• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.167-178
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to analyze the direct investment decision factors in the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Vietnam, and to contribute to the creation of domestic jobs and the revitalization of the inter-Korean economy. According to the analysis, most of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Vietnamese investment companies are entering the complex for the purpose of utilizing cheap labor, cheap factory locations, sales/development of local markets, and bypass export production bases in third countries. This can be divided into production-efficient investors using differences in production price such as labor costs and market-oriented investors to sell and expand the local market, which seems to be consistent with global direct investment patterns such as Nike, Apple, and Amazon. However, even if the North Korea-U.S. denuclearization talks ease or lift sanctions, Vietnamese investors' willingness to invest in the North Korea has been most burdened by the possibility of closing special economic zones due to political risks. Last but not least, it is important to note that those willing to invest in North Korea are mostly smaller enterprises in textiles, sewing, footwear and leather industries-those that benefit from low-cost labor. Since their size is small, they need policy support in financing, especially in the early stages of their business. Even after they grow past the early stages, those without collateral would still need state guarantee letters to get financing. Thus, it is worth considering to use the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund to compensate commercial banks for bad loan loss or for low-interest loans for smaller SMEs. The interviews with SMEs found that red-tape is one of the biggest difficulties they face. Thus, it is recommended that a one-stop service agency should be established to cover all processes and issues related to inter-Korean economic cooperation to eliminate redundancy and expediate government support for SMEs.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.403-425
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• 2007

The sudden emergence of China as a superpower in world politics and economics is apparently a big surprise. This, however, is not an unusual incident. As far as the Chinese are concerned, they say that China is simply running almost the same track that its neighboring countries. In the recent years, a number of experts and scholars have expected that the emergence of China as a great economic power will be argued as a major issue in world politics and economics. So its economic progress will require experts and scholars to watch carefully how China is going to change. It certainly has created an atmosphere that most of the world leaders, experts and scholars are very concerned about China's remarkable performance in its economics and then willing to accept China's rapid growth as an urgent matter. Many experts and scholars began to analyze carefully the factors that have contributed to the rapid growth. Foreign direct investment (FDI), import-export, and economic reform were then listed as the most important factors. As a result, philosophy of economics, analytical economics, and economics are immediately needed for China who is at the moment very anxious to sustain the stable and continuity of rapid economic growth. But unfortunately China does not even recognize the reason why they need to adopt these economic concepts and methods.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.59-65
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• 2014

Purpose - The competitiveness of logistics in the 21st century rests on ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of its local hub. While considering entry into a niche market in local logistics, it is pertinent to note that Budapest is emerging as a hub in EU enlargement in Eastern Europe. Big, small, and medium-sized businesses in Korea entered Hungary in the early 1990s since then, there has been a significant increase in Korean presence, of approximately 130 times. This study aimed to identify the key distribution issues that have emerged in relation to Eastern Europe. Research design, data, and methodology - This study indicates that 33 major Korean companies were located in Hungary, which serves as an out post to enter the European marketplace. However, Korea's exports to Hungary have declined (-32.0% in 2012) because of a loss of competitiveness against multinational corporations, due to factors such as the rise in current local distribution costs and wages. Hungary, on the other hand, through diversification and expansion of foreign trade with the non-EU markets, including Korea, is increasing its exports. Strategies of emerging countries are compared and reviewed in this study, by examining the vicissitudes of Hungary's distribution methods. Results - There are issues regarding Hungary's innovative ability. Hungary has a history of low wages and high skilled labor. However, the outflow of high-quality human resources for high-wages has become more extensive, and this underlines concerns that the CEE's trade hub is moving to neighboring countries. After the European financial crisis in 2010, the Hungarian economy is now developing, because of the IMF's measures, and it is being transformed into a trade surplus nation, while regaining distribution volumes rapidly. However, if there is continued lack of investment, the supply chain is weakened and exports decline amidst competition with TNCs or with China's distribution networks. Conclusions - It is necessary to create a new logistics approach for increasing trade between Korea and Hungary. First, Korean small and medium enterprises (SMEs) should build trust by working with advanced Hungarian talent, and they should expand into state-of-the-art fields instead of being confined to traditional sectors. Second, this study focuses on limiting and lowering their high expectations for success according to foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and the role in the CEE distribution hub Korea should try to strengthen the distribution hub with its centralized population, using better, more highly educated human resources, thereby sustaining more innovative ability. Further, the positive effects of these measures are manifested in enhanced business on both sides of Hungary, namely, the EU and non-EU nations such as Turkey and emerging markets around Europe, and a better engagement in the core placement of culture and industry. For this, Korea can contribute to, and benefit from, a Hungarian logistics center, for adopting the high-tech cluster systems and commercializing distribution technology such as RFID·USN.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.511-544
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• 2007

He purpose of this paper is to estimate environmental efficiency and grasp the relationship between trade and environmental efficiency for 61 countries. Furthermore, we examine the environmental Kuznets relationship between environmental efficiency and GDP per capita and 'pollution haven hypothesis' as well. This paper implies that trade-related variables such as trade composition, the share of polluting exports and openness of a country are important determinants of environmental efficiency and especially, we confirmed existence of 'environmental Kuznets curve' but could not accept 'pollution haven hypothesis' in that 'foreign direct investment (FDI)' improves the environmental performance of pensioner nations.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-34
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• 2013

