International Area Studies Review

Korean competitiveness in rural communities and agriculture has considerably diminished due to the ‘market opening’ for agricultural products: sudden surge of imported agricultural products → oversupply of domestic agricultural products and a fall in their prices → aggravation of farm incomes → weakening of agricultural sector basis. As a result, there is a decline in rural farm income and population. Therefore, the conditions of settling in rural areas have become worse in the chain of vicious circle. As part of an increasing farm diversification to solve the crisis of the Korean agricultural sector, nowadays the agri-tourism attracts considerable public attention.

The role of India in the Korean War is relatively little known either in Korea or India. For a student of Indian Studies in Korea and a student of Korean Studies in India of our time, a study of the role of India in the Korean War might provide one more useful perspective to understand the relations between Korea and India. So, it is worthwhile to analyze the subject, especially on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War and suggest that India needs to provide its disinterested objective vision as it did during the Korean War, and help in resolving the complex issues of the Korean peninsula such as North Korea's nuclear proliferation problem etc. Even before the Korean War India played a crucial role for the independence of the whole of Korea, and after the War it provided medical assistance on humanitarian grounds instead of sending its armed force to South Korea under the UN command. Later it sent the Indian Custodian Force as the Chairman of NNRC, which initially was resented by South Korea but whose task was later appreciated by it.

The region of East Asia has experienced profound changes during the last two decades with the formation of a more region-oriented regional order in the economic and other arenas. Amidst the tendency moving fast towards an increased economic interdependence, there have been growing discussions among the regional countries on the possibility of building an East Asian Community. The main aim of this research is to examine the extent to which the EU's integration experience would make contribution to understanding East Asia's regional potential. It is argued that, despite the huge gaps between the two regions, the overall conditions for regional cooperation and integration in East Asia have been fast improving and the applicability of the European model to the region will continue to increase in the future. After analysing the political and security implications of the ongoing discussions, the author concludes that both the EU's model of regional integration and its proactive engagement policy in the region would likely facilitate the formation of an East Asian community in the coming future.

In the globalizing society, it is inevitable to have good relations with neighboring countries. After WW II, global areas have been formed differently by America. In other words, America had set multilateralism system in Europe, in contrast to bilateralism system in East Asia. So, East Asian countries couldn't communicate and exchange without America for a long time. However, in the Post-Cold War, though this mood was dissolved, it is still difficult to say East Asian countries have good relationship one another. In this paper, I argue that the reason is unsolved problems, the emotional matters among the nations. Unlike Europe, it occurred past problems in East Asia repeatedly and continuously. Then, it makes hard to cooperate the nations. On the basis of Constructivism perspective, this paper takes an example, Korea-Japan relations, which has some unsolved past problems. In Korea-Japan relations, there are many tries and efforts to have a good relation politically and socially. Yet, it comes to nothing whenever past problems happened between two nations. In the political part, we can find it by examining the change of policies toward the nation before and after occurring past problems. Likewise, in the social part, as one of evidences, the change rate of number of tourists coming and going to the countries proves it. Irrational factors can affect relations between nations.

This paper addresses a comparative analysis of outward FDI to Korea and China by Japanese MNCs. The study aims to review the level of economic development of countries expanding overseas and the relativity of outward FDI patterns, and the change process of Japan's outward FDI from the standpoint of the Investment Development Path Theory. The result can be summarized as follows: First, as a result of examining the long-term changes of Japan's outward FDI, the development process can be mapped in the order of resource securing→entry into developed markets→production cost reduction→measurements to regional economic integration→establish international division of production→entry into developing countries for markets. In particular, the exchange rate factor called high Yen played a vital role in terms of production cost reduction. Second, as result of outward FDI compared with Korea and China, while the proportion of non-manufacturing industry is higher in the case of Korea, China still has a high proportion in the manufacturing industry. This implies that the investment towards Korea in Japan's outward FDI pattern is swaying toward developed countries. Third, since the 2000s, Japan's outward FDI to China began increasing tremendously, as a new phenomenon, by strategic asset seeking motivation, such as R&D base, rather than the traditional efficiency seeking or market seeking motivations. This explains that the strategic asset seeking motivation can be demonstrated both in South→North and North→South, which can exist in third or fourth phases of the IDP theory. It shows that, dynamics of different directions are also feasible within the strategic asset seeking motivation depending on technology levels.

