KJC Korea
Journal Central

A first glance Korean and Danish seem to be seemingly far apart each other in every linguistic aspect, from the grammar over pronunciation to the written language, not to mention the elaborated polite-conjugations we find in Korean compared to the Danes’ habit of saying ‘you’ (‘du’) to just about everyone. However, both languages have, from the latter half of the 20th century to nowadays, received an enormous amount of loan words from English-American. If we look in to that, going all the way back to the Viking era in Scandinavia, when it was the Vikings lending out to the English (knife, guest, gift), we even find some rare and astonishing connections between Korean and Danish. In this article we go on a walk about Seoul in South Korea, exploiting the city a as linguistic space, looking at stores, shops, cafés, billboards, signs, and more on, chasing Old Norse that has made it all the way from the Viking age, over England and USA to Asia and Korea.

The annual event of ‘Almedalsveckan’ – ‘The Almedal Week’ held at the first week of July on Gotland in Sweden where every political party has attended has been existing since 1968. The political event for a variety of seminars, meetings, and garden talks has become a symbol for Swedish deliberative ‘Agora’ democracy. In spite of its history with accumulated data of speeches, debates and addresses, no single research analyzing addresses of party leaders has existed so far except for descriptive statistical studies of the event and participants. This article aims at filling this gap. Evening addresses given by two main party leaders representing Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party were compared in this article. Two analytical tools, i.e. keyword analysis, on the one hand, and political discourse analysis on the other were adapted to explore the contents, symbols, ideas and arguments. This research based on semiotic exploration of core keywords detects that clear ideological differences between addresses of the two largest political parties have emerged in terms of perceptions of social issues, ideological stances, value orientation, policy goals and arguing claims on the prospective role and image of welfare state. More in-depth and broader interest in empirical studies of political address is argued to be of greater importance for better understanding of persuasive skills, consequences of the addresses and influence on political changes.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the Swedish people’s attitude toward universal basic income(UBI) and related tax increases, and to identify the factors affecting the attitude. Overall, the number of respondents who expressed opposition to the introduction of the UBI was significantly higher than that of those who expressed support. Also, a negative attitude toward tax increases and the NOOMP(Not Out of My Pocket) phenomenon were identified. Opposition to the related tax increase was greater than those in favor. When the introduction of a UBI was accompanied by tax increase, opposition grew even greater. In the case of tax increase for the UBI, they preferred to achieve it through corporate tax and income tax on the rich. In general, opposition against the UBI and related tax increases was higher than support. But the degree varied depending on ideological tendencies, perceptions of tax burden, and preparedness for income loss. The more progressive, the more supportive of basic income and related tax increases. Conversely, the greater the perception of tax burden, the higher the negative attitude toward the UBI and related tax increases. The greater the preparedness for income loss, the higher the opposition to basic income. Basic income provides cash indiscriminately regardless of social welfare needs. In terms of social welfare effects, it is very inefficient. This may be the reason why basic income is not considered as a policy alternative in most welfare countries, including Sweden. Moreover, public trust in Sweden’s existing social security system is higher than in any other country. Therefore, it is analyzed that support for the UBI is significantly low in Sweden. Moreover, the fact that Swedish people are already paying high taxes to achieve a high level of social protection seems to reinforce the negative attitude towards the introduction of the UBI because it requires unbearable tax increase.

Since the 2000s, Finnish governments have tried to transform social and health services provided by the municipality-centered delivery system. After several failed attempts for last two decades, the reform bill of the PM Marin’s government was finally passed through the Eduskunta (Finnish Parliament) in June 2021. The core aims of the bill are to create 21 wellbeing services counties (hyvinvointialueet), to transfer the responsibility to provide social and health services from municipalities to the newly established administrative organizations, and to develop Future Health and Social Services Centres (Tulevaisuuden sosiaali- ja terveyskeskukset) for the improvement of service accessibility and the reduction of inequality in service provision. The first elections to constitute 21 county councils were held on 23 January, 2022. During the election campaign, the key issues were about how to fix both inequality and inefficiency simultaneously and how to reform the decision-making system related to social and health services. The findings from this study on the Finnish case demonstrate that the role of public organizations will be emphasized and strengthened in the new service delivery system, and the three-tier governance of “central government-wellbeing services counties-municipalities” will replace the existing two-tier governance of “central government- municipalities.”

This study examines the context of the Danish referendum in 2022 and analyzes the implications of the abolition of the European Union (EU) defense opt-out on Denmark’s security and defense policy. Denmark is the only Nordic country to join both the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); however, it has an opt-out from the field of defense cooperation as it has obtained the right not to cooperate with the EU in the areas of common defense, European currency, European citizenship, and judicial and internal affairs. The Danish government has attempted to abolish opt-outs to work more effectively with the EU, but these efforts have not been successful due to public opposition. On the other hand, the ongoing war in Ukraine has resulted in increased public support for initiating defense cooperation with the EU. Based on the results of the referendum, Denmark will be able to return to the Common Defense and Security Policy (CSDP) and participate in the increasing defense cooperation between NATO and the EU.

Causing a shock to the international order across Europe and the world, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war has made it inevitable to take a reconstructive approach to the foreign and security order established since the end of Cold War in general. In particular, Sweden and Finland which have long maintained own neutral foreign policy lines are now receiving international attentions as they decided to apply for the NATO membership through extensive processes of national debates and policy deliberation. This article contributes to estimating the impact of this war on the foreign and security order in Finland and the Nordic region by studying the change of the Finnish foreign and security policy prompted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finland developed a unique neutrality and peace diplomacy policy in the context of special relations with the USSR since the Second World War. However, new political dynamics in foreign policy-making has been also demonstrated through its accession to the EU in 1995 and a total constitutional reform in 2000. This war undermined basic premises of the Finnish foreign and security policy line developed during the Post-Cold War era, thereby forcing key political actors such as the President, PM and cabinet members, Eduskunta (Finnish Parliament) and political parties to seriously consider reconstituting the existing policy line at the paradigm level. The new 2000 Constitution, which provided with a ‘parliamentary turn’ in foreign policy-making and the extensive policy and legislative consultation system unique to Finland have been found to work well enough even in the situations where an urgent crisis response is required. Although the final realization of Finland’s goal of joining the NATO remains to be seen further, Finland’s response to the war and its results strongly suggests a paradigm-level change in the Finnish foreign and security policy and the birth of a new political consensus.