In activist communities worldwide, globalization has had an enormous impact, both in the composition of activist groups and the content of their messages. At the same time, regional concerns are playing a significant role in the ways protests are organized, managed, and deployed.
Regardless of their location or their target, it is clear that protest campaigns have, on the one hand, become increasingly globalized. The protests that took place during the July 2008 G8 Toyako Summit in Japan offer a case in point. Approximately one hundred transnational activists flew into Sapporo, a city located near the summit site, and joined various civil and protest activities. Over a loudspeaker, they broadcast statements denouncing the summit meeting as “antidemocratic” and “discriminatory against the poor.” These activists were drawn from East, Southeast, and Central Asia, as well as Europe and North America, and they voiced correspondingly global concerns—for human rights, global peace, and democracy, and against inequality and poverty. These themes echoed those of other major global protests, including demonstrations that took place against the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, the latter most notably in 1999 in Seattle. Indeed, protests of this kind represent what might be called an antiglobalization movement
On the other hand, global movements of this kind also appear to be organized on an increasingly regional basis. Though the activists who protested the Toyako Summit came from all over the world, and addressed topics of global importance, most of the participants came mainly from South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Given this apparent dichotomy, the question arises: Will global social movements become regional?
One could argue that global social movements are and will remain regional, at least for the time being, for two practical reasons. First, the costs associated with flight to activist hubs near protest sites can be expensive. Second, the amount of time spent in transition to the protest site becomes a burden. The time doubles when taking into consideration the time spent to return to the originating country. These factors can be prohibitive especially to those based far away, but are less burdensome to regional activists, thus making it easier for nearby protesters to participate.
While time and cost are no doubt a concern, they may not be as important when compared with the other factors. Language is among these factors. Cooperative activities beyond the national borders are on the rise, yet many foreign activists do not speak the languages spoken in the countries where they protest. They invariably rely on English, widely accepted as the “global” language. Yet the levels of English fluency differ among participating activists, and this is a key factor. With their English ability, activists from Europe and North America tend to communicate with others on an individual basis, while those from nearby countries often rely on interpreters, especially when discussions delve into the details of the planned activity and necessary arrangements associated with it. Typically, interpreters are group leaders, well educated and knowledgeable about regional and global issues—and these individuals facilitate most intergroup communication.
Preestablished ties and preexisting communication can influence negotiation and cooperation processes among activists. Global social movements tend to enhance crossnational cooperation among participating activists—that is, activists who come together from different countries often regroup elsewhere, building on their previous cooperative activities. In the case of the 2008 G8 summit protests, regionalization was very much at work. Several months prior to the summit, Japanese media activists planned a temporary umbrella organization called the G8 Media Network, which helped to accommodate incoming foreign media activists and arranged international cooperative activities during the summit. As it happened, the foreign activists and groups that interacted with the G8 Media Network were actually regional, originating mainly from South Korea and Hong Kong. Under the auspices of the G8 Media Network, these groups of activists arrived prior to the summit and stayed until it concluded. Afterward, the same media groups discussed the continuation of crossnational cooperation. Though technically foreign, the dominant actors and groups who sought to continue cooperative activities were, in fact, only from neighboring countries.
Looking more closely at participants in the global protest activities provides further insight into contemporary global protest movements. At the 2008 G8 Summit protests, two different types of foreign participants were on display—those who had prior ties to host activist groups in Japan, and those who did not. The former group could be described as professional activists, whose preestablished ties ensure that they have good knowledge of a given protest’s scheduled activities. The professional group also organizes its own plans of action, precoordinated with domestic groups. The latter group tends to be traveling activists, a more or less independent and unorganized collection of individuals who enjoy traveling the globe and joining the activities offered at protest sites worldwide. The professional activist group is often drawn largely from neighboring countries in the region.
Most global social movements feature participants from around the world. At the same time, signs of regionalization also exist, making most protests both global and regional in nature. One could claim that the future of global social movements is regional. But whether global or regional, it is vital that we continue to study the composition of global protest movements and their abiding impact on civil society.
