2021, Vol.36, No.1

The Journal of Northeast Asia Research 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.75

pISSN : 2005-4432
https://journal.kci.go.kr/inas

This research aims to analyze the relationships between political institutions and the pervasion of COVID-19. To proceed with empirical research, we set democracy, decentralization of local government, proportional representation, federalism, and bicameralism as independent variables. We employed OLS multiple linear regression based on the cumulative COVID-positive cases of 178 countries from 2020 to early 2021. The results shows that democracy, proportional representation, federalism, and bicameralism do not have statistical significance. We found strong evidence that the more a country is decentralized, the more cases of COVID-19 are expected. Regardless of many institutional advantages decentralization has, our research argues that more coordinated anti-pandemic policy process and measures between central and local governments will be encouraged.

One of the common problems of developing countries that have not yet started industrialization is the dual economy. In many developing countries, rural societies have a intensive socio-economic backwardness. Therefore, the economic development of these countries has the task of overcoming the backwardness of rural society and the task of connecting the potential of the agricultural sector to industrialization. The role of the rural and agricultural sectors in the industrialization of developing countries lies here. This role of the agricultural sector is evident in the experiences of developing countries that have succeeded in industrialization, such as Korea and Taiwan. It is very important that the policy makers were independent from the demands and pressures of landlords for the successful implementation of Taiwan's agricultural policy. Agricultural policies for economic development often conflict with the interests of the landlord class. In the case of Taiwan, policy makers promoted agricultural policy that reflected the needs of farmers more actively than those of landlords. As a result, it was possible not only to improve agricultural productivity, but also to increase farmers' income and gain political support from farmers for the government.

This study provides a literature analysis centering 『Korean Diplomatic Historical Records Removal Collection』 and 『DPRK Yearbook』, paying attention on the circumstances of Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) made an effort to recover the solidarity with the collapsing socialist camp at the situation of the breakup of cold war in 1980s. This study, firstly finds that DPRK recognized international situation and the limitation of competition between North and South Korea disadvantageous to DPRK focused on non-alignment movement and made an effort to recover the solidarity with socialist camp. Secondly, this study investigates that DPRK completed ‘Own Style of Socialism’ as a domestic political discourse by the change of diplomatic relations and redefinition for the people. Lastly, this study suggests that DPRK moved the focus of foreign policy by the change of foreign relationship of DPRK in 1980s from confrontation between North and South Korea to system protection and internal unity centering Il-sung Kim and Jung-il Kim.