South Korean Economy Research Articles

Экономика Южной Кореи: трудное время реформ

Экономика Южной Кореи: трудное время реформ

The Development Performance of the South Korean Economy

The Development Performance of the South Korean Economy

The Transformation of the South Korean Economy and Its High Technology Industry in the Intra-Regional Division of Labour and Industrial Change in East Asia

The Transformation of the South Korean Economy and Its High Technology Industry in the Intra-Regional Division of Labour and Industrial Change in East Asia

Importance of Secondary I m p act of Foreign Tourism Receipts on the South Korean Economy

This study examined the secondary impact as compared to the primary impact of foreign tourist receipts on the South Korean economy for output, personal income, employment, value added, indirect tax, and import, using an input-output model. This study also analyzed the performance of the tourism industry as compared to other export-oriented industries in terms of multipliers and substitution effect.

Unifying Korea: Beyond Hopes and Fears

Fears of a North Korean invasion of South Korea are giving way to /ears of a North Korean economic and political collapse. The post-Kim 11 Sung power struggle, the nuclear conflict, and North Korea's rapid economic decline all add fuel to the fire. If North Korea collapsed today, it would devastate the South Korean eco nomy To avert this adverse scenario, Seoul and Pyongyang must push ahead with their respective economic reforms, learn from German unity mistakes, develop peaceful Korean unification plans, and begin to put these plans into action.

Evaluation of POSCO`s Success and its Future Strategies

A key factor in the growth of the South Korean economy has been the government's ability to achieve stability and efficiency for the nation. The development of five-year plans has worked to focus attention on all aspects of the economy and society. Rebuilding its country from the ashes of the Korean War in the early 1950s, South Korea has carried out successfully six five-year plans and embarked on its seventh in 1992. It strives for long-term growth while attempting to eliminate factors that detract from the planned course, encouraging more efficient use of its national resources-like people and money. Korea demonstrated that it had come of age and joined the ranks of the international community when it hosted the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. In developing countries, like Korea at its early stage, the government supported industry expansion through financial assistance and trade policies while promoting exports.

National security and the two Koreas

A continuous time model of the military competition between North and South Korea is developed and tested using data from 1960–1987. Several policy simulations are explored using this model. We find that there is considerable potential for moderate defence reductions on the peninsula. However, a strong South Korean economy is likely to accommodate real increases in both military and private consumption.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews in This Article Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. By Alice H. Amsden. (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp Food Aid and Industrialisation: The Development of the South Korean Economy. By John Cathie. (Aldershot, Avebury, 1989, pp Demand, Prices and the Refining Industry: A Case‐Study of the European Oil Products Market. By Robert Bacon, Margaret Chadwick, Joyce Dargay, David Long and Robert Mabro. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp Current Issues in Monetary Economics. Edited by Taradas Bandyopadhyay and Subrata Ghatak. (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990, pp The New Competition: Institutions of Industrial Restructuring. By Michael H. Best. (Oxford, Polity Press, 1990, pp Economic Theories, True or False? Essays in the History and Methodology of Economics. By Mark Blaug. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1990, pp Exchange Rates and International Finance. By Laurence S. Copeland. (Wokingham, Addison‐Wesley Publishers Limited, 1989, pp The Limits of Econometrics. By Adrian C. Darnell and J. Lynne Evans. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1990, pp Regulation and Banks’ Behaviour Towards Risk. By Daniela Di Cagno. (Aldershot, Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1990, pp Keynes's Third Alternative? The Neo‐Ricardian Keynesians and the Post Keynesians. By Amitava Krishna Dutt and Edward J. Amadeo. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1990, pp The New Palgrave: Econometrics. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1990, pp The New Palgrave: Utility and Probability. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1990, pp The Nonprofit Sector in International Perspective. Edited by Estelle James. (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp Perspectives on Trade and Development. By Anne O. Krueger. (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990, pp Taking Money Seriously and Other Essays. By David Laidler. (Hemel Hempstead, Philip Allan, 1990, pp The Collected Essays of Harvey Leibenstein. Volume 1: Population, Development and Welfare. Volume 2: X‐Efficiency and Micro‐Micro Theory. Edited by Kenneth Button. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited/1989, pp Exchange Rates and Open Economy Macroeconomics. Edited by Ronald MacDonald and Mark P. Taylor. (Oxford, Basil Black well, 1989, pp Continuous‐Time Finance. By Robert C. Merton. (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990, pp Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought. Volume IV: Keynes, Macroeconomics and Method. Edited by D. E. Moggridge. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1990, pp Alvey: Britain's Strategic Computing Initiative. By Brian Oakley and Kenneth Owen. (Cambridge, Mass, and London, The MIT Press, 1990, pp Sustainable Development: Economics and Environment in the Third World. By David Pearce, Edward Barbier and Anil Markandya. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1990, pp Optimal Decisions in Markets and Planned Economies. Edited by Richard E. Quandt and Dušan Tiaska. (Oxford, West view Press, 1990, pp The Political Economy of James Buchanan. By David Reisman. (College Station, Texas, Texas A&M University Press, 1990, pp Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry. By Subroto Roy. (London, Routledge, 1989, pp Open Economy Macroeconomics: Theory, Policy and Evidence. By Ronald Shone. (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990, pp Intra‐Industry Trade: Theory, Evidence and Extensions. Edited by P. K. M. Tharakan and Jacob Kol. (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp Hayek and the Market. By Jim Tomlinson. (London, Pluto Press, 1990, pp Concentration and Price. Edited by Leonard W. Weiss. (Cambridge, Mass, and London, The MIT Press, 1990, pp Adam Smith and Modern Economics: From Market Behaviour to Public Choice. By Edwin G. West. (Aldershot, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1990, pp