There is currently a fundamental transformation of services, a transformation central to the growth of productivity and competition in the global economy. This transformation, a response to commodification generated by decomposition of production and intensified competition in global markets, is driven by developments in IT tools, the uses they are being put to, and the networks they run on. The service transformation is changing how firms add value, affecting the underlying economic activity in countries around the world.
This article introduces the notion of the services transformation, placing it in the historical context of production and competition, noting the advent of the Internet as a critical building block. Second, we consider national strategies for capturing value in this new era. The experiences of Japan and Korea, successful in deploying high-speed IT networks, but facing unexpected challenges in using them to capture value, highlight several features of the services transformation.
Embedded in traditional culture perpetuating family-centered elderly care, informal care is still viewed as a family or moral issue rather than a social and policy issue in South Korea. Using newly available microdata from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, this study investigates the effect of informal caregiving on labor market outcomes in South Korea. By doing so, this study provides evidence to inform elderly long-term care policy in South Korea, and also fills a gap in the international literature by providing results from an Asian country. Empirical analyses address various methodological issues by investigating gender differences, by examining both extensive and intensive labor market adjustments with two definitions of labor force participation, by employing different functional forms of care intensity, and by accounting for the potential endogeneity of informal care as well as intergenerational co-residence. Robust findings suggest negative effects of informal caregiving on labor market outcomes among women, but not among men. Compared with otherwise similar non-caregivers, female intensive caregivers who provide at least more than 10 hours of care per week are at an increased risk of being out of the labor force by 15.2 percentage points. When examining the probability of employment in the formal sector only, the effect magnitude is smaller. Among employed women, more intensive caregivers receive lower hourly wages by 1.65K Korean Won than otherwise similar non-caregivers. Informal care is already an important economic issue in South Korea even though aging is still at an early stage.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s apparent stroke in mid-August raises the possibility of near-term political succession in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). This has prompted U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) planners—concerned with command and control of North Korea’s fissile material under conditions of regime disarray, internecine conflict, or collapse—to examine afresh the alliance’s assumptions, contingency plans, and political strategies.
The Korean Peninsula occupies a central place in the Chinese national security calculus. Chinese policy above all aims to avert military conflict on the Peninsula and regime collapse in the North. Conflict and collapse scenarios could embroil China in unwanted military action, imperil its long-term economic development program, jeopardize its crucial ties with the United States and South Korea, open the floodgates to North Korean refugees, and alter the Northeast Asian strategic landscape to China’s disadvantage.
For these and other reasons, China has emphasized the need for a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. It has encouraged North Korea to emulate, to the extent feasible, China’s own post-1978 economic reforms. At the same time, China has deepened political and commercial ties with South Korea, and sustained the North Korean regime through generous economic and military assistance.
China’s core interests—plus its special ties with North Korea’s military, party, security, and economic elite—have persuaded many outside observers that Beijing possesses not only unique insights into the Pyongyang regime’s internal dynamics but also potential leverage. Further, many assume that China, having both the need and ability to influence North Korea’s political succession, will do precisely that—shape, or if necessary impose, a North Korean succession that accords with China’s policy interests.
China has consistently denied having superior knowledge and usable leverage, and has adamantly rebuffed speculation regarding its national ambitions and potential actions.
Such disclaimers notwithstanding, some in the ROK and the United States postulate that national and alliance interests might best be served by “coordinating” with China on North Korean regime change/collapse scenarios. A few even argue that the alliance should “subcontract” this issue to China, thereby tacitly acquiescing in its intervention to ensure a peaceful, stable transition.
Despite the high stakes, crucial U.S.-ROK contingency planning seemingly has been approached in an environment that is rich in conjecture and hope, and poor in hard intelligence and agreed assessments.
Yet it is possible—indeed imperative—to do better than this. With respect to one small part of the complex whole—China’s interests, potential leverage, and likely actions—a starting point for rigorous
analysis might include the following issues and questions:
Knowledge : Does China in fact enjoy superior knowledge of internal DPRK decision-making? What are the sources of and limits upon such knowledge? How have the North Koreans approachedspecial bilateral ties with the Chinese in the realms of party-to-party affairs and military cooperation?
