Korea's Future and the Great Powers

Book Description

The eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula will send political and economic reverberations throughout Northeast Asia and will catalyze the struggle over a new regional order among the four great powers of the Pacific--Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. Korea's Future and the Great Powers addresses the vital issues of how to achieve a stable political order in a unified Korea, how to finance Korean economic reconstruction, and how to link Korea into a cooperative framework of international diplomatic relations.

Customer Reviews:

The great powers position -key to two Korea,s Reunification.......2003-08-20

In last page of Cover the book Editors write : "The eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula will send political and economic reverberations throughout Northeast Asia and will catalyze the struggle over new regional order amnong the four reat powers of Pacific-Russia, China, Japan, and the United States." Book is edited by leading american reaserchers korean issue. Book is very current now at time start Bejings 6-sides talks. The contibutors of book was outstanding scholars and former politicians , like prof. Robert Scalapino from University California, Marcus Nolland, Robert Galluci,Chuck Downes, Michael Armacost. Book is divided to three parts: first - Historical and political context, second economic context and third strategic implications. Analysis of international enviroment Korean Peninsula is deep and serious. I agre with genaral conclusions book: America must prepared to solve very serious challenges from North Korea and must cooperate with China, Japan , Pacific-Russia
and specially Republic Of Korea. I recomend this book readers want understand korean issue.

The Korean Management System: Cultural, Political, Economic Foundations

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The Korean Management System: Cultural, Political, Economic Foundations
Chan Sup Chang , and Nahn Joo Chang
Manufacturer: Quorum Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0899308589

Book Description

The Korean culture and the impact of the geopolitical environment of the Korean peninsula have produced a unique behavioral pattern in both managers and workers. It is necessary to understand this behavioral pattern in order to understand the Korean management system that has played such a major role in contributing to the phenomenal economic achievement of the Korean business community. Entrepreneurs, top executives, managers and workers are all integral parts of the management system, and their performance is given an in-depth analysis. After introducing the reader to the Chinese and Japanese cultures that share a common Oriental heritage with the Korean culture, the authors discuss the geopolitical influences of the major powers: China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. The Koreans first learned modern management principles from the Japanese, and following World War II, from the Americans. Later, the Korean government actively supported businesses' survival and prosperity. The various entrepreneurial management styles influence the development of Korea's modern managers as well. The impact of the group and individual behavior of Koreans, the evolution of the chaebol, the management of human resources, and the Office of Planning and Control are explored in depth. The very special ethical issues that surround Korean business dealings are also given particular attention. Top executives, managers, and entrepreneurs doing business in Korea or with Korean businessmen will be interested in this book's discussion of the Korean management system. This book will make excellent supplemental reading material in international business, human resource, and strategic management courses.

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Great Book.
got the story right, but the facts wrong
Well-written, a lot of information about North Korea
An erudite, well-researched and compelling examination

The Great North Korean Famine
Andrew S. Natsios
Manufacturer: Institute of Peace Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1929223331

Book Description

A terrible famine struck the most reclusive society on earth in 1994. Over the next five years, while the North Korean regime tried to hide the dreadful reality and the international community tried hard not to look, perhaps as many as 3 million people starved to death.

In this powerful, provocative book, Andrew Natsios asks three overarching questions: What do we know about the origins and extent of the famine? Why did donor governments and organizations not do more to help? What are the consequences of the famine for North Korea and the lessons for the international community?

In the search for answers, Natsios supplements the scanty store of published sources by drawing on the testimony of thousands of refugees, on thousands of e-mails he received while heading an NGO effort to aid the victims, and on his own encounters with officials from North Korea as well as from Western governments. The picture he presents is a disturbing one: human misery on a biblical scale, a paranoid regime that sacrificed its own citizens to ideological rigidity and pride, and foreign governments that subordinated humanitarian impulses to political and diplomatic interests.

