• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.33
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• pp.193-225
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• 2006

This study attempts to reconsider the significance of political economy as a theory of knowledge and/or a method for explaining the convergence of broadcast and telecommunications. It is going to suggest what the domains of political economy should be in the future by both highlighting the characteristics and blind spots of previous studies and drawing some distinctive features of a new media environment. The principals and recent research trends in political economy are reviewed in order to make clear that the historical totality as a meta-framework of political economy needs to be reexamined in the era of convergence. Although the scope of political economy has been limited to criticize the structure of media ownerships, the study emphasizes the importance of media consumer theory. It also discusses the problems of free market theory, distortion of active media audience theory, and limitations and creative tension of audience commodity. Finally, this study stresses the significance of audience-oriented policies in order to make approach to practical sides of media politics.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.1-47
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• 2022

This paper introduces a politico-economic model with a welfare state and immigration. In this model, policies on taxes and immigration are determined through a plurality voting system. While many studies of fiscal implications of immigration argue that relaxing immigration policies can substitute for tax reforms in an aging economy, I show that the democratic voting procedure can dampen the effect of relaxing immigration policies as desired policy reforms are not always implemented by the winner of an election. This political economy results in three types of social welfare losses. First, the skill composition is not balanced at a socially efficient level because workers are motivated to maximize their wages. Second, older retirees implement excessive taxes to maximize the size of the welfare state. Third, the volume of immigration is lower than the optimal level given the incentive by young workers to regain political power in the future.

• 사회경제평론
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.127-141
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• 2018

This article looks back on the past 30 years of the Korean Association for Political Economy from the perspective of so-called 86 generation. It is argued that KAPE should promote effective communication between radical economists and liberal economists who are critical of mainstream economics.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.27-45
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• 2012

Among political scientists, Japan's free trade agreements (FTA) with member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been considered to be a political tool that can compete against China for regional leadership in East Asia. However, this paper demonstrates that Japan's so-called FTA diplomacy towards ASEAN nations serves the broad interests of Japanese actors in both the political and economic sectors. Given the attention to Japanese domestic political issues, it is argued that diplomacy primarily facilitates a need for free trade with ASEAN and ASEAN markets for Japanese corporations to compete in the global economy and for the government to nurture Japan's stagnant economy by assisting these corporations. This work also contends that the unclear function of FTA as an economic good is due to the lack of the government capacity to effectively manage FTA diplomacy. This partly results from the conventional view with regard to Sino-Japanese rivalry.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.243-260
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• 2013

The dominant academic literature about trade agreements maintains that they are only about national terms-of-trade manipulation and not at all about purely political concerns. Non-academic economists, commentators, and diplomats by contrast think that trade agreements are all about political concerns. There are two substantive and important distinctions between the two views. i Practitioners maintain that policymakers care virtually not at all about the terms of trade or about trade-tax revenue. ii Practitioners, unlike academics, maintain that trade-agreement negotiations themselves change the underlying political economy. Observation of actual trade policy measures, though not conclusive, suggests that the practitioners are right and that the academics are wrong.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.45
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• pp.7-48
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• 2009

The recent crises of Marxism do not mean Marx’s crisis. Marx said that he was not a Marxist. The purposes of this essay explore (1) the modern identity of the political economy; (2) the possibilities of mutual understanding between neoclassical economics and Marxist economics; (3) problems of the political economy in media and communication industry. I have begged for analytical Marxists, because of their good fruits. They accepted the methods of modern social science and they constituted a tremendous advance in the application of the scientific methods to the study of society. In insisting on micro-foundations(methodological individualism), analytical Marxism distinguished itself from structuralism and functionalism. I appreciate that analytical Marxism has reduced a theory to practice. But the works didn’t listen to everyone(from Marxists to un-Marxists), and explain everything. Making theory with production/consumption, macro/micro, and structure/behavior is a road to the political economy in the long run. It also applies to media and communication industry. The realm of media/communication is broad, which in philosophy, humanities, politics, economics, sociology, and engineering. And media policy is more complicated by politicians who look at the same situation from different angles. By the aid of interdisciplinary research, the political economy of media/communication shall explain at full length.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.1-48
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• 2013

