• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.7
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• pp.38-53
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• 2020

Purpose - A financial crash triggers asset fire sales by foreign investors and, as a consequence, the price of domestic assets severely decreases. Domestic investors take advantage of these low prices by replacing foreign assets with domestic assets, which helps to alleviate the liquidity shock caused by foreigners. However, is the amount of capital retrenchment by domestic investors sufficient to protect the Korean economy from capital stop by foreign investors during financial crisis? This paper answers this question and suggests the implications of this phenomenon for the Korean economy. Design/methodology - We estimate the associations between capital stop and retrenchment and various financial crises such as banking, currency, debt, and inflation crises using the complementary log-log model. Specifically, we use data of gross capital flows to differentiate between the role of foreign and domestic investors in financial markets. Capital stop and retrenchment designate a sharp decrease in gross capital inflows and outflows, respectively. Findings - Capital stop is significantly associated with financial crises, especially currency and debt crises. This implies that increased risk aversion during times of financial turmoil encourages foreign investors to retrench their investments, worsening liquidity shocks. Conversely, capital retrenchment is not significantly associated with such crises. The results show that, although financial crises reduce gross capital outflows, the reduction is not as large as that with capital inflows. Originality/value - The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, this study investigates how domestic investors behave during times of financial distress by studying gross capital flows-not net capital flows. Second, we concentrate on sharp changes in capital flows during crises. Third, we examine the associations between capital stop and retrenchment and financial crises in general, not specific events.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.68-82
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• 2020

Purpose - This study investigates the impact of inland port development in China on the promotion of bilateral trade flows between China and South Korea. Design/methodology - The probable association between the establishment of inland ports and Sino-Korea trade was estimated using gravity models. In this regards, two sets of data were collected. The first dataset consists of the baseline variables of a gravity model, while the second one includes variables of logistics infrastructure development. The indicators of logistics infrastructure development include inland ports, the amount of government expenditure on transport infrastructure, the lengths of roads and railways, the number of trucks and the number of logistics industry workforce. Findings - The results show that inland port development has a positive impact on facilitating bilateral trade between China and South Korea. However, the positive association holds only for Chinese regions with a large trade volume and a proximity to seaports. In other regions, the impact of inland ports is not statistically significant. Originality/value - To the best knowledge of the authors, this study is the first attempt to explore the economic impact of inland ports in China. In addition, the findings in this paper provide both policy and managerial implications for the future development of inland ports, such as the strategic location of inland ports and integrated intermodal operations.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.1-26
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• 2019

Purpose - This paper investigates the recent trade collapse, recovery, and prolonged slowdown to shed light on the discussions about whether the current slowdown is structural or cyclical. I examine structural, cyclical, and heterogeneous aspects of the recent trade trends using detailed statistics of a small open economy, South Korea, whose economic success and growth have been heavily dependent on exports. Design/methodology - I use both aggregated and disaggregated trade statistics of South Korea. I apply the following methodologies: 1) I decompose the trade growth into the extensive and the intensive margin and observe the effect of prices over time. 2) I estimate the trade-income elasticities focusing on the world's import demand, separately for goods from the world and from Korea. 3) I compare the drop in goods exports in slowdown and trade collapse, which are the two unusual periods in the recent history when world trade has substantially dropped altogether. Findings - I show that while the last drop of trade after 2015 has cyclical aspects, there is evidence that the continued slowdown from 2012 is structural: 1) the so-called 'China factor' is found in the analysis of trade-income elasticity of the world and China for imports from Korea. 2) The bilateral trade barriers between Korea and its principal trading partners are universally tightening. 3) Firm sizes, destination countries, and the mode of transactions affect disaggregated trade flows during the slowdown periods. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the debate regarding whether the current trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. I provide two concrete evidence that the export drop in 2015 stems from low oil prices: one is the divergence of Korean export value index from its export quantity index, which started in late 2014 when oil prices plunged. I also contribute to the literature by providing evidence that Korea's trade barriers with important trading partners are steadily increasing since 2012 as the protectionist measures toward Korea's export products are steeply increasing after the global financial crisis.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.157-172
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• 2020

This study attempts to analyze trade flows between Vietnam and China in order to understand the mutual influence of bilateral trade relations. China is a country with the world's leading economic potential. China and Vietnam are neighboring countries sharing a border of 1,281 km. Trade relations between the two countries are a necessity and, with a right policy, are beneficial to both. Vietnam has a trade deficit with China. This situation is exacerbated by the continuing rise in the gap. Vietnam trade deficit from China was USD12.5 billion in 2010, increasing to USD24 billion in 2018. Data are extracted from the 2015 national input-output tables of Vietnam and China as well as Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey statistics. The research identified 36 sectors of bilateral input-output trade between Vietnam and China. A bilateral output-input model is applied to analyze how final demand and use of input in the production of this country induces output and value added of the other country. The results show that China benefits more from Vietnam's production and consumption than Vietnam does. Vietnam's inter-sector structure does not stimulate domestic production due to the absence of supporting products as inputs in the production process.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.23-41
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• 2003

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gravitation of ship's cargo tons of arriving and leaving port of Busan based on the gravity model empirically and experimentally and to suggest possible ways to expand the trade quantities(cargo tons) by identifying important factors determining the port of Busan's bilateral trade flows with foreign countries by using the 1995, and 2001 data. In this paper, new independent variables, such as land, populations, and the APEC and ASEAN memberships, and new dependent variable, such as the ship's cargo tons of arrival and leaving port of Busan were used for expanding the previous studies. Empirical analysis found that the port of Busan tends to trade more with countries in close proximity and the large size of economies. The fact that the port of Busan's trades more with APEC countries than with non-APEC countries is a clear empirical evidence of the growing importance of the regional trade agreement and strategic alliance with the ports of these member countries. The main policy implication based on the findings of this study is that GDP, distance, adjacency, and APEC membership which were the affecting variables to the bilateral trade with the port of Busan should be closely investigated for enhancing the trade quantities with those foreign countries.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.99-117
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• 2021

Korea's FTA e-commerce regulations are evolving into a standardized norm. However, "location of computing facilities", which was not covered by Korea's existing FTA, was newly established in Korea's first Mega FTA, RCEP. China, a member of RCEP, restricts data movement and requires data localization through its Cybersecurity law. These facts have led to start this study with interest in data-related regulations. It examined country-specific and regulatory characteristics in the process of forming digital trade norms, using the TAPED established by Burri et al. (2020). It also analyzed the current status of introducing norms related to 'data flow', 'data localization' and 'data protection' of the EU, USA and China, which are leading the formation of e-commerce trade norms. Finally, the legal review was conducted to compare the exact meaning of the wording expressed in each agreement for the six recently enacted Mega FTAs and Digital Economic Agreements. These findings are meaningful in that they provided implications for the effectiveness of RCEP and the direction of negotiations on Korea's digital trade norms.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.533-551
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• 2008

Export Credit Agency(ECA) plays a role of importance in international trade and investment flows. The first ECA, the Export Credits Guarantee Department(ECGD) of the United kingdom, was established in 1919. Its original purpose was to encourage and support exports that would not otherwise have taken. Similar motivations led to the establishment, most of those in operation today. Their traditional role is to support and encourage exports and outward investment by insuring international trade and investment transactions, and in some cases by providing trade finance directly. ECA come in all shapes and sizes, and there in no such thing as a typical ECA model. Most of them insure both political and commercial risks on exports and until the last decade. They operated as government entities or on the account of their government, and many of them have changed and are still changing. This study focuses and analyzes the changes of those four major countries' ECAs, which are the U.S.A.(EXIM), France(COFACE), Japan(JBIC), and Canada(EDC).

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.12spc
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• pp.443-450
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• 2021

The study is devoted to the formation of a economic principles cargo delivery management in global supply chains. Mathematical model of delivering special categories of goods by road is a key element of these principles. The article analyzes the existing studies on solving the problem of cargo delivery in various aspects. It was noted that the greatest attention is paid to legal regulation, last mile delivery, optimization of routes and delivery schemes, information support, technological innovations, cluster routing, etc. In the developed mathematical model a minimum of total costs of forming loading units and freight shipments was defined as the criterion of optimality of organizing delivery by motor transport. The authors propose the creation of logistics clusters allowing the integration of urban transport flows and global supply chains.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.253-268
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• 2019

This paper analyses the characteristics of partner countries when multinational firms of Korea, China, and Japan make greenfield FDI in foreign countries. Particularly, this paper applies the gravity model for greenfield FDI flows for the period 2003-2017. This paper finds that multinational firms of Korea, as compared to those of China and Japan, are very significantly and negatively responsive to political risks of partner countries. In contrast, multinational firms of Korea as well as those of China and Japan tend to make greater amounts of greenfield FDI in financially high-risk countries. This result indicates that multinational firms from these three countries should take financial risks of partner countries into more serious consideration.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.394-394
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• 2023

The world's sustainable growth is being severely hampered by the inefficient use of water resources. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of trade in global and regional water and food security, societal reliance on local production as well as international trade remains inadequately assessed. Therefore, using South Korea as a case study, this study fills in this research gap by applying the virtual water concept, the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) method, and the Tapio decoupling model. The virtual water concept was used to estimate South Korea's net virtual water trade for major grain crops from 1992 to 2017. Then, the LMDI method was utilized to assess the driving factors causing changes in net virtual water trade. Lastly, the Tapio decoupling model was used to investigate the decoupling relationships between economic growth and the driving factors of net virtual water trade. Results showed that South Korea remains a net importer of virtual water flows with respect to grain crops, with an average import of 16,559.24 million m³ over the study period. In addition, the change in net virtual water trade could be attributed to water intensity effect, product structure effect, economic effect, and population effect. However, water intensity and economic effects were the major decisive factors for decrease and increase in net virtual water trade respectively, while the population and product structure effects had minor positive influences on the net virtual water trade. Furthermore, water intensity and economic growth showed a strong decoupling in most periods, while the decoupling state between product structure and economic growth was observed as expansive negative decoupling. Likewise, population size and economic growth showed a weak decoupling in most periods. The results reveal South Korea's status as it concerns the virtual water trade of grain crops, thus providing valuable insights into the sustainability of trade activities for the management of local water resources.