• Journal of Arbitration Studies
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.91-120
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• 2020

The Scope of Application of North Korea's Foreign Economic Arbitration Act and Foreign Investment Act This article examines whether the Foreign Economic Arbitration Act and the Foreign Investment Act of North Korea apply to South Korean parties or companies. This article analyzes laws and agreements related to economic cooperation between South Korea and North Korea. Furthermore, this article compares and evaluates laws related to foreign investment and enacted in North Korea. Now, North Korea's door is closed due to economic sanctions against it, but it will be opened soon. Thus, this article prepares for the future opening of North Korea's markets. Is there a rule of laws in North Korea or just a ruler? Are there laws in North Korea? North Korea has enacted a number of legislation to attract foreign investors, referring to those Chinese laws. For example, North Korea enacted the Foreigner Investment Act, the Foreigner Company Act, the Foreign Investment Bank Act, the Foreign Economic Arbitration Act, the Foreign Economic Contract Act, the International Trade Act, and the Free Economy and Trade Zone Act, among others. Article 2 (2) of the Foreign Investment Law of North Korea states, "Foreign investors are corporations and individuals from other countries investing in our country." It is interpreted that South Korea is not included in the "other countries" of this definition. According to many mutual agreements signed by South Korea and North Korea, the relationship between the two Koreas is a special relation inside the Korean ethnic group. An arbitration between a South Korean party and a North Korean party has the characteristics of both domestic arbitrations and international arbitrations. If the South Korea and North Korea Commercial Arbitration Commission or the Kaesong Industrial Complex Arbitration Commission is not established, the possibility of arbitration by the Chosun International Trade Arbitration Commission, established under North Korea's Foreign Economic Arbitration Act, should be examined. There have been no cases where the Foreign Economic Arbitration Act is applied to disputes between parties of South Korea and North Korea. It might be possible to apply the Foreign Economic Arbitration Act by recognizing the "foreign factor" of a dispute between the South Korean party and North Korean party. It is necessary to raise legislative clarifications by revising the North Korea's Foreign Economic Arbitration Act as to whether Korean parties or companies are included in the scope of this Act's application. Even if it is interpreted that South Korean parties or companies are not included in the scope of North Korea's Foreign Economic Arbitration Act, disputes between South Korean companies and North Korean companies can be resolved by foreign arbitration institutes such as CIETAC in China, HKIAC in Hong Kong, or SIAC in Singapore. Such arbitration awards could be enforced in North Korea pursuant to Article 64 of North Korea's Foreign Economic Arbitration Act. This is because the arbitration awards of foreign arbitration institutes are included in the scope of North Korea's Foreign Economic Arbitration Act. The matter is how to enforce the North Korean laws when a North Korean party or North Korean government does not abide by the laws or their contracts. It is essential for North Korea to join the New York Convention (Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards) and the ICSID Convention (Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes Between States and Nationals of Other States).

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.161-178
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• 2023

Purpose - purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the investment facilitation levels of 11 RCEP countries (excluding Myanmar, Brunei, and Laos due to lack of data) on China's outward foreign direct investments(OFDI) using balanced panel data from 2010 to 2019. Design/methodology - First, four investment facilitation measurement indicators (regulatory environment, infrastructure, financial market, ease of doing business) were selected,investment facilitation scores of the 11 countries were obtained using the principal component analysis, an investment gravity model was established with nine explanatory variables (investment facilitation level, market size, population, geographic distance, degree of opening, tax level, natural resources, whether the country is an APEC member or not, and whether a valid bilateral investment treaty with China has been concluded) were used to establish an investment gravity model, and regression analyses were conducted with OLS and system GMM. Findings - The results of the regression analyses showed that investment facilitation levels had the greatest effect on China's OFDI, all four first-level indicators had positive effects on China's OFDI, and among them, the institutional environment had the greatest effect. In addition, it was shown that explanatory variables such as market size, population, geographical distance, degree of openness, natural resources, and whether or not a valid bilateral investment treaty has been concluded would have positive effects on China's OFDI, while tax levels and APEC membership would impede China's OFDI to some extent. Originality/value - Since the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEPT) came into effect not long ago, there are not so many studies on the effects of investment facilitation levels of RCEP member states on China's OFDI, and the investment facilitation measurement index constructed in this paper is relatively systematic and scientific because it includes all the contents of investment facilitation related to the life cycle of company's foreign direct investments.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.57-77
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• 2004

