• Strategy21
• /
• s.34
• /
• pp.128-148
• /
• 2014

In south Korea, the so-called 'conservative-liberal' rivalry over the assessment of the government's North Korean policies is seen to be impeding the road to right policy choices. For example, the liberals accused former President Lee Myung-bak's hardline policy of provoking Pyongyang and leading to a deterioration of inter-Korean relations, while the conservatives appreciated it for helping nurture mutually beneficial inter-Korean relations in the longer term by compelling North Korea to observe international norms. However, such debate over the vices and virtues of Seoul's North Korea policies is hardly meaningful as the measuring sticks used by the liberals and the conservatives are entirely different matters. The two major goals South Korea must pursue with its North Korean policies should be 'peaceful management of division' and 'change in North Korea'. The former is related to maintaining stability within South Korea and promoting co-prosperity with North Korea. For this, the nation needs to engage, encompass and assist the Pyongyang regime. The second goal is also necessary since South Korea, as a divided nation, must seek a unified Korea under the system of democracy and market economies by bringing change in North Korea. For this, South Korea needs powerful leverages with which it can persuade and coerce the North. This means that the nation is destined to simultaneously chase the above-mentioned two goals, while also both recognizing and negating the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. This situation necessitates Seoul to apply flexibility in reconciling with Pyongyang while applying firm principles to sever the vicious circle involving the North's military provocations. The May 25 Measures, which banned trade and economic cooperation with the North except those related to humanitarian assistance, were taken as sanctions against Pyongyang for sinking the South Korean corvette Chonan in March 2010. The Measures were taken by the Seoul government immediately after a multinational investigation team discovered evidence confirming that the South Korean naval ship had been torpedoed by a midget North Korean submarine. Naturally, the May 24 Measures have since then become a major stumbling block in inter-Korean exchange, prompting opposition politicians and concerned entrepreneurs to demand Seoul to unilaterally lift the Measures. Given the significant damages the Measures have inflicted on inter-Korean economic relations, removing them remains as homework for both Koreas. However, the Measures pertains to the 'principles on national security' the Seoul government must adhere to under all circumstances. This is why North Korea's apology and promises not to repeat similar provocations must come first. For now, South Korea has no alternative but to let North Korea solve the problems it has created. South Korea's role is to help the North do so.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.5-36
• /
• 2017

"The Candle Revolution" impeached the Park government and elected the Moon government. The candlelight protesters demonstrated public anger associated with accumulated corruption and deep-rooted irregularities. Complete political reform is required to perform deep fundamental reform. It aims to transform democracy in a way that is more inclusive. Inclusive democracy contributes to making welfare state stronger. Inclusive democracy is made possible by proportional representation that allows progressive parties more seats and leverages. Proportional representation systems are characterized by higher degrees of redistribution and larger welfare state. Constitutional reform has to be focused on introducing parliamentary government. "Imperialistic" presidential system in Korea has no mechanism of checks and balances which are key characteristics of presidential systems. It has failed to attend the poverty and social inequality arising from globalization and neoliberal change since 2000s. Parliamentary government is supposed to deliver social policy when parties are more disciplined than in presidential system where political parties remain weak.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.293-310
• /
• 2024

In this paper, we propose an agent model for Language-Driven Zero-Shot Object Navigation (L-ZSON) tasks, which takes in a freeform language description of an unseen target object and navigates to find out the target object in an inexperienced environment. In general, an L-ZSON agent should able to visually ground the target object by understanding the freeform language description of it and recognizing the corresponding visual object in camera images. Moreover, the L-ZSON agent should be also able to build a rich spatial context map over the unknown environment and decide efficient exploration actions based on the map until the target object is present in the field of view. To address these challenging issues, we proposes AML (Agent Model for L-ZSON), a novel L-ZSON agent model to make effective use of AI foundation models such as Large Language Model (LLM) and Vision-Language model (VLM). In order to tackle the visual grounding issue of the target object description, our agent model employs GLEE, a VLM pretrained for locating and identifying arbitrary objects in images and videos in the open world scenario. To meet the exploration policy issue, the proposed agent model leverages the commonsense knowledge of LLM to make sequential navigational decisions. By conducting various quantitative and qualitative experiments with RoboTHOR, the 3D simulation platform and PASTURE, the L-ZSON benchmark dataset, we show the superior performance of the proposed agent model.