A compelling and revealing book for specialists and general readers alike, THE GREAT NORTH KOREAN FAMINE takes us not only behind the well-guarded borders of the brutally incompetent "Hermit Kingdom" but also into the policymaking labyrinth where ethics and politics clash in the struggle to shape foreign policy.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book........2003-12-07

I was stationed in South Korea at the height of the North Korean Famine 1996-1997 and remember watching South Korean newsreports of the malnurished children. This book told me how this famine came about and helped me to understand what I had heard and seen back then. I recommend this book to all interested in or studying about Korea.

got the story right, but the facts wrong.......2002-03-25

As a professional colleague once said about another author, he got the story right but the facts wrong.

This is a difficult book to evaluate. It basically gets the story of the North Korean famine right, but it is misleading or wrong in many of the specifics, starting with the first sentence of the book "In September 1995 the North Korean government, in a rare admission of vulnerability announced to the outside world that severe flooding had devastated its agricultural regions and that subsequent failure had caused widespread food shortages." Narrowly true, perhaps - the government of North Korea may well have made such a statement in September 1995 - but thoroughly misleading. The government of North Korea had publicly admitted it had food shortages and successfully reached agreements with Japan and South Korea to supply emergency food aid in May 1995 - before the floods hit in June. So unless time moves backwards on the Korean peninsula, floods in June could not be the cause of agreements reached in May. As evidenced by the September statement that Natsios uses to begin the book, the flooding proved politically useful to both the North Koreans (the famine was an act of God and not a combination of their own incompetence and malevolence) and to the donor community (easier to supply aid in response to victims of natural disasters than victims of a thoroughly odious regime).

Much of this book is built on such half-truths. In part, this is due to its author's intended or inadvertent tendency to place himself at the center of all events. This gives the book a certain strength: the first-hand accounts -- I visited this orphanage on this date and this is what I observed -- are compelling. But either Natsios is disturbingly self-promoting or simply doesn't know what he is talking about. Time and time again, he makes false claims that he was the first (or the only) participant to see or understand some aspect of the famine. For example, in chapter 4 he makes much of his June 1998 trip to the Chinese border region and interviews with North Koreans refugees there. Not for another 150 pages does he mention in passing that his own colleague at the US Institute for Peace, Scott Snyder, had done the same border trip, interviewed the same refugees, and published a report on this a year earlier. To cite another example, the following chapter argues that no one except Natsios and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen understood that famines are economic phenomenon, and as a consequence everyone misread what was occurring in North Korea. Problem is, two economists, Marcus Noland, a Korea specialist associated with the Institution for International Economics, and Sherman Robinson, an agricultural economist affiliated with the International Food Policy Research Institute, had read their Sen, understood the economic basis of famines, and had produced an economic analysis of the North Korean famine, similar to the one that Natsios lays out in this book, in 1998. Indeed, as in the case of Snyder, Noland and Robinson's work is listed in the reference list - so Natsios clearly new of its existence - though oddly it is never mentioned in the text. I could go on. Individuals are misidentified, private informal emails are quoted as "trip reports" etc.

It is unfortunate that this book is so error-filled, since it is unlikely that another comprehensive account of the North Korean famine will be produced in the near future. Moreover, Natsios has been appointed director of the US Agency for International Development, so his view on these issues counts. But while he got the broad outlines of the story right, he is wrong on many specifics, and one should not regard this book as the final authority on the North Korean famine.

Well-written, a lot of information about North Korea.......2002-03-24

I am very impressed with the new USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios's book "The Great North Korean Famine." If you are a student of famine or interested in what is happening in North Korea, you should read this book. A book like this is hard to come by because information from North Korea is so limited. Gathered and compiled diligently, this is a very well written account of causes and conditions of famine in North Korea that may have killed as many as a couple of million or more people, about 10 percent of the population.

According to the Nobel winning author/economist Amartya Sen (whose book on right-based development I have just read recently), no democratic government has ever let famine happen. Famine is preventable if the government cares about its people.

