Korean Unification: Economic Adjustments under German Assumptions

This paper explores the impact of unification on North and South Korea under the hypothetical scenario that German‐type reunification occurs in the Korean peninsula. Simulation results using a global dynamic general equilibrium model show that with comprehensive market‐oriented reform and opening, the North Korean economy could capitalize on its growth potentials. Unification can reduce the growth rate in South Korea for a certain period following the unification shock due to the transfer of resources out of the South into the North and an increase in risk on the Korea peninsula. Due to the relative sizes in population and per capita gross domestic product of the two Koreas, unification can be more disruptive on North and South Korea, compared to the experience of Germany. The critical factors determining the economic effects of unification are the nature of wage‐adjustment, the size of resource transfers from the South to North, and exchange rate policy.     

How credible is the North Korean threat?

We perform event analysis on particular episodes of tension in the Korean peninsula between 2000 and 2008, and investigate the effect of the events on South Korean financial markets (stock markets, bond yield spreads and the exchange rate) given that South Korea would be the first affected by a military aggression from North Korea. Surprisingly, in nearly all cases, these events, which have often been dramatized in the world media, have no significant impact on either of these variables or only a very small one. We also find no significant impact of events on listed firms that would a priori be likely to suffer from increased tension between the two Koreas. Since financial markets often contain better predictions than expert opinions or surveys, these results strongly suggest that the North Korean threat is non‐credible.     

A study on the military alliance of South Korea–United States with the existence of threat from North Korea: a public good demand approach

The military alliance between South Korea and the USA is examined in the context of the North Korean threat. The findings are as follows: First, South Korea is more sensitive to the North Korean threat than the USA. Second, defense goods are affected more by national income and own price than by the North Korean threat. Third, the spill-in elasticity of demand for defense goods in South Korea is increasing in absolute value. The policy implications are that South Korea needs to strengthen the military alliance with the USA and to put emphasis on national income growth in defense budget planning. We would like to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. This research was supported by Korea National Defense University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.     

Market Activities and Trust of North Korean Refugees

This study investigates the effects of North Koreans’ informal market activities on their trust. Using survey data on North Korean refugees living in South Korea, we find that North Korean refugees who previously traded goods in markets in North Korea have higher trust in most people. By contrast, the experience of trading in markets did not affect trust in other North Korean refugees, suggesting little evidence of in‐group favoritism. Our main result is robust when we apply the instrument variable approach. This finding suggests the possibility that increased marketization in North Korea leads to a weakened control of the authorities over the North Korean society.     

Determinants of Labor Market Participation and Wages of North Korean Female Refugees in South Korea

This paper uses data from a survey on 289 North Korean female refugees who arrived in South Korea in 2007 to understand the determinants of their economic adaption in the South Korean labor market. More specifically, we look at the effects of job finding channels and government policies on the labor market participation and wages of these women. We find that job finding through both personal contacts and public employment networks increases the probability of finding employment, but the former, especially job finding through contacts with South Koreans, is the most effective route to finding employment. In addition, jobs with higher wages are acquired in employment attained from South Korean referrals, followed by South Korean government agencies and those from North Korean refugee contacts. We further find that labor market participation is negatively affected by both public benefits and private transfers possibly because of increases in the reservation wages of job seekers.     

Between Collapse and Survival in North Korea: an Economic Assessment of the Dilemma

The current North Korean reform focuses on an open door policy without much import liberalization and on a partial domestic liberalization limited to the consumer sector. This can be considered a variant of the so-called East Asian growth model pursued in South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Although the basic directions of such a model are understandable, the intensity of the reform measures is not radical and strong enough, and the economy has exhausted domestic resources to rely on and is having difficulty in getting access to external resources. Collaboration from the US and South Korea is the most critical elements for the success of North Korean strategy since these will lower political uncertainty and give the regime access to international capital and markets.They may have at most two or three years to rely on and try a big push from the outside, which can hopefully give the system a new momentum for recovery. Otherwise, collapse is certain since they do not have their own ability to revitalize the economy. Success or failure of the next three-year reform will determine the future of North Korea. Failure, including the sudden stop of the reform by internal coup, could lead to collapse of the North Korean regime (hard landing), which will bring in radical reforms either by a new North Korean leadership or by a South Korean takeover. Success could lead to a widening and deepening of reforms to deal with the main body of the domestic economic system (Chinese style soft landing), or alternatively give room for stop-go style (Romania or Cuba style) muddling through.     

DOES THE GRAVITY MODEL EXPLAIN SOUTH KOREA'S TRADE FLOWS?*

This paper applies the gravity model to explain South Korea's bilateral trade flows and to extract practical trade policy applications. A trade structure and an Asian‐Pacific trade network are included in the gravity equation to characterize the peculiarity of South Korea's trade patterns. The empirical result shows that South Korea's trade follows a Heckscher–Ohlin model more than an increasing returns or a product differentiation model. South Korea has large unrealized trade potentials with Japan and China, suggesting that they are desirable partners for an FTA. North–South Korean trade will expand markedly if bilateral relation normalizes and North Korea participates in APEC.     

“后疫情时代”韩国国家新政及启示

为应对新冠肺炎疫情给韩国经济和社会带来的负面影响、顺利完成经济结构转型升级、缓解两极分化严重的情况,韩国政府制定了《韩版新政综合规划》,以将韩国发展为智慧国家、绿色国家、温馨国家,并推动韩国在全球政治经济格局中处于重要位置。本文旨在通过分析《韩版新政综合规划》的主要内容,为我国提供政策借鉴。     

Économie sociale et nouveaux pays industrialisés: Le cas de la Corée du sud

For more than 30 years, South Korea has experienced exceptional economic growth. In the context of such an accomplishment, is any room left for the social economy organizations? The analysis of available legal and economic data shows that whereas these organizations have a nonnegligible place in the Korean economy, on the one hand their role is limited in comparison with their western counterparts, and on the other hand the boundaries between public, capitalist and social economy sectors are blurred. The family in Korea is the most natural factor of socio‐economic integration; in many areas the family substitutes for intermediaries like the social economy organizations. The economic crisis that touched Korea at the end of 1997 contributed to the weakening of the traditional model of family solidarity and offered new prospects for the Korean social economy, especially in the field of social protection and social services. This is similar to what seems to be evolving in Europe.     

Industry‐specific Real Effective Exchange Rates and Export Price Competitiveness: The Cases of Japan,China, and Korea

This paper constructs a new dataset of the industry‐specific real effective exchange rate, based on the producer price indices, for Japan, China, and Korea on a monthly basis from January 2001 to February 2013 in order to provide a better indicator for export price competitiveness. By conducting simulation analysis, we found that Korean electrical machinery firms substantially improved their cost competitiveness by lowering their production costs during the Korean won appreciation period, while Japanese firms' large plant investment caused by management misjudgments led to excessive production capacity, which resulted in the deterioration of Japanese export competitiveness. A structural vector autoregression analysis also reveals that industry differences of cost competitiveness as well as nominal exchange rate changes have significant impact on export performances of Japan and Korea.     

中、韩贸易与投资一体化的实证分析

中韩建交以来,中韩贸易迅速发展,随着韩国企业对华投资的增多,贸易与投资呈现长期均衡关系。本文就韩国企业对华投资与中韩贸易进行实证分析,进一步论证贸易与投资一体化理论,同时结合实际分析中韩贸易与投资一体化的原因。     

The effect of immigrants on the extensive and intensive margins of trade

This study examines the impact of immigrants on the extensive and intensive margins of South Korean exports. Since trade data contain excessive zero trade flows, we adopt recently suggested Poisson and Gamma pseudo maximum likelihoods. ???Our finding shows that immigrant stock in South Korea has significant effect on both the extensive and intensive margins of South Korean exports. Immigrants’ network seems to decrease variable as well as fixed costs of trade.     

North Korea: Sanctions,Engagement and Strategic Reorientation

This paper examines the roles that sanctions, and inducements might play in resolving the North Korea problem. It finds that while the “maximum pressure” narrative is plausible, the evidence to substantiate it is thin. Likewise, the North Korean regime is aware of the potentially constraining (or even destabilizing) political implications of cross‐border economic integration and has acted to structure engagement in ways to blunt its transformative impact. Maximizing the transformative possibilities of engagement will require conscious planning by North Korea's partners. Multilateral guidelines and voluntary codes on corporate conduct could be used to anchor this process, but they will only be effective if there is greater political commitment to such norms than has been witnessed to date. Without such commitments, engagement risks enabling North Korea's doctrine of the parallel development of the economy and weapons of mass destruction.     

高等教育:韩国经济原动力

韩国作为我国的邻邦,近些年经济发展势头迅猛。韩国经济的跳跃式发展,其中一个与众不同的原因是由于起主要推动作用的教育的驱动。剖析了韩国经济发展的特征及其原动力,建立了内生经济增长模型,并以韩国经济发展与高等教育发展的20年的数据为依据,通过实证分析证明了高等教育是推动韩国经济增长的原因,最终总结出韩国的高等教育对我国高等教育未来发展的启示。     

Does Tariff Induce Intellectual Property Right Protection and Reduce Incidence of Piracy?

We consider a model with North exporting a copyrighted product to South where there is IPR violation, and South exports a basic good to North. We examine the impact of North's imposition of import tariff on South's monitoring of IPR violation and the incidence of piracy. If South values IPR compliance “lowly”, then tariff imposition do not alter the pre‐tariff no monitoring equilibrium outcome but unambiguously raises the incidence of piracy. If IPR compliance is valued “highly” then tariff either switches the equilibrium outcome from not monitoring to monitoring or increases its rate. However, the incidence of piracy may increase.     

Testing the relative purchasing power parity hypothesis: the case of Korea

This study examines the relative purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis using the data from the Korean won–US dollar and the Korean won–Japanese yen foreign exchange markets. We extract proxies for inflation from stock market returns of Korea, the United States and Japan based on the method used by Chowdhry, Roll and Xia in 2005. We explicitly test the relative PPP hypothesis in light of the short-run price volatility using monthly, bimonthly and quarterly data from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2012. Our findings suggest that the empirical test results from the entire sample period do not support the relative PPP hypothesis. However, the results from the sample period excluding the Asian Financial Crisis period show that the relative PPP hypothesis holds for the Korean won–US dollar market with a moderate magnitude of inflation impact, but not for the Korean won–Japanese yen market. Abrupt changes in exchange rates during the crisis period may have affected the relationship between inflation and exchange rates. This result also suggests that factors other than inflation might have affected the Korean won–Japanese yen exchange rate.     

TRADING VOLUME,VOLATILITY, AND GARCH EFFECTS IN THE SOUTH KOREAN WON/US DOLLAR EXCHANGE MARKET: EVIDENCE FROM CONDITIONAL QUANTILE ESTIMATION*

Under the MDH, this paper investigates the asymmetry in the positive relationship between unexpected volume and volatility, and whether the unexpected volume series as a proxy for the rate of information arrival absorbs the GARCH effects. This is achieved by applying a quantile regression approach to the won/dollar exchange market with reliable data on trading volumes. Interestingly, the results show that in a freely floating exchange rate system, the positive relationship increases as exchange rate returns are higher. Contrary to previous studies, despite a significantly positive relationship, the inclusion of volumes alone does not reduce volatility persistence at medium or high levels of returns. In addition, the reform of the South Korean exchange rate system had an impact on the relationship, which occurred in response to a financial crisis.     

韩国应对劳工短缺的政策选择及其对中国的借鉴

劳工短缺现象已成为东亚许多国家的普遍问题。这个问题并不是经济自发调节便可消除的暂时现象,如长期持续下去,将对各国的产品出口以及经济发展构成严重的制约。韩国自20世纪80年代末起便开始了对劳工短缺问题的调查研究,积累了大量的文献与实践经验。在描述韩国劳工短缺现状的基础上,探讨其成因并介绍韩国政府对此问题所采取的措施及实施效果。提出了对解决我国劳工短缺问题的可借鉴之处。     

韩国媒体报道中的中国国家形象分析及其相关对策——以韩国主流媒体对中国广州亚运会报道为例

随着全球化时代的来临,国家形象问题日益成为国际传播和国际关系领域里的研究热点．成为政府官员、专家学者和普通民众普遍关切的一个极富理论和实践意义的课题。本文首先介绍了韩国主流媒体对中国广州亚运会报道的整体情况,分析了韩国主流媒体报道中的中国国家形象,指出韩国媒体对中国和广州各个方面的报道比较全面、相对客观．只是在涉及到民主、人权、日本、朝鲜等问题时,才表现出负面。本文强调需要不断提升对外传播能力,通过提升国家公民的素质、建设和谐媒体．实施中国媒体“走出去”战略等手段重新塑造国家形象。     

韩国电子商务的发展研究

本文以U-Trade Hub系统为中心，对韩国电子商务的发展历程及现状、取得的成果进行叙述，分析韩国电子商务所面对的各种课题，并针对韩国电子商务国际化提出相应的推广方案。