The meaning of seaport has always been translated into something concerned with nation-wide goals and viewpoints, which used to be in developing country. The time developing countries have tried to be in pursuit of their economic development, one of important sectors is SOC investment that is needed into huge capital input which they couldn't easily afford to it. Another one which we have to mention in terms of seaport at contemporary maritime matters is privatization of port, that is strongly connected with efficiency to achieve port productivity. All these factors can produce high quality of service, and port co-operation and diversification of their business areas, etc. Therefore we then have to think of private port management companies such as P&O Ports, Hutchison Whampoa in HK, etc. in order to provide better port service to the customers, and they can also get involved into capital port investment as well. This kind of concept already comes from Denholm Ship management companies in shipping. So, it is necessary for us to look into port management company in our side, which means, we have to be involved into such a business to invest and manage foreign ports as well as our ports. Then, port competitiveness will follow in our ports.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.79-97
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• 2003

R&D expenditure of Korean firms has been increasing drastically since 1980 and occupied 84% of total R&D expenditure in 1994. After 1994, however, the growth rate of industry R&D expenditure has dropped below single digit. R&D concentration rate of upper 20 companies declined from 61.9% in 1999 to 49.8% in 2001. The technology trade balance has diverged by 2.8 billion dollars in 2000 compared to around 0.3 billion dollars in 1985. We find several reasons on declining the industry R&D growth rate in Korea. First, we carefully say there might be an crowding out effect in increasing government R&D investment from Granger causality test between industry R&D and government R&D. Second, the decreasing benefit of tax credit since 1992 on industry R&D expenditure has caused the decrease of industry R&D growth rate. Third, the type of R&D cost becomes to similar to matured countries type of cost, which means the portion of capital expenditure has been decreased since late of 1980s. Therefore, industry R&D growth rate gets to saturation point. We draw several policy implications from the changing structure of business R&D of Korean company. Firstly, to stimulate industry R&D investment Korean government needs to strengthen tax credit policy. Secondly, to induce foreign direct investment Korean government needs to establish technology infrastructures and high quality of manpower. To utilize foreign technology resources Korean government need to introduce global R&D program executed by foreign scientist as an Project Leader.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.36
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• pp.87-109
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• 2007

This Comment explores the ICSID case of CMS Gas Transmission Company v. Argentine Republic, awarded on May 12, 2005. The Part II of this Comment first describes the relevant facts of the case including the some background for readers' understanding and the Part III summaries the claimant's requests and the decisions rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal in the Award. At Part IV, the Comment addresses the issue of determinating laws applicable to the merits of dispute in case that the parties of the case have not chosen a governing law, and at Part V, takes a close look into three main issues of (i) the indirect expropriation of the investment, (ii) the breach of fair and equitable treatment and (iii) the protections under umbrella clauses. In this CMS case, we see first that while the Tribunal affirmed that any indirect expropriation can occur from incidental interference depriving the foreign investor of the use or reasonable-to-be-expected economic benefit even if not necessarily to the obvious benefit of the host State, the Tribunal denied the occurrence of indirect expropriation in this case by holding that the Government of Argentina has not breached the standard of protection laid down in the Treaty. Secondly, however, regarding the issue of fair and equitable treatment, we see that the Tribunal, finding Argentina's breach of obligations, affirmed that the foreign investor can expect the host State to act in a consistent manner, free from ambiguity and totally transparently in its relations with the foreign investor, which can give the foreign investor certain degree of foreseeability. Thirdly and finally, we see that, on base of the effect of the umbrella clause, the Tribunal recognized the obligation of the host State undertaken not to freeze the tariff regime or subject it to price controls and not to alter the basic rules governing contracts between the foreign investor and the host State without the first's written consent. However, the protection under the umbrella clause is available only when there is a specific breach of rights and obligations under BIT or a violation of contract rights protected under BIT.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.127-150
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• 2003

This study analyzes how capital market comovement can affect investors' decision making. We first analyze time-varying correlation coefficient between stock indices of U.S.A. and Korea. and then, using our empirical results, attempt to draw implications on investors' behavior. We find that the tendency of comovement between Korea and U.S.A. equity returns has considerably increased after the financial crisis of late 1997. Through the analysis of investors' behavior, we find that foreign investors, contrary to ITC's (Investment Trust Company) and individual investors, buy more shares in Korean markets as American stock prices go up. Foreign investors employ dynamic hedging strategy and give more weight on global economic factors than domestic ones. Our empirical results as a whole imply that investment behavior of foreign investors is most closely related to comovement of U.S.A. and Korea capital markets.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.38
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• pp.377-408
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• 2008

