KJC Korea
Journal Central

Korean government’s policy on overseas Koreans has primarily focused on education. While initial program was geared on instilling anti-North Korea (or anti-socialism) ideology, latter educational programs have centered on instilling nationalism. Focus on nationalism is primarily due to the government’s recognition of overseas Koreans as human capital that would contribute in advancing the nation. Hence, Korea has focused on developing nationalism programs to encourage migrant remittances, investments and loyalties of the dispersed diaspora so to bring them back to the motherland. By conducting in-depth interviews with 12 Korean Americans living in Korea, the current study investigates how effective Korea has been in implementing programs to instill nationalism discourse, and how transnational activities in conjunction with nationalism education has strengthened their Korean identity. The findings offers ways to make the transnational discourse more effective for young generations of Korean Americans and suggests areas for future studies.

LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) experienced confusion and hardship between 1993 and 2012, but since 2012, when Prime Minister Abe resumed power, LDP successfully reconstructed predominance. LDP won landslide electoral victories in five consecutive national elections between 2012 and 2017. Several perspectives have been presented to account for the re- emergence of LDP predominance: institutionalism, leadership analysis, and policy performance. All these explanations have something to be desired to explain the phenomena. Alternatively this article suggests that three factors are critical to account for LDP predominance: LDP’s coalition strategy to bring in other parties while keeping the opposition divided; flexible and comprehensive support mobilization; and policy differentiation and consistency. Reconstruction of LDP predominance was possible because of Abe’s policy differentiation based on neo-conservative agendas, renewed right-wing support mobilization, and flexible partisan coalition strategy to embrace Komeito and Japan Restoration. LDP predominance under Abe’s leadership is likely to continue as long as Japanese economy remains resilient, oppositions are divided, and floating voters show residual support for the LDP.

This study discusses the structural transformation of Japanese local governance from historical and comprehensive perspectives which have been neglected in the proceeding literature. Considering the Japanese domestic context, this study provides an operational conceptualization of local governance as follows; an effort to create a local public sphere by implementing ideas, projects, and legal institutions regarding the four fields including decentralization, local autonomy, community- building, and co-production. This study reviewed how these fields have developed in the past 70 years and highlighted several features. First, Japanese local governance has evolved through the cyclical interaction of the four fields. Seconds, the interaction patterns among autonomy, community-building, and co-production are becoming more and more fused. Creative institutions are emerging in the different local communities as a result. Third, most of critical ideas about community, citizen, human being, and autonomy were already presented in the 1960’s by some pioneering scholars and practitioners. The cyclical structural evolution has been engendered as a historical effort to put these critical ideas into practice. These study results are expected to deepen the understanding of Japanese local governance by effectively linking the proceeding literature on each four fields.

The purpose of this study is to derive the characteristics of a border trade zone and to present implications for inter-Korean economic cooperation through an analysis of the transition process and the status of customs clearance of North Korea-China border trade zones. North Korea and China has designated 10 boder trade zones in 1958, 14 in 1965, and 15 in 2001 and administrated them. In 2001, both governments reached an the agreement to manage the border trade zones systematically. In 2010, the border trade zones have expanded aiming to construct new border bridges. Despite the sanctions imposed on North Korea, the status of customs clearance of border trade has increased. while the amounts of customs clearance of road lines have been grown rapidly, the amounts of railroad lines have been declined sharply. Focusing on region by region, the lower reaches of the Yalu and Tumen rivers and Nanping trade zone in Jilin Province of china, the import routes of iron ore from North Korea, have been emerging as major channels of customs. If the current sanction phase is resolved in the future, the border trade customs clearance will be greatly activated, possibly affecting the composition of inter-Korean economic cooperation. In addition, the current construction and operation of the between North Korea and China border trade zone will become a reference model when establishing a bilateral trade route in the border area between the South-North Koreas. Therefore, it is necessary to have continued research and interest in the North Korea-China border trade zone.