Dr. Kwon will examine the electoral effects of issue salience of unemployment. While increasing employment volatility has spawned exciting research, evidence of how unemployment affects voter choice is inconclusive. Professor Kwon refines partisan voting theory by focusing on issue salience of unemployment and the dynamics of voter choice. Voters are more likely to make a transition to support Left parties when they identify unemployment as the most important and salient issue, while there is no effect of issue salience of unemployment on loyal Left voter behavior. His study also examines voter heterogeneity in the link between issue salience and the probability of transition to Left. Analysis of a transition model using the 1997 Korean presidential election survey finds supporting evidence.

Hyeok Yong Kwon (Ph.D., Cornell University) is an assistant professor in political science at Korea University. Before joining Korea University, he taught at Texas A&M University. His research interests include political economy, voting behavior and mass public opinion, and political methodology. His recent works explore economic insecurity and the dynamics of voter choice in comparative perspective. Also, he works on the relationship between government partisanship and welfare spending in OECD countries. Previous publications include "Targeting Public Spending in a New Democracy: Evidence from South Korea" British Journal of Political Science (2005) and "Economic Reform and Democratization: Evidence from Latin America and Post-Socialist Countries" British Journal of Political Science (2004).

The pace of policy reform is important in new democracies, where the status quo policies, established by non-democratic regimes, may be far from the preferences of popular majorities. Slowing policy reform slows down governmental implementation of democratic policy mandates. This, in turn, may offset (at least partly) the positive effects of broader participation and greater accountability.

Whether the net impact of procedural reform is to accelerate or to slow policy reform depends on the particular procedures involved, and the political context. In this paper, the authors consider a procedure that, on the surface, appears likely to accelerate reform, thereby promoting change in the policy status quo. This is a sunset rule.

This paper focuses on the sunset rule adopted in South Korea, at the end of the Kim Young Sam administration. Kim's support for the sunset rule at the end of his term is puzzling. Why would a lame duck president support a rule that would seem to limit the life of the regulations passed in his own term?

Jeeyang Rhee Baum, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include comparative political institutions, administrative law, and bureaucracies with a particular emphasis on East Asia. Her most recent publications include: "Presidents Have Problems Too: The Logic of Intra-branch Delegation in East Asian Democracies", British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming) and "Breaking Authoritarian Bonds: The Political Origins of the Taiwan Administrative Procedure Act", Journal of East Asian Studies.

Congressman Weldon represents the Seventh Congressional District of Pennsylvania. He is in his tenth term and is the most senior Republican in the Pennsylvania delegation. He is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a leading House supporter of a national missile defense program. The Congressman has worked to strengthen the dialogue between the US and North Korea for the past three years. He has worked closely with Ambassador Han of North Korea as well as former Secretary Powell and Ambassador Pritchard to urge both sides to continue their participation in the six-party talks.

General Cha achieved the rank of Lieutenant General in the Army of the Republic of Korea. He has had a distinguished career, serving both in the public and the private sector, including as policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification, director general of the Policy Planning Bureau and deputy minster for Policy, and as an assistant professor in international relations. He has a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Korea Military Academy, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Paris. He is the author of several books and articles on Korean security issues, published in both Korean and English.

William Brown (Bill) is an economist and senior research analyst with CENTRA Technology, Inc. of Northern Virginia, specializing in North Asia-area economics. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty of George Mason University's graduate school of public policy where he teaches courses on Asian economic development and international trade.

Bill has extensive experience as an economic analyst in the US government, having worked in the Chief Economist's Office of the Commerce Department, as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Economics in the National Intelligence Council, and as an eco-nomic analyst in the CIA's Office of Economic Research where he focused on his research on the North Korean and Chinese economies. He served for two years in the US Embassy in Seoul and has traveled extensively in the region, including a trip last summer across the DMZ into North Korea.

Mr. Brown writes occasionally for the Chosun Ilbo in Seoul and speaks on Korean and Chinese issues to a number of Asian and US audiences. He holds an M.A. in economics from Washington University, Missouri with most of his Ph.D. work completed, and a B.A. in International Studies from Rhodes College, Tennessee. He grew up in Kwangju, South Korea as the son and grandson of Presbyterian missionaries and speaks and reads some Korean and Chinese.

Hosted by the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum as part of its ongoing seminar series on North Korea.