Are there reasons to believe that China contributed to North Korea’s nuclear program? If not, are there reasons to believe that North Korea shared any knowledge whatsoever of its activities with China? Has China sought to cultivate North Korean officials and, if so, when, and how successfully? How has North Korea reacted to any such Chinese activities?
Leverage: How much leverage does China enjoy over North Korean political, military, and economic decisions? What are the sources of such leverage? What are the constraints? How should one assess North Korea’s likely response to Chinese pressure? What options does North Korea enjoy in deflecting such pressure?
A Proactive Approach by China to North Korean Political Succession : What posture is China likely to adopt toward political succession in North Korea? What are its policy options? What assets does it hold? How does the issue of North Korean succession—including the possibility of regime chaos or collapse—fit into China’s broad strategic posture? What external considerations (especially those involving the ROK, the United States, Japan, and Russia) must China take into account?
ROK and U.S. Policy Considerations Regarding China’s Potential Involvement in a North Korean • Political Succession: What essential posture should the ROK and the United States adopt? On the one hand, should they enlist China’s cooperation in “managing” political succession in North Korea, or endeavor to minimize that involvement, instead addressing North Korean succession scenarios as primarily a task for the U.S.-ROK alliance? On the other hand, should they accept (and even tacitly encourage) China’s superior ability to effect a stable succession that preserves peace and stability? Should they broaden the scope of the current six-party talks to include formal discussion among “the five” (excepting North Korea)? Or should some other approach be adopted?
On one level, U.S. and ROK planners must urgently address these issues in order to have confidence that the two allies can deal smoothly with any North Korean political succession scenario. On a deeper level, a rigorous bilateral analysis of this type can serve to strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance itself by fully illuminating a broader set of underlying national attitudes, interests, and priorities.
Asia’s economies have been hard hit by the current global financial crisis, despite in most cases enjoying strong macroeconomic fundamentals and stable financial systems. Early hopes were that the region might be “decoupled” from the Western world’s financial woes and even able to lend the West a hand through high growth and the investment of large foreign exchange reserves. But that optimism has been dashed by slumping exports, plunging commodity prices, and capital outflows. The region’s most open, advanced and globally-integrated economies—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—are already in severe recession, with Japan, Korea and Malaysia not far behind, and dramatic slowdowns are underway in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. What role did Asian countries play in the genesis of the global crisis, and why have they been so severely impacted? How is their recovery likely to be shaped by market developments and institutional changes in the West, and in Asia itself in response to the crisis? Will the region’s embrace of accelerated globalization and marketization following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis now be retarded or reversed?
Linda Lim is a leading authority on Asian economies, Asian business, and the impacts of the current global financial crisis on Asia, and she has published widely on these topics. Her current research is on the ASEAN countries’ growing economic linkages with China.
Forthcoming in 2009 are Globalizing State, Disappearing Nation: The Impact of Foreign Participation in the Singapore Economy (with Lee Soo Ann) and Rethinking Singapore’s Economic Growth Model. She serves on the executive committees of the Center for Chinese Studies and the Center for International Business Education at the University of Michigan, where formerly she headed the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Before coming to Michigan, she taught economic development and political economy at Swarthmore. A native of Singapore, she obtained her degrees in economics from Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA), and Michigan (PhD).
Philippines Conference Room
The U.S. financial crisis has spread around the globe. Financial globalization means that most countries and regions are not immune to the contagious effects of a financial crisis that originates in one country.
East Asian countries had already experienced the contagious effects of a financial crisis in 1997. That year, a financial crisis that broke out in Thailand and Indonesia reached Malaysia and then South Korea. Each of these countries reacted differently to the crisis. South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand accepted International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities that required neoliberal economic restructuring in return for emergency loans, while Malaysia rejected the IMF offer and instead encouraged the inflow of speculative financial capital, while reforming the banking and financial system. In the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis, regional economic, financial and security cooperation were discussed among East Asian countries. These efforts resulted in the Chiang Mai Initiative, the Bond Initiative, the East Asian Summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Six Party Talks.