Although there is still no official policy paper or overall regional strategy towards Asia, the latest trend in Chinese diplomacy shows that China's strategy towards Asia is one of Harmonious Asia. The phrase connotes a sense of ‘togetherness’ that appeals strongly to the international society. To expatiate on the strategy, China proceeds along three tracks -economic cooperation, installing partnerships, and multilateral security. One could state that China's Asia strategy has been quite fruitful. However, there linger four future challenges to China's implementation of Harmonious Asia. That is, if the U.S. reinforces smart power; if Japan invents its own diplomacy; if China has difficulty harmonizing with regional states; and if China does not take sufficient responsibility. The possibility of voices calling for the need for a new system will rise once China becomes a responsible state and the regional states embrace China's subsequent leadership. Despite the potential and possibility, the reality of either a Sino-U.S. co-leadership structure or a Sino-U.S.-Japan tripartite concert will be unlikely to come to avail in the near future given the unremitting distrust between China and US/Japan on their strategic intentions vis-à-vis each other.

The article focuses on three non-institutional factors - president, role of ideology (policy orientation), and external environment of Uzbekistan (and Central Asia) and how they have been influencing over foreign policy decision-making in Uzbekistan since independence. Firstly, President is a nexus of power in Uzbekistan. The authority of President of Republic of Uzbekistan Islam A. Karimov is often described as something “never-surpassed” in Uzbekistan since the super presidential system with authoritarian features has been developed over two decades. Islam Karimov as the top decision-maker in the foreign policy decision-making process, has promoted the ‘preventive’ and ‘multilateral’ diplomacy not too much leaning on one state or power. Secondly, as of role of ideology (policy orientation), in Uzbekistan, ‘de-Sovietization’ and ‘pragmatism’ are the dominating ideas in the foreign policy decision-making under the Karimov administration. Uzbekistan in the beginning had some distance from Russia and tried to broaden diplomatic relations with the West and other states such as South Korea and Japan. The third non-institutional factor is External Environment. The Central Asian region, where Uzbekistan is belonging to, is located in the center of Eurasia. With its abundant energy resources, the economic value has been remarkably growing in recent years. In this regards, Central Asia has been drawing attentions of key international players as the arena of competition. While this external condition provides a variety of options for Uzbekistan such as the ‘equidistance diplomacy’ among regional powers, such environment often turns out as challenges and unstable factors against the stability of Uzbekistan at the same time.

This study compares supplier relationship by multinational assemblers in China vis-á-vis the Chinese assemblers in the stage of product development. We surveyed seven automobile firms (four international joint ventures and three Chinese firms) during 2005-2007, when the Chinese automobile industry began to rear up. Based on the survey, we examined the roles of suppliers, which is one of the critical dimensions in product development of the automobile industry.

The purpose of this article is to explore the characteristics of the Burmese Buddhist nationalism mainly led by Buddhist monks in colonial order. This study mainly focuses on the behaviors, ideas, and ideologies of whom took part in nationalist movement, permeating the westernized way of thinking. How did they cope with socio-economic change and weakening of the traditional Buddhist functions? Here, we choose three cases concerning on the nationalism in colonial era. First, the YMBA and the GCBA movement, as a religious one with Wunthanu movement, awakened to people unfairness of the British order in the aspects of traditional ascetical life. Second, the Saya San rebellion was a kind of mixed movement on tradition and modernity, which inclined to reestablish of the return of the millenarian kingdom with secular physical confrontation. Third, the main reason of the Oil Strike which had triggered in 1938 was basically economic and racial discrimination compared to Indian workers who had come to Myanmar in colonial period. However, there was a severe religious dissatisfaction behind the uprising that the British authorities despised the Buddhist cultures and practices. The nationalist movement in colonial Myanmar had evolved to their own form which contained the national unity and distinguished identity compared to other people focusing on Buddhism.