Foreign capital in Korea’s economic development, 1960–1985

The relationship between foreign capital and state autonomy is investigated in the rapidly developing South Korean economy. The changing composition and the sectoral distribution of the different types of foreign capital, the role of the Korean state in the acquisition and distribution of foreign capital, and the implications of foreign capital on the autonomy and capacity of the state are studied. The findings show that public loans and state-guaranteed commercial loans in the 1960s and 1970s have supported and strengthened state autonomy, while direct foreign investment (DFI) and commercial loans in the 1980s could potentially undermine it. Significant changes in the 1980s—rapid increase of Japanese DFI in hotels, commerical loans behaving more like DFI, and changing industrial orientation of the Korean economy toward more high-technology sectors—suggest that the types of foreign capital which are more independent of state control and more keen on market signals will increase in the future. This has importnat implications for future Korean economic development.

Human Resources Development In South Korea

The tremendous growth of the South Korean economy during the past two decades is due to a multitude offactors not the least of which is the rapid and pervasive development and education of their la...

South Korea in 1987: The Politics of Democratization

By any measure, 1987 was a momentous year for South Korea. Running against the political clock of President Chun Doo Hwan's expiring seven-year term in February 1988 and the international clock of the Seoul Olympics to follow in the summer, events moved briskly. From massive protests in the spring to government capitulation in June, from the negotiations for a new constitution to its adoption in October, the world watched as developments culminated in December in the first election of a president by direct popular vote in 26 years. The economic situation seemed to favor South Korea's difficult but inevitable transition to democracy. Following a successful year in 1986, the South Korean economy continued to record a healthy growth, accompanied by a large trade surplus. Both politically and economically, South Korea moved one giant step closer to joining the ranks of advanced, democratic countries of the world. But at the same time, the Korean people braced themselves to face uncertainties ahead, as political consensus was far from realization at home and economic prospects abroad appeared rather bleak.

An Jū-Kon to Nik-Kan kankeishi [An Chung-gŭn and the History of Japanese-Korean Relations] (review)