Thus, regionalism in East Asia was revived in response to external shocks, such as global financial volatility, endogenous opportunities such as East Asian market compatibility (Pempel, 2008), endogenous security threats such as the North Korean nuclear development, and exogenous opportunities such as "bringing in the U.S." (Pempel, 2008).
Nonetheless, East Asian regionalism is still at a low level of institutionalization compared to Europe. East Asian regionalism is still basically "bottom-up, corporate (market)-driven regionalism" (Pempel, 2005).
I will discuss the obstacles and the opportunities that Northeast Asian countries are facing since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization.
Hyug Baeg Im is Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. He is Dean at the Graduate School of Policy Studies and Director at Institute for Peace Studies. He received B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He was visiting professor at Georgetown University (1995-1996), Duke University (1997), Stanford University (2002-2003) and visiting fellow at International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC (1995-1996). He served as a presidential adviser of both Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun presidency. His current research focuses on the impact of IT revolution and globalization on Korean democracy. His publications include “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea,” World Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1987), “South Korean Democratic Consolidation in Comparative Perspective” in Consolidating Democracy in South Korea (Lynne Rienner, 2000) and “’Crony Capitalism’ in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan: Myth and Reality,” (co-authored with Kim, Byung Kook) Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), “Faltering Democratic Consolidation in South Korea: Democracy at the End of Three Kims Era” Democratization, Vol. 11, No. 5(2004), “Christian Churches and Democratization in South Korea” in Tun-jen Cheng and Deborah A. Brown (eds.), Religious Organizations and Democratization: Comparative Case Studies in Contemporary Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006) and “The US Role in Korean Democracy and Security since Cold War Era,” International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol. 6, No.2 (2006).
Philippines Conference Room
Recent analyses of U.S.-Korea relations have tended to focus on rising anti-American sentiments in South Korea and the changing nature of the overall alliance relationship. Either attributed to a case of Korean exceptionalism or U.S. exceptionalism, the current trend of anti-Americanism in Korea is treated as a unique watershed moment that portends the transformation of bilateral relations. Park argues that mobilization of anti-Americanism in Korea, however, is also a manifestation of anti-Great Power-ism, which is not new in the history of Korean politics. In fact, President Roh’s election platform of finding autonomy and self-reliance demonstrates close parallels with the anti-Qing mobilization in turn-of-the-century Korea. Anti-Great Power-ism (anti-sadae) emerged as a potent tool of political mobilization in the late 19th century, when the newly created Reform/Enlightenment Party made their criticism of the existing policy of “revering Great Powers” (sadae) the centerpiece of their attack against the conservative establishment. Even though sadae was originally a pragmatic policy of accommodating the powerful Qing, marking a departure from a cultural-ideological emulation of Ming China, it was stigmatized during 19th century politics as subservient and Great Power-dependent.
By comparing the progressives’ political mobilization processes in the late 19th century and in 2002-2006, the speaker argues that today’s anti-Americanism is actually a continuation of anti-China-ism seen from a broader historical perspective. At the same time, such anti-Great-Power mobilizations demonstrate the importance attached to relations with the “Great Powers” in Korean politics. Korean leaders have historically sought to generate political legitimacy by achieving different types of status in relations with the region’s dominant power in the context of regional hierarchy. A key implication of this study is that the social context of hierarchy continues to play an important role in alliance politics as well as East Asian security.
Seo-Hyun Park is an acting instructor in the Korean Studies Program at APARC and a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University. Her dissertation project explores enduring patterns of strategic thinking and behavior in East Asia, examining how the hierarchical regional order has conditioned conceptions of state sovereignty and domestic security politics through comparative case studies of Japanese and Korean relations with China in the traditional East Asian order and with the United States in the post-1945 regional alliance system.
Park received a B.A. in Communications from Yonsei Universitiy in Korea and an M.A. in Government from Cornell University.
