2011, Vol.38, No.2

Korean Social Science Journal 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.06

pISSN : 1225-0368 / eISSN : 2196-4424
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kssj

In the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, South Korea, which had been a very successful economy, was forced to raise interest rates and cut government spending by the IMF. These measures caused great economic distress. Because Asian countries were not well represented in the IMF’s governance structure, Korea could not effectively appeal the decision. We argue that what Korea and neighboring countries learned from this experience was that they had to accumulate their own reserves to self-insure against future crises. This self-insurance in East Asia has allowed Korea to navigate the current crisis well. However, the trillions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves accumulated in Asia have contributed to the ‘global imbalances’ that have played an important role in causing the current crisis. We suggest three possible solutions: reform of IMF governance,increased liquidity through regional risk sharing and foreign exchange swaps, and the Chinese RMB as a reserve currency.

South Korean and American college students are compared on paranormal beliefs. The surveys were administered twice, first in 1999 and then in 2009 both in Korea and in the United States. In 1999, Korean students showed higher scores than the United States students in every sub‐type of paranormal beliefs except for religious belief. In 2009, Korean students showed higher scores in paranormal beliefs except for religiosity and spiritualism. The level of religious and non‐religious paranormal beliefs declined in both countries over the 10 years between the two testing periods and the decline was significantly steeper in Korea. The implications of these findings are discussed.

We examined how the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) explains differences in the consumption patterns between card bubble periods and non‐bubble periods with KLIPS panel data. From empirical results, with regard to the food consumption, the PIH represents significant results for the low income household, while the middle income households had the liquidity constraint. For the health and medical service consumption, all households were free from liquidity constraints except for the year when the credit card crunch occurred. For total consumption, the high income households were free from the liquidity constraint. On the other hand, the middle income households confronted a liquidity constraint. However, the low income households were free from the liquidity constraint in the card bubble periods, while the PIH was rejected in the non‐bubble periods. Finally, we can argue that abolishing the ceiling on credit card cashadvance services has the same effect as eliminating borrowing constraints.