Labor share of income in Korea has fallen from 90% in 1996 to 79% in 2010. This paper explores the factors driving the movements in the labor share of income based on a panel dataset containing 19 years of data on 18 Korean manufacturing industries. The effects of technical progress, globalization and the bargaining power of labor and capital on the labor share of income are tested for the period of 1991-2009. The main empirical results are as follows. (1) Capital-aug menting technical prog ress measured by capital-labor ratio and R&D intensity has a negative effect on the labor share. (2) Market openness measured by the value of export and import as a ratio to value-added production is found to have a positive impact. (3) Globalization of production measured by inward-FDI and outward-FDI as a ratio to total domestic fixed capital is found to have a negative impact on the labor share. (4) Union density is found to have had a statistically significant effect in 1991-1998. This finding is consistent with the efficient bargain model in which firms and workers bargain over both wages and employment. But union density is insignificant in 2000-2009. This implies that since the financial crisis in 1997, the bargaining institution in Korea has been approaching the right-to-manage model in which firms and unions bargain over wages and then firms set employment unilaterally. (5) Variables for domestic financialization measured by dividend-income ratio and financial-fixed assets ratio have an insignificant effect on labor share.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.196-215
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• 2007

The Representatives of Korea & India hold The Sixth negotiation for conclusion of Korean-India CEPA(Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement) at IFANS(Institute of Foreign Affairs & National Security) in Seoul at April 4, 2007. The latest, India is paid attention by the citizen of the world as the leading country that it lead the 21C's world economic with the China, India is called one of the BRICs and Chindia countries. Now, the concern of the citizen of world inclines huge potential energy of India. It is that time, we must change our concern from Chinas to India slowly. This paper put emphasis the point that we have to move switch over the focus of our study from to India, now.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.91-105
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to analyze the project performance and development process of the phase 1 project of GFEZ from 2004 to 2010. The phase 1 project from 2004 to 2010 is consist of eleven project zones. Among these zones, eight zones are currently underway and three zones have been completed. The performance of the phase 1 projects is no so much because it were stated later than planning with the difficulty of business developers selection. The major performances are development and supply of industrial & residential land, construction of road and railway, investment promotion of 102 companies, and creation of 20,971 new jobs. Most of the direct invested companies were located at Gwangyang and Yulchon Districts, and were mainly logistics and related service, iron and steel, machinery, shipbuilding, and fine chemicals. The main problems, however, are the limit of promotion of high-tech industries and large firms, low FDI reported rate, difficulty of superior business developers, delayed business progress of Hadong district. Therefore, efforts to solve these problems are required for the success of GFEZ.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.87-108
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• 2018

This article explores the international trade flow of Bangladesh's ready-made garments (RMG). We first suggest the brief history and an international structure of trade among countries by using the trade volume. Then we implemented a gravity model regression with the sample of 38 major partner countries in order to investigate the potential export market for the RMG industry. The fixed effect and random effect model for the panel data during the period of 1990 to 2011 are estimated. Our result shows that Bangladesh's RMG exports are affected positively by the size of economy, inflation, exchange rate, foreign direct investment(FDI) and trade openness. On the other hand, the distance between trading partners are related negatively with the trade volume. We used the estimated coefficients from the panel regression in order to predict RMG export potential of Bangladesh. This might show which country is the promising export market for Bangladesh RMG industry. We found that Bangladesh has the highest potential of RMG export with Japan and USA, which seem to have considerable room for export growth if trade barriers and constraints are removed. We added some policy implications for encouraging the RMG export of Bangladesh by using the results from the analysis.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.163-191
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• 2017

This article aims to review the recent, especially focusing on the year of 2016, situations and prospects of the Vietnamese politics, economy, and international relations. Politically, Vietnam completed the election of members for the National Assembly and organized new leadership at the 12th National Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 2016. One characteristic of the new leadership is that the politicians, especially the members of politburo, from the North continue to occupy the position of majority. The other one is that the new leadership promised to carry out the restructuring of economy toward industries producing higher value-added commodities even though Vietnam industries admittedly need to accelerate present industrialization and modernization as a developing country under the seemingly contradictory slogan of "the development of market economy for socialism." The declared goals of the new leadership in Vietnam are inevitable in a sense since the development of Vietnamese economy has been heavily dependent upon Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) taking advantage of Vietnamese cheap labor and simultaneously it is evident that its future is unsecure if it maintains status quo. In fact, the Vietnamese economy has impressively showed high growth rate by the help of foreign capitals since 1990s despite the repetitive recessions of global economy but its growth is not likely to be sustainable anymore if it will not reduce foreign dependency and social economic inequality in a long term. In a short run, global economic recession, the financial and monetary policies of global powers, and recent protectionism and uncertainty of trade agreements will be three crucial variables to affect Vietnamese economy. In terms of international relations, Vietnam is continuously expected to practise the policy of checks and balances among the powerful countries. Vietnam has seriously disputed with China on islands sovereignty in the South China Sea and attempted to maintain close relationship with other powerful countries including especially America. However, mainly due to the new protectionism by the regime of American president Donald Trump, the Vietnamese government also need to keep close relationship with China increasingly for both economic and diplomatic security. Under the circumstances, Vietnam is expected to maintain more practical and balanced international relations.