Philippines Conference Room
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Seo-Hyun Park is an acting instructor in the Korean Studies Program at APARC and a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University. Her dissertation project explores enduring patterns of strategic thinking and behavior in East Asia, examining how the hierarchical regional order has conditioned conceptions of state sovereignty and domestic security politics through comparative case studies of Japanese and Korean relations with China in the traditional East Asian order and with the United States in the post-1945 regional alliance system.
Park has been a recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, and the Cornell University Einaudi Center’s Carpenter Fellowship, and most recently, the Predoctoral Fellowship at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. She has also conducted research in Japan and Korea as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University. She received a B.A. in Communications from Yonsei Universitiy and an M.A. in Government from Cornell University.
Korea introduced three major health-care reforms: in financing (1999), pharmaceuticals (2000), and provider payment (2001). In these three reforms, new government policies merged more than 350 health insurance societies into a single payer, separated drug prescribing by physicians from dispensing by pharmacists, and attempted to introduce a new prospective payment system. The change of government, the president’s keen interest in health policy, and democratization in public policy process toward a more pluralist context opened a policy window for reform. Civic groups played an active role in the policy process by shaping the proposals for reform —a major change from the previous policy process that was dominated by government bureaucrats. However, more pluralistic policy process also allowed key interest groups to intervene at critical points in implementation (sometimes in support, sometimes in opposition), with smaller political costs than previously.
Strong support by the rural population and labor unions contributed to the financing reform. In the pharmaceutical reform, which was a big threat to physician income, the president and civic groups succeeded in quickly setting the reform agenda; the medical profession was unable to block the adoption of the reform but their strikes influenced the content of the reform during implementation. Physician strikes also helped them block the implementation of the payment reform. Future reform efforts in Korea will need to consider the political management of vested interest groups and the design of strategies for both scope and sequencing of policy reforms.
Soonman Kwon is Professor of Health Economics and Policy, and Director of the BK (Brain Korea) Center for Aging and Health Policy in Seoul National University, South Korea. After he received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he was assistant professor of public policy at the University of Southern California in 1993-96. Prof. Kwon has held visiting positions at Harvard School of Public Health (Fulbright Scholar and Tekemi Fellow), London School of Economics (Chevening Scholar), Univ. of Trier of Germany (DAAD Scholar), and Univ of Toronto. He is on the editorial boards of Social Science and Medicine (Elsevier), Health Economics Policy and Law (Cambridge U Press), and Health Systems in Transition (HiT, European Observatory). He has occasionally worked as a short-term consultant of WHO, ILO, and GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) on health financing and policy in China, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, and Vietnam. He has also been a consultant of Korean government for the evaluation of its development aid programs in North Korea, Ecuador, Fiji, Mexico and Peru.
Philippines Conference Room
The Asia Health Policy Program has launched a new working paper series on health and demographic change in Asia with a working paper on informal caregiving for the elderly in South Korea. Authored by Young Kyung Do, the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in comparative health policy with the Asia Health Policy Program, the first working paper provides evidence to inform elderly long-term care policy in South Korea.
As Dr. Do notes in the abstract of his paper, informal care is embedded in traditional culture perpetuating family-centered elderly care and is still viewed as a family or moral issue rather than a social and policy issue in South Korea. Using newly available microdata from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, the study investigates the effect of informal caregiving on labor market outcomes in South Korea. It fills a gap in the international literature by providing results from an Asian country. Empirical analyses address various methodological issues by investigating gender differences, by examining both extensive and intensive labor market adjustments with two definitions of labor force participation, by employing different functional forms of care intensity, and by accounting for the potential endogeneity of informal care as well as intergenerational co-residence. Robust findings suggest negative effects of informal caregiving on labor market outcomes among women, but not among men. Compared with otherwise similar non-caregivers, female intensive caregivers who provide at least 10 hours of care per week are at an increased risk of being out of the labor force by 15.2 percentage points. When examining the probability of employment in the formal sector only, the effect magnitude is smaller. Among employed women, more intensive caregivers receive lower hourly wages by 1.65K Korