Recently, traditional trade in the global trade market has stagnated in the aftermath of the US-China trade war and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the global e-commerce market is growing rapidly, presenting a new opportunity for exports. To examine the effect of an online matching and logistics system on reverse overseas direct purchase and the mediating effect of reliability, this study conducted a questionnaire survey on 320 employees in a Korean trade company from March 10 to April 30, 2018. The study model's goodness of fit was tested, and an analysis was performed using the AMOS statistical package. The online matching and logistics system were found to have a positive effect on reverse overseas direct purchase. Furthermore, results revealed that while a country's reliability mediated online matching and reverse overseas direct purchase, it did not mediate the logistics system. These results mean that online matching is affected by a country's reliability in overseas consumers' buying decision process. This study provides implications for the future directions of export companies and national policies to promote reverse overseas direct purchase. Future research including more countries and companies would be able to make further contributions toward the development of the Korean cross-border e-commerce industry.

This study aims to determine if the current COVID-19 event can be admitted as an excuse for non-performance in international trade transactions. In order to do so, this study selected case study method in the analysis. Firstly, the definitions of Force Majeure addressed in CISG, UCC, Chinese Law, and Korean Law were organized. Secondly, this study reviewed the avian influenza event in 2006 and the natural disaster event occurred in Guangdong, China, in 2017. In the study, three critical evaluation factors are suggested in order to be admitted as a Force Majeure event in international transactions as following: 1) possibility of foresight of the event, 2) possibility to overcome and avoid the event, and 3) the enterprise's countermeasures of the event. As an implication, this study organized the definitions of Force Majeure that were indicated in various kinds of Laws and suggested the basic framework to analyze the possibility of admittance as a Force Majeure event.

China's 'One Belt One Road' initiative has had a profound impact on China's relationship with Central Asia, which shares borders at North-western region. Central Asia plays an important role in securing the export market of Chinese products, supply of raw materials, and transportation route to Europe. The inland port is of significance to facilitate the development of logistics, trade and industry in the surrounding areas by enabling the distribution and import and export clearance in the region by performing the role of the seaport on the hinterland. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of the development of inland ports in central and western China on the geopolitical relationship between China and Central Asia. To this end, we analyze the status of inland port development in China's Midwest by employing the SWOT-PEST analysis method to analyze the current status as well as prospects of trade, investment and transportation routes with Central Asia in terms of geopolitics. As a result of the analysis, the relations between China and Central Asian Countries are becoming more politically and economically close, but it has brought about serious challenges by domestic and foreign environmental changes. Therefore, the development of the inland ports in central and western China are determined by the geopolitical relations under 'One Belt One Road' initiative between China and Central Asia, while the development of the inland port is also expected to serve as a catalyst for the development of both regions.

This study examines the research trends and knowledge structure of international trade studies using topic modeling method, which is one of the main methodologies of text mining. We collected and analyzed English abstracts of 1,868 papers of three Korean major journals in the area of international trade from 2003 to 2019. We used the Latent Dirichlet Allocation(LDA), an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to extract the latent topics from the large quantity of research abstracts. 20 topics are identified without any prior human judgement. The topics reveal topographical maps of research in international trade and are representative and meaningful in the sense that most of them correspond to previously established sub-topics in trade studies. Then we conducted a regression analysis on the document-topic distributions generated by LDA to identify hot and cold topics. We discovered 2 hot topics(internationalization capacity and performance of export companies, economic effect of trade) and 2 cold topics(exchange rate and current account, trade finance). Trade studies are characterized as a interdisciplinary study of three agendas(i.e. international economy, International Business, trade practice), and 20 topics identified can be grouped into these 3 agendas. From the estimated results of the study, we find that the Korean government's active pursuit of FTA and consequent necessity of capacity building in Korean export firms lie behind the popularity of topic selection by the Korean researchers in the area of int'l trade.

This study was carried out to identify the impact of EU GDPR on international trade amid the ongoing digital trade liberalization. To do this, we first looked at the current trend of digital trade liberalization, the role of data in it, and the trade-restrictive elements of EU GDPR. This allowed us to identify the negative impact of GDPR on free trade. It then conducted an interview survey on Korean companies operating in the EU to verify the conclusions reached. The result of this survey showed that the level of GDPR risk perceived by Korean firms was very low compared with those of American, Japanese and Chinese firms. In particular, the impact of GDPR is not clear for Korea's SMEs. It can be assumed that the reason for this is that Korean SMEs are not using data as a major business tool while the capability of SMEs is sufficient to cope with GDPR. In this regard, the government's appropriate policies and further research for SMEs are needed.

This study aimed to understand the relationships among the institutional pressure and the level of compliance and corporate value. The research focuses on four main variables, which are regulatory pressure, normative pressure, and cultural-cognitive pressure as the institutional pressure, and the CSR score as the level of the firm's compliance. We examined the impact of the institutional pressure on the firm's compliance-level, together with the effect of compliance level on the corporate value. We analyzed the 3,792 CSR data listed in China's A market and 31 province and city-level data from China. Results showed that institutional pressure had a positive influence on the firm's compliance level. The corporate value was greater with a high compliance level when the institutional pressure was high. The firm's compliance level negatively influenced corporate value when the institutional pressure was low. This study took into account a level of institutional pressures in three dimensions when investigating the effect of CSR compliance level on the corporate value. Thus, this study has a unique academic contribution by demonstrating that CSR activities can have a positive or negative effect depending on the institutional environment for each firm. The findings of this study also provide valuable insights to industry practitioners by suggesting the importance of considering the institution-specific condition when deciding to comply with the institutional pressure.

In this paper we explore the two analyses to know the urbanization effect on trade. First, the granger causality test to examine the relationship between trade and urbanization. The Granger causality test is a statistical hypothesis test for determining whether one time series is useful for forecasting another. The results indicated that the existence of a bidirectional causality running from trade to urbanization when six lags were applied. When eight lags were applied, we found unidirectional causality running from urbanization to trade. Second, gravity models were used to investigate the urbanization effect on trade. The production cost and specification are affected by the economies of scale, and the economies of scale increased as the greater geographically agglomeration. However, the gravity model to explain the bilateral trade flows ignores the urbanization variables. Therefore we added the urbanization variable represented as the geographically agglomeration into gravity model. The results show that the degree of urbanization of both countries has statistically positive effect on trade (export and import) and the bigger coefficients of trade partner's urbanization. The reason is that the trade share of industrial supplies, intermediate goods and capital goods is much higher than finished consumer goods. The urbanization is more important the improved the efficiency of production than demand market.

In the UK's the insurance law 2015, a remedy for breach of warranty in marine insurance was introduced. Also, if the insured proves that breach of warranty in marine insurance does not affect damages, the insurer pays the insurance money to the insured. The UK's marine insurance law has served as the governing law that has been the standard for the marine insurance industry for a long time. Korea and China were heavily influenced by the UK maritime insurance law. Therefore, this study analyzed the cases of breach of warranty in marine insurance in Korea and China. Through this, the insurer avoid the insurance contract for an accident that occurred after the breach of warranty. this result will be different under the new revised insurance law system. With the revision to The Insurance Act 2015, one of the biggest change in the insurance system is that it is possible to remedy of the violations of warranty. However, such a revision of the law requires considerable attention as it also changes the interpretation and judgment of the courts. Accordingly, a practical response of the insurance industry is required. It is necessary to prepare for possible disputes in practice.

As the volume of trade between Korea and Vietnam increases, the number and amount of commercial disputes between Korean and Vietnamese companies are increasing. In the case of Vietnam, due to differences in the arbitration system and norms due to the socialist state system, foreign companies lack confidence in the settlement of disputes through commercial arbitration in Vietnam. At this point, it is necessary to not only discuss commercial disputes and settlements, but also to closely review and understand Vietnam's commercial dispute settlement system. Therefore, this study examines the current status and characteristics of Vietnam's commercial disputes and analyzes the actual problems of Vietnam Commercial Arbitration System that arise through the arbitral award of the Vietnam International Arbitration Center (VIAC), Vietnam's representative arbitration agency, and precedents on the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitration awards in Vietnamese courts. In the end, this study seeks to revitalize the Vietnam Commercial Arbitration so that each disputed party may quickly deal with the commercial disputes, and seeks a more smooth solution through commercial arbitration in future trade claims between Korean and Vietnamese companies.

The purpose of this study was to measure the competitiveness of ship finance in Korea, Europe, China, and Japan and compare them with each other to derive implications for strengthening the competitiveness of Korea ship finance. in order to achieve this goal Moon Hui-chang (1998) double diamond model was utilized, and the business conditions, factor conditions, demand conditions, and related and supporting industry were defined and measured for ship finance. As a result, Korea is highly competitive in business and demands conditions due to the high competitiveness of the domestic shipbuilding industry, and Europe is superior to Korea in all aspects except for business conditions. Japan failed to innovate and weakened its competitiveness, while China showed high competitiveness in factors and related supporting industries conditions.