This paper attempts to identify the cultural effects of individualism and collectivism, which have been widely studied as the central organizing dimensions of culture, on the individual's political attitude and behavior while disentangling the individual and national level effects based on multilevel modeling. It uses the five waves (1981–2007) of the World Values Survey for thirty OECD member countries and attempts to establish a stronger case for the external validity of the findings. The analysis finds that in general individualism and collectivism matter both for the elements of civic culture/social capital. The significant cultural effects show up either at one level or at both

Historically, there were two exploration perspectives for East Asia — the continental and the maritime—which produced two distinct cartographic traditions responsible for divergent names of places and seas in this region of the globe. The continental perspective, developed by Russians as they expanded eastward across the Eurasian land-bridge, viewed the large body of water around East Asia and Siberia logically as Vostochnoe More-Akiyan—the “Eastern Sea-Ocean.” However, from the maritime perspective developed by western European explorers (Magellan, Drake, Cook, La Perouse and others) who were approaching East Asia by sea via South America or South Africa, the same semi-enclosed bodies of water appeared to them as really part of the Pacific Ocean. These two distinct perspectives, coming from opposite directions, created alternative names for the Pacific Ocean and for the semi-enclosed seas behind island chains strung along the rim of Asia. While it is true that the western maritime cartographic tradition became the more influential standard in cartography, it did not completely erase all the names the Russians had developed from their continental perspective. This explains overlapping names for the same geographical spaces, and the attendant problems of standardization of pelagonyms in East Asia. There is a definite need to return to the earliest historical names and negotiate their acceptance by all concerned.

In the recent years, with the increasing global influences of overseas Chinese, China not only transformed from an “internal overseas affairs” to an “external overseas affairs”, but also facilitated the forming of numerous overseas affairs organizations rapidly under the “multiple development” overseas affairs policy. It also formed the deeply-rooted six major systems: Highest decision-making body for overseas affairs policy; Political forum for overseas Chinese, Plan implementation body for overseas affairs, Interdepartmental plan implementation body for overseas affairs, other negotiating body for overseas affairs, and party system for overseas works.

This paper analyzes the dynamic patterns and trends pertaining to bilateral trade between Korea and Vietnam over the past decade. The principal findings of this paper are as follows. First, the commodity trade patterns between Korea and Vietnam have remained virtually unchanged, even though the volume of bilateral trade between the two has expanded significantly over the past decade. Second, Korean exports have been characterized by a high and growing share of intermediate goods, and Korean imports by a high and growing share of consumption goods. Third, the technological level of Korea's exports to Vietnam is much higher than that of Vietnam's exports to Korea. Fourth, Vietnam's exports are less diverse than Korea's. Fifth, bilateral trade between Korea and Vietnam has been less intense than these countries' trade with other countries in recent years. Sixth, Korea-Vietnam bilateral trade has principally been inter-industry trade. Seventh, Vietnam enjoys a comparative advantage largely in either primary products or low-technology manufactures, whereas Korea enjoys a comparative advantage primarily in manufactured products and machinery and transport equipment. Finally, the high degree of trade complementarity between Korea and Vietnam makes it plausible that a freer trade agreement may bring about greater benefit for both countries.

After the establishment of APEC in 1989, APEC member countries remained reserved or neutral in their response to the proposal for the creation of an intra-FTA within APEC. However, APEC member countries agreed on the need to promote an FTAAP to speed up economic cooperation between APEC member countries as a long-term plan for rapid intra-regional integration and the breakdown of the Doha Round in recent times. At the APEC SOMIII in 2008, Korea, in cooperation with countries like Peru and Indonesia, led a study titled, “Analysis of Existing Studies on a FTAAP and Future Research Topics” that began examining the feasibility of an FTAAP. Discussions for an FTAAP do not contradict Korea's strategic FT A plans and, as a result, Korea has maintained an interest in promoting an FTAAP as a long-term plan rather than a short-term plan. Finally, much research is needed on the feasibility of an FTAAP and how best to promote an FTAAP to increase economic cooperation and the unification of APEC member states in the future.

The European Commission has controlled State aid that would distort competition and affect trade between Member States. The State aid control is, in fact, one of the most important provisions of EU law, aiming at ensuring the process of competition and the integrated internal market. However, its State aid control does not seem very successful, since the current data indicate that the number of unlawful State aid is still significant, although the overall amount of granted aid has not increased considerably despite the current financial crisis in the EU. In particular, it does not give an impression that there are proper guidelines of the State aid exemption to a certain sector, such as R&D. This article discusses about its control of State aid for R&D that can cause incentive loss of the R&D investments due to its comparative advantage. Even though the Commission stresses that State aid for R&D should serve as an incentive for firms to commence R&D activities, it is still difficult to decide which R&D aid can encourage them to carry out R&D efforts effectively. When the Commission lacks the legal techniques to implement an adequate balance test of positive and negative effects of State aid, its State aid policy will fail to contribute to achieving social and pro-competitive goals of the EU.