You should read this book if you are interested in North Korea or on the politics of famine.

An erudite, well-researched and compelling examination.......2002-01-14

The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, And Foreign Policy by Andrew Natsios (administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development) is an erudite, well-researched and compelling examination of the famine crisis in North Korea; its roots, its politics, its economics, and its bitter consequences. Straightforward narration renders college-level international problems in terminology the lay reader can easily understand. An appendix includes an op-ed piece by the author, succinctly titled "Feed North Korea: Don't Play Politics with Hunger." A powerful, eye-opening, highly recommended study, The Great North Korean Famine is also available in hardcover (192922334X, $42.50).

Perspectives on Korean Unification and Economic Integration

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Perspectives on Korean Unification and Economic Integration
Yesook Merrill , Yung Y. Yang , and Semoon Chang
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1840644184

Book Description

During the last decade of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula was the stage for non-stop, dramatic political and economic events. This volume brings together an unusually broad range of perspectives on US policy towards North Korea, the North Korean economy, and North-South economic co-operation and unification. The year 2000 opened a new chapter on the Korean peninsula; the North-South summit in June was no doubt a historical milestone that could lead to major changes on the peninsula. But the fundamental issues herein addressed are still relevant and important. No overnight solutions or magic bullets exist. Essential ingredients for North-South economic co-operation, ranging from regional security matters to policy nuts and bolts, remain little changed.

Assembled in this volume are a diverse group of economists and analysts from academia, government and think tanks in the US and South Korea. Topics range from philosophical to practical policy matters. Students, researchers and policymakers interested in Korea and in the broader issues of economic and political integration will find this volume fresh and insightful.

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Interesting and Educating

A good inside look at Korea's economic growth

The Rise of the Korean Economy
Byung-Nak Song
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea (East Gate Book)

Democracy and the Korean Economy

The Japanese Economy

Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History, Updated Edition

The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Revised and Updated Edition)

ASIN: 019592827X

Book Description

Already known for providing a unique insider's view on Korea's impressive economic and industrial growth, this book has been updated with statistics from 2000. Also new are analyses of the Asian Economic Crisis and the economic effects of changing North-South Korean relations.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting and Educating.......2006-03-07

The book is a good reference and gives good insight of the Korean economy system and mentality. It is also a good introduction of Korean economy to people who are new to this issue.

A good inside look at Korea's economic growth.......2003-09-22

There's nothing quite like getting an insider's view. Song provides this, having worked for the Korea Development Institute, and by just having been a Korean living in the country at the time. Most other English language accounts are given by foreigners who have spent a few years in the country, so Song has quite an advantage over them. He does overlook the darker side of the 'miracle' though, but you can find out all about that in a book like 'Troubled Tiger' my Mark Clifford. Bear in mind too, that Song is an academic, and so you won't find many interesting anecdotes here. But, like all good academics, he uses a wealth of hard data to back up his assertions, and provides interesting explanations of different aspects of the Korean economy. A great reference.

Korea after Kim Jong-Il (Policy Analyses in International Economics)

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A Hard Look At Korean Unification

Korea after Kim Jong-Il (Policy Analyses in International Economics)
Marcus Noland
Manufacturer: Institute for International Economics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 088132373X

Book Description

Vulnerable to external pressure and confronting internal demands for change, the future of the North Korean state remains very much a live issue. In June 2003 the ratings agency Standard and Poor's issued a report highlighting the ineluctable prospect of a North Korean collapse and its perilous implications for South, identifying the prospectively economically devastating costs of unification— a la Germany— as a factor depressing South Korean sovereign bond ratings.

