooperation between the two Koreas; it is a barometer by which the possibility of Korean unification may be gauged.The North-South Korean economic cooperation started off by trading restricted items and by the consignment processing of manufacturing industries, and in 2002, a joint Korean industrial park, the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, was established in North Korea. For South Korea, Gaeseong is an opportunity to utilize North Korea's low-wage workers, which would enhance the competitiveness of South Korean companies. On the other hand, North Korea could achieve much-needed economic growth by attracting South Korea's investment in the North's special economic zones (SEZs). At present, 116 companies have moved to the Gaeseong SEZ, employing 40,000 North Korean workers. The accumulated production volume between January 2005 and November 2009 was $729 million, and the exports were $120 million. The Gaeseong SEZ is planning to include 2,000 companies with 350,000 workers and is targeting an annual production volume of $16 billion.Previous studies on the North-South Korean economic cooperation have approached the topic mainly in the context of domestic and foreign policies, not in the business context.1 That is, previous studies have generally regarded well-organized business models and management ability as exogenous variables. Based on this assumption, an examination of the North-South Korean economic cooperation in the business context should yield a deeper understanding of the project's sustainability. Further, such an approach may induce higher levels of participation in the project by all sectors of Korean society.This paper examines how the North-South Korean economic cooperation and firms in North Korea could achieve success. In addition, the paper illustrates a profitdriven North-South business model and provides applicable cases for each model. The paper also determines the types of firms that would most likely succeed for each of the four SEZs and discusses the practical implications.North-South Korean Economic Cooperation Business ModelsThis paper classifies the business types of the two Koreas by using productive combinations of economic resources. The neoclassical school looks at labor, capital, and natural resources, among others, as main economic resources.2 Today, such resources also include production and technology/management know-how. These added factors are essential in explaining not only the issue of trade but also the phenomenon of foreign direct investment.3 As stated above, the North-South Korean economic cooperation has developed from consignment processing to direct investment, which would be difficult to explain only through the natural resources indicated by the neoclassical school.4In this regard, this paper assumes four economic resources-natural resources, labor, technology/management know-how, and capital-as the factors in the classification of North and South Korea's business types and stages of business development. Although hundreds of combinations could be made from the four economic resources because of duplicate use, classifying every possible model is not practical in the real-world context. Therefore, only seven types of businesses are discussed.The first business type is the Indirect Manufacturing Model, which combines North Korean labor with South Korean capital. The second type is the Direct Manufacturing Model, which combines North Korean labor with South Korean technology/management know-how. …

A Study on Constant and Time Varying Covariance Dynamics of Insurance Stock Price in Korean Capital Market

A Study on Constant and Time Varying Covariance Dynamics of Insurance Stock Price in Korean Capital Market

Negotiating hybridity: transnational reconstruction of migrant subjectivity in Koreatown, Los Angeles

Transnationalism has emerged as a key factor in altering immigrant ethnic enclaves by networking them with global flows of capital and labor. A quintessential example is Koreatown in Los Angeles, often portrayed as the ‘overseas Korean capital.’ The area has experienced rapid transition since the mid-1990s that is related to a huge influx of South Korean transnational investment and, concomitantly, migrants of various backgrounds. This study investigates the resulting transformation of the built environment, residential composition, and social relations in Koreatown. Of particular interest are the ways in which Korean and other transnational migrants flexibly alter their identities in terms of the situations in which they exist. Semi-structured and informal interviews with key informants were conducted, focusing on autobiographic narrations related to the discursive structure of their identities. Information from mainstream and Korean-American newspapers and previous academic work also are central to interpreting the qualitative data. We argue that, in contrast to the common view, Los Angeles's Koreatown is a highly multicultural, heterogeneous space. Therefore, it is suggested that this area should be reconsidered as a hybrid, rather than homogeneous, space where intra- and interethnic identities are flexibly reproduced, contested, and combined in the course of localized global interactions.

Secret Pyongyang Meeting Builds Science Ties Between Two Koreas

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGESSEOUL-- In secret, some 200 researchers from South and North Korea met in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang last week to discuss ways to jump-start scientific cooperation across the divided peninsula. ([Read more][1].) [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5771/172a

Time to Leave Korea?

Peninsula in 1945. Their historic encounter in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in June 2000 has initiated a thaw in relations that could lead, in time, to a confederation of the two Koreas and eventual reunification. How far and how fast the d?tente progresses, however, will depend in large part on whether the United States is prepared to modify its role on the peninsula, especially the size and character of its military presence there. The conventional explanation for the North's sudden reversal is that Pyongyang was desperate for economic assistance from Seoul. North Korea does indeed want South Korean economic help, but this fact alone cannot explain the North's new turn outward. To under stand the timing of the summit, and to assess whether the d?tente will endure, it is necessary to examine the relations not only between Pyongyang and Seoul but also between Pyongyang and Washington. Kim Jong Ils central objective is the normalization of economic and political relations with the United States, accompanied by a peace settle ment formally ending the Korean War. He needs normalization to unlock aid not only from the United States but also from Japan, western Europe, and the World Bank. Equally important, a peace settlement with

Regulating industrial growth in the South Korean Capital region

Balanced regional development has been at the top of the South Korean political agenda for more than three decades. Despite implementing various policy measures, industrial development has been heavily weighted towards the Seoul metropolitan area and this has fuelled a substantial level of population growth with associated physical and social problems. Hard planning and rigid development zoning failed to adequately address this issue and more recently, the South Korean government has looked at ways of relaxing planning control whilst providing new incentives and disincentives for manufacturing firms in a fresh attempt to close regional and intra-regional economic disparities. This paper explores the government's changing strategy, paying particular attention to industrial parks as the main vehicle carrying forward the policy of decentralisation. It examines the failure of past measures and considers the potential that more recent strategies may offer for reshaping the economic and social structure of both the Capital region and the whole of South Korea.

Transport issues and policies in Seoul: an exploration

This paper presents an empirical overview of the traffic problems currently being experienced in the South Korean capital. These are largely the by‐product of rapid economic expansion in recent years and the development of a ‘car culture’ in the face of poor public transport provision. In the past, government policy was directed at overcoming infrastructural constraints through programmes of large‐scale investment. Whilst this policy has continued (with a significant programme of investment in Seoul's underground system), transport planners are now looking at ways of increasing road capacity by developing more sophisticated methods of traffic management. Although these seem to be proving successful on a trial basis, the paper argues that because of bureaucratic separatism, transport policy has been unable to keep pace with Seoul's rate of urban expansion. Policy relating to transport and urban development is often not sufficiently integrated and reactive traffic management may fail to divert future transport problems.

The Taxation of the Windfall from Internationalization of the Korean Capital Market

The Taxation of the Windfall from Internationalization of the Korean Capital Market

The Growth of the Korean Capital Market

The Growth of the Korean Capital Market

The Taxation of the Windfall from Internationalization of the Korean Capital Market

The Taxation of the Windfall from Internationalization of the Korean Capital Market

Exploring Estimation Procedures of the Korean Capital Stock under Data Constraints (Written in Korean)

Exploring Estimation Procedures of the Korean Capital Stock under Data Constraints (Written in Korean)

Records Seized by U.S. Military Forces in Korea, 1921-1952

Research Notes Records Seized by U.S. Military Forces in Korea, 1921-1952 NORTH Korea recently published a pamphlet entitled Yesterday, Today : U.S. Imperialism, Mastermind of Aggression on Korea. It is the familiar propaganda booklet with the usual rhetoric, accusing the United States of crimes in the past and warning of the imminent danger of another American-provoked war in Korea. However, two things are notable about the pamphlet. One is that the North has reproduced in it a "restricted" memorandum written on August 26, 1949, by an officer of the American embassy in Seoul, Gregory Henderson. Then a young and eager Third Secretary, Henderson reported on a private conversation he had over dinner with Colonels Kim Paek-il, Min Ki-sik, and Song Yoch 'an and Lieutenant Colonel Chöng Chong-gün of the South Korean army. The conversation was about the morale and preparedness of the South Korean troops for an invasion of the North to unify Korea. A second thing to be noted is that the pamphlet, in English, was published not by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, as is usually the case, but by the Korean People's Army Publishing House. These facts indicate that the North Korean army that occupied Seoul twice during the Korean War (June 28, 1950, and January 4, 1951) seized material belonging not only to the Korean government but to the American embassy as well. Some of this material has been used in the past in unconvincing attempts to substantiate the claim that the United States and its South Korean "puppets" started the Korean War. In the winter of the first year of the war, United Nations troops also captured the North Korean capital, P'yöngyang, and seized material belonging to the party and government of the North. The existence of such captured documents and other material was known to some 178suh scholars for some time, but the documents were classified and their use restricted. Therefore, there has been no serious study based on this material . Only last year the records were declassified and made available for public use. For students of Korea, particularly those interested in the period from the liberation of Korea to the Korean War, it is rare and valuable material. It is not known how much or what sort of material the South Korean army seized when it occupied P'yöngyang. None of this material is available, and there is no study in Korea based on material captured by the South Korean army. This research note is a brief introduction to the material seized by the U.S. military forces in Korea and is offered in the hope that scholars will make use of the material in their research and study of the period prior to the Korean War. The material is held by the General Archives Division of the National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, Washington, D.C. 20409. It is physically housed in the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland, and is Usted among the holdings of Record Group 242, National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1941—. The records are grouped and identified by Shipping Advice numbers (SA), for example, SA-2005. There are nine such Shipping Advice numbers, running consecutively from 2005 to 2013. Each Shipping Advice number, except the last, includes eight to ten boxes of records, and the material in each box is itemized and numbered. Each box is marked with place and date, at times approximate area and date of capture . All items are identified by SA number, box number (B), and item number (I). Most of the material is in Korean, but there are some books in Japanese and Russian. There is an annotated list of the material, in English, but it gives only SA, B, and I numbers and minimal information such as whether each item is a published book or a handwritten record, when and where it was published, number of copies and pages, and so on. There is no annotation of the contents of the documents. This list was prepared by the 8238th Army Unit, Translator and Interpreter Service , General Headquarters, Far East Command, shortly after the capture of the...

An Incident In Pyongyang

Since I am an old soldier, you will have to indulge me as I tell an occasional war story. In Korea in early December 1950, the troops of the Chinese People's Army were sweeping southward and threatening the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. We had just received a trainload of new M46 tanks. They sat on flat cars in the marshaling yards—like so many great squat toads. They were prizes that must not fall to the enemy. Captain Will Baker of the 57th Tank Recovery Company was given the mission to unload the tanks and transport them south to safety. The northern sector of the city was already coming under enemy fire, and Will was given 24 hours to get them out. (Or the Air Force would be called in to blast them into uselessness.) At about 6 PM, soon after Captain Baker received the order, he rushed up and