Globalization of R&D activities of multinational firms is becoming important in compared with the past, because of increasing globalization of world economy. So, every country tries to attract foreign investment including R&D activities. In this paper, effects of several factors, which determine the scale of foreign subsidiary's R&D activities in local market, are analyzed. Through the review of previous literature, I found that three groups of determinant factors. The first one is the factor which is related to characteristics of local market, such as competitive situation of local market, accessability to research institutions, etc. The second group is the factor which is related to relationship between foreign subsidiary and its mother company. The dominant factors of this group are operation strategy of foreign subsidiary, competitiveness of mother firm, and equity structure of foreign subsidiary. Finally the characteristics of industry affect to the scale of foreign subsidiary's R&D activities. Among these factors, 6 factors are chosen to investigate empirically. For the empirical investigation, 107 foreign subsidiaries among KOITA(Korea Industrial Technology Association)'s list are chosen. Each subsidiary has more than 50% of foreign equity and implement R&D activities in Korea. The results show that sales volume of foreign subsidiary is dominant influencing factor in determining scale of R&D activities in Korean market. And also I found that currently established firms are implementing more R&D activities than old established firms. This is quite interesting finding. However, R&D activities of foreign subsidiary are not vitalized in Korean market. It probably means that Korean government and Korean business partners have to make effort to enhance foreign firms/ R&D activities, because it could contribute technological and economic development of Korean market.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.247-254
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• 2015

Objectives : The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of foreign and institutional investors in the pharmaceutical industry on R&D investments. Methods : The empirical analysis was done for the years 2009 to 2013 which examined the period after the influence of the financial crisis. Financial statements and comments in general and internal transactions were extracted from the TS-2000 of the Korea Listed Company Association. STATA 12.0 was used as the statistical package for the panel analysis. Results : The results show that the shareholding ratio of foreigner investors turned out to have a statistically significant influence on R&D investment. No statistical significance was found in the shareholding ratio of institutional investors. Conclusions : The findings of this study, which indicate that a higher shareholding ratio of foreigner investors leads to greater R&D investment, indicate that foreign investors directly or indirectly impose pressure on a manager to make R&D investments for the long-term.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.5-8
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• 2016

Purpose - With its considerable water resources, Lao People's Democratic Republic, hereafter Lao PDR, is considered to become the "battery" of the Southeast Asia region in the next 20 years. This paper explores the investment opportunity in the hydroelectricity development project in the Lao PDR. Research design, data, and methodology - Three significant investment factors including cultural factor, political factors, and economic factors are being literally analyzed. In fulfilling the purpose of this analysis, Num Theun 2 Power Company or NTPC, a current largest hydropower project in the country, is selected for an example of a mega investment project model in the country. Results - NTPC's investment plan, budgets, and current revenue and rate of return are briefly discussed throughout the paper. In addition, this paper also briefly compares and contrasts of the investment in the Lao PDR and investment in its neighboring Singapore who is considered one of the leading developed economies in the region. Conclusions - A recommendation is being proposed on the last section of this paper in the areas that Lao PDR may consider adopting in order to make its investment environment becomes more attractive to foreign investors.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.51-65
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• 2020

According to an analysis of 560 foreign-invested companies investing in South Korea's manufacturing industry, the following three facts were found. First, the proportion of sales by manufacturing foreign-invested companies is divided into 68.5 percent of domestic sales and 31.5 percent of exports. From 68.5 percent of domestic sales, sales to Korean companies are 60.5 percent, including 37.1 percent for large companies and 23.4 percent for small and medium-sized companies, while only 8.0 percent for domestic consumers. Second, the investment sectors of manufacturing foreign-invested enterprises are 'machine and equipment manufacturing', 'chemical and chemical-chemical material manufacturing-excluding pharmaceuticals', 'electronic components, computers, video, sound and communication equipment manufacturing' and 'vehicle and trailer manufacturing'. It overlaps with electric·electronics, petro-chemicals and automobiles, which are Korea's main industries and areas of Korean global companies. Third, 31.5 percent of the sales of foreign-invested companies in the manufacturing sector are exported. Foreign-invested companies export their products to use them for their parents or affiliates or to the third countries. The analysis shows that foreign-invested companies invested in Korea for B2B transactions with Korean companies. The implications are that Korea can attract foreign investments by utilizing Korean companies' demand for intermediate goods. Foreign-invested companies can invest in Korea in order to use Korea, which has signed free trade agreements with the US, the EU and ASEAN, as an export platform.