The S&P scenario is as provocative as the title of this monograph. Today's North Korean regime embodies elements of both communism and Confucian dynasty under its deified-yet-mortal leader, Kim Jong-il. Its anomalous internal characteristics and external relations create an unusually broad set of possible transition paths and successor regimes, ranging from effective maintenance to the status quo to evolutionary change to revolutionary upheaval, probably implying the collapse of North Korea as a sovereign state and its absorption into rival South Korea. Now the Kim regime has raised the stakes both externally with its nuclear program, and internally, taking up economic reform and its accompanying dislocations, thereby moving from the realm of elite to the realm of mass politics. Korea expert Marcus Noland traces how under these unsettled conditions, something as prosaic as the demise of the sixty-something Kim Jong-il could set off abrupt transitions to non-Kim family leadership with or without juche, the near-theological ideology of national self-reliance, while collapse, or civil war are possible as well.

This study quantitatively analyzes the probability under alternative scenarios of regime change in North Korea, investigates the character of possible successor regimes, examines the likelihoods of "radical" and "gradual" economic integration between the North and South and the implications of these profoundly different trajectories for the South.

Customer Reviews:

A Hard Look At Korean Unification.......2004-02-04

Marcus Noland, in June 2000, wrote one of the better books, published by the Institute for International Economics, on the situation on the Korean peninsula, Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas. Now, as Volume 71 of that organization's "Policy Analyses in International Economics", is Noland's Korea After Kim Jong-il. It's a short, but dense read, and worth every graph and sentence in its 103 pages, of which 18 are the appendix, index, and references, and including four tables and four figures. It's an economic analysis, certainly, but Noland's unpretentious presentation is punctuated with glib remarks.

As in Avoiding the Apocalypse, Noland offers alternative scenarios with supporting data and policy recommendations. Korea After Kim Jong-il in fact contains much of the same recommendations Noland suggested in his 2000 book, only more sharply focused on developments which occurred after 2000. Noland's recommendations are based on economic factors, not political or diplomatic ones. Unfortunately, these recommendations required the political cooperation of regional players and the United States to succeed, but in many cases, none of the players have even carried out the suggestions each could make unilaterally.

The first issue Noland discusses is North Korea's probability to survive or collapse. Noland offers numerous sociological arguments for change from numerous sources. He also contrasts these theories with public polling data and anecdotal evidence from policy-makers. He concludes, that there is a consensus among important decision-makers and the public that North Korea will collapse even without external pressure, which is not supported by any cross-national economic data or sociological theory.

This strange consensus is even more jarring considering, that South Korea's official policy is predicated on the North Korean regime's survival, until it is gradually integrated into the South's economy. Noland identifies three three likely future scenarios: cooperative engagement (Seoul's position), neo-cons' dream, and international embargo. On a timeline, cooperative engagement would ensure Pyongyang's survival for decades, the ne0-con's dream secenario would cause Pyongyang's collapse around the end of President Bush's second term, and an international embargo would cause collapse within two years. Noland stresses the economic and political damage, that either of the last two scenarios would cause to the South Korea.

Finally, Noland recommends specific policies for South Korea. These suggestions are identical to the recommendations found in the 2000 book. This repetition highlights the stakes involved in the South's continuing reform, which Noland generally praises, even if he rightly acknowledges the failures. This last section is the most important focus of the book, because Noland believes the South Koreans should own their destiny. I accept this right until the point South Korea's messy politics leads to a serious cris in the region, because Seoul cannot accept it's responsibility for it's own unification policies.

Noland's recommendations (pp. 76-7) include :

1."Seoul should commit to the principle that engagement should be done on efficient, transparent terms....as long as the state maintains direct and indirect influence over specific capital allocations by financial intermediaries, it will be tempted to use its influence to promote its policy...The simplest way of accomplishing this would be to put provisions into the tax code that would create an incentive for South Koreans to invest in the North instead of....China and Southeast Asia...Such a tax-based approach woould also have the virtue of transparency."

2. "...South Korea should prepare for the possibility of collapse...a general need to improve the financial transparency in the South Korean economy...a second desirable innovation would be the creation of independent institutional investors capable of monitoring management and fostering a market for corporate control..."

Book Description

The Korean economy has been one of the success stories of the postwar economic development. One of the poorest countries in the 1960s, Korea rose to become, by 1996, the eleventh-largest economy in the world, with a per capita income of more than $10,000.

Essential features of the so-called Korean model of economic development are an export-led industrialization strategy, exclusion of labor, authoritarian rule, and a cultural emphasis on education and hard work. This Korean model, however, began to unravel in 1987 when one pillar, authoritarianism, started to crumble under popular pressure for democracy; the Korean economy has since undergone fundamental transformations.

This book describes and explains the effect democratic change has had on Korean economic policy and its economy. It explains how conflicts over economics have evolved in major policy areas and which economic factors have been important in resolving these conflicts. Democracy and the Korean Economy is

A timely and comprehensive overview of the impact of democratic transition on economic performance in South Korea.
The first book to analyze the economic impact of democratic change in South Korea.
An explanation of the effect democratization has had on Korean economic policy and its economy.
A careful delineation of the pattern of policy change in major policy areas instead of a sweeping generalization about the relationship between democracy and economic growth.
A close look at specific industries and chaebols (large business conglomerates) that analyzes their market position and political influence under both the earlier authoritarian regime and the democratizing regime.
An authoritative study of a new model of Korean political economy. The old Korean model of economic development was valid twenty years ago; Korea has undergone a fundamental political transformation since 1989, and there are few studies on how that process has changed the Korean economy.

Korean Politics: The Quest for Democratization and Economic Development (Cornell Paperbacks)

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Korean Politics: The Quest for Democratization and Economic Development (Cornell Paperbacks)
John Kie-Chiang Oh
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801484588

Book Description

Extraordinary political and economic changes have rocked the Republic of Korea over the past fifty years. John Oh, a Korean-born political scientist, has written a clear and insightful account of government and politics throughout this turbulent period. His chronological and thematic study analyzes both the conflicts between authoritarian forces and populist/democratic elements and the nation's determined efforts to achieve economic growth. In relating Korea's transformation to a democratic society and an industrial state, Oh explains how the country's politics and economy are interrelated. He covers the launching of the first democratic republic, the emergence of military regimes, and the growth of the middle class and the civil society. He also reveals the causes of collusion between political and economic groups which led to corruption, structural anomalies, and economic crises. Korean Politics is the first English-language book to draw on original Korean-language sources including testimonies from the trials of former presidents in its analysis of their military-dominated governments. The book concludes with succinct discussions on the first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition leader, Kim Dae-jung. Timely and authoritative, it is an ideal classroom text and an indispensable reference on contemporary Korea.

The Korean Developmental State (Routledge Studies in the Growth Economies of Asia)

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The Korean Developmental State (Routledge Studies in the Growth Economies of Asia)
Iain Pirie
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0415403405

Book Description

The Korean Developmental State is a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of processes of state and economic restructuring in South Korea since the 1997 crisis. The book distinguishes itself from previous studies by consistently arguing that structural changes in the global political economy have played a crucial role in reshaping the Korean state's own economic project.

More precisely, Iain Pirie seeks to demonstrate how the Korean state increasingly adopted neo-liberal policies from the 1980s onwards as a rational response to the evolution of global economic structures; an evolution which has been driven by the continuous attempts of major global firms and leading capitalist states to overcome the chronic profitability problems that have dogged the core capitalist area since the late 1960s. The radical restructuring programme the Korean state initiated after the 1997 crisis must be understood as a logical conclusion to these earlier, more incremental, processes of reform it initiated almost two decades earlier. This book seeks to establish the neo-liberal character of the Korean state through a close analysis of key institutional and policy reforms, and serious engagement with more theoretical debates concerning the nature of the neo-liberal state itself.

The Korean Developmental State offers a new perspective on the economic experience of Korea as a development model, one that emphasizes global trends and contradictions for Korea's economic crisis and resulting transformation, and as such will be of significant interest to scholars of Korean studies and the Asian economy.

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