BOOK REVIEWS143 An Ju-Kon to Nik-Kan kankeishi [An Chung-gún and the History of Japanese-Korean Relations]. By Ichikawa Seimei. Tokyo: Hara Shobö, 1979. 675 pp. ¥5,000. In April 1979, the chief of staff of the Japanese Land Self-Defense Forces visited South Korea, and the Korean-Japanese Parliamentary Conference on Security Affairs was established. In July, the Director-General of the Japanese Defense Agency paid his first official visit. There is no doubt that Japanese-South Korean relations entered a new epoch. Japanese companies already own 58 percent of all foreign equity in South Korea, and South Korea is heavily dependent upon Japanese trade. In spite of such close ties between Japan and South Korea, the two peoples have yet to resolve the emotional conflicts that have persisted since Japan forced the opening of the hermit kingdom in 1876. The interaction between Japan and South Korea since the two nations "normalized" their relations in 1965 has been predominantly economic in character. Intellectual and cultural exchanges have been sporadic and formal. While a great number of Japanese tourists and businessmen have visited South Korea, the contacts between the two peoples have been superficial at best. The two peoples have yet to "touch their hearts." The Koreans could very well sympathize with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai who took strong exception to Premier Tanaka's comment in Peking that Japan had caused "inconveniences" to China in the 1930s and 1940s. Examples abound. In March 1979, the head of the Japanese Federation of Managerial Organizations (Nihon Keieisha Dantai Rengökai), Sakurada, caused a major incident at an international seminar by stating that the phenomenal growth of the South Korean economy was due to excellent education provided during the Japanese colonial period. The unanimous reaction of the Korean press was that of anger. They recalled that in March 1955 Kubota Kanichirö, the head of the Japanese delegation in the Korean-Japanese negotiations for the normalization of relations, had stated that the establishment of a former colony as an independent nation before the signing of a treaty of peace was rather unusual; that the United States should be criticized for enforcing complete repatriation of Japanese residents from Korea before a treaty of peace had been concluded; that the Japanese administration of Korea was not altogether bad, and that much was done to help the Koreans in the sense that port facilities, schools, and hospitals were built and spectacular advances were made in rice cultivation; and that the reference in the Cairo Declaration to the Korean people as being in a state of slavery was an exaggeration caused by the emotional stress of war. The Japanese government refused to rescind this so-called Kubota statement for two years in spite of the violent reaction of the Korean government. Both of these remarks have been characterized in Korea as "mangön" (bögen in Japanese) or reckless remarks. These "incidents" of recent years are worth noting because very similar types of emotional conflict and differences of opinion prevailed in 1909 when Count Ito Hirobumi was assassinated by An Chung-gün in Harbin. Ito and his 144ICHIKAWA colleagues undoubtedly believed that the Japanese policy of placing Korea under its control was justified for the sakes of both Japan and Korea. Since the early 1890s, Japan had striven without avail to encourage the Korean government to reform itself in order to put the latter on firmer political, economic, and diplomatic grounds. Only by annexing Korea could Korea be reformed and the stability of East Asia be assured. Recalcitrant Koreans, a group including that nation's emperor, should be disposed of for the good of Korea. The Korean reaction to Japanese policy, however, was quite the opposite. Many Koreans had supported Japan's war efforts against Russia between 1904 and 1905, because of the Japanese declaration that the war was to assure peace in Asia and to consolidate Korea's independence. For racial and cultural reasons, the Koreans also preferred Japan over Russia. Various remarks of An Chungg ün to his interrogators also indicate that the Koreans were resigned to Japanese "protection" of Korea in the wake of the Japanese victory against...

Korea: Troubles in a Divided State

The Third Republic that came into being in South Korea in December 1963 experienced a number of serious tribulations during 1964. A series of political crises poignantly revealed the strong legacies of the junta regime that reigned between May 1961 and December 1963 and the weaknesses of the new government. Some corrective measures were adopted toward the end of the year, but much more improvement will be necessary before political stability can be assured in South Korea. The first, and the most serious, crisis erupted over the issue of normalization of diplomatic relations with Japan. President Chung Hi Park and the leaders of the Democratic Republican Party were intent on expediting the process of normalization even though the opposition parties voiced strong warnings against a hasty conclusion of the agreement or any excessive concessions. The opposition parties demanded a nonpartisan foreign policy based upon the concurrence of substantial elements of the national leadership.' In view of the fact that General Park won the Presidential Election (October 15, 1963) by a small plurality, and that the urban and the more sophisticated elements of the population voted against him, it would have been wise for the President to allow the opposition parties some participation.2 Nevertheless, the government dispatched Kim Chong-pil, president of the National Congress of the Democratic Republican Party and number two man in the regime, to Tokyo to oversee the work of the official government delegation and spur the negotiations. An early settlement of the prolonged disputes was expected to have a significantly favorable impact on the South Korean economy. Kim announced in Tokyo that the agreement would be concluded in March 1964, and that the final signing of the treaty would take place in May. Although the government has not announced the details of the so-called Kim-Ohira memorandum, an unofficial agreement