Taking the cases of Korean garment factories in Binh Duong area, this study aims to explain the phases and causes of the wildcat strikes that have rapidly expanded recently in Vietnam. For the purpose, this study raises several questions as follows. Why the strikes sometimes increase and decrease other times? Why the factory workers prefer a wildcat strike even though it is politically risky, unproductive, and complicated? By the same token, why the foreign management cannot or will not preemptively preclude the wildcat strikes that are usually predictable and the workers are mostly able to accomplish their demands? While answering these questions, this study explores the economic, political, and socio-cultural conditions of the wildcat strikes respectively. Based on the fieldwork in around 30 Korean owned garment factories and the interview with around 100 Vietnamese factory workers in Binh Duong, this study confirms several findings on the phases and causes of the strikes in the area in specific and in Vietnam in general. First, the annual trends of the wildcat strikes reflect the macroeconomic conditions in which the consumer prices and the labor market in Vietnamese economy and business conditions in the world economy are pivotal. Second, however, the influence of macroeconomic conditions on both the management and the workers in the garment factories are differential, depending on the financial situations of the multinational corporations and the workers' capability of reproducing their household economies. Thirdly, the possibility of the wildcat strike in each factory is relatively independent on the financial conditions of a factory and rather associated with the stable political structure and active political processes within the factory that enable the management and the workers to efficiently communicate each other. Lastly, the necessity of establishing political stability in a factory arises from the distinctive social and cultural characteristics of the multinational corporation in which foreign managers and native workers inevitably live in separate and different socio-cultural worlds.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.601-623
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• 2014

This paper is to analyze critically policy and discourse of creative economy and creative city. Applying the concept of 'policy transfer' or 'policy mobility', It points out that it may be inevitable for a certain policy or discourse developed in Western society to change its contents and characteristics in its international diffusing process. And then, this paper describes political contexts and process in which the policy and discourse of creative city of a former mayor of Seoul, Oh, Se-Hoon, during the late part of the 2000s, and those of creative economy of the current president, Park, Geun-Hye, have been suggested and pursued, arguing that those policies and discourses, having been distorted and lack of concrete contents, have functioned as a key ruling tool or political rhetoric. In particular, this paper concludes that the policy and discourse of creative economy of the current government would have little positive effect due to excluding intentionally policy of economic democracy and ignoring unintentionally policy of creative city, which seem to have an inherent relationship with that of creative economy.

• 사회경제평론
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.25-61
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• 2018

Nowadays 87 regimes born in the same year with the Korean Association for Political Economy(KAPE in abbreviation) have ended historically. This paper surveys the research trends of KAPE after 2007 for the 30th founding anniversary. This survey is expected to help research way forward of KAPE. The main contents of the surveys are as follows. Global finance crisis caused by subprime mortgage crisis in 2007 expanded to global economic crisis resulting in the crisis of economics. KAPE criticized the mainstream economics with different approach and methodology as well as political economy copying with the crisis of economics and then focused on economics of inequality. However, the progressive economics is depressed under the conservative regime after 2007. As a result, the progressive economics have experienced the crisis of reproduction of knowledge and have become the peripheral science in Korea. With new regimes after 87 regimes, more important than restoration of the progressive economics is rebirth as the progressive economics corresponding to new regime and new era. This is responsibility of KAPE as the single association of the progressive economics in Korea.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.22
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• pp.39-75
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• 2003

This essay begins with the following questions; "What is a fundamental source of media power?" and "How can the media power dominate market?". This essay aims at answering the questions. I made my selection of countries such as Venezuela, Italy and UK for this article with a political economic approach. This analysis found evidence that an enormous conglomerate ownership, and alliance or convergence between media and political power are two fundamental source of the media power. With the integration of newspaper and television the media monopoly increased their supplies and political influences as I have shown. Despite the growing threat of media monopoly power to democracy and public interest, in recent years, governments worldwide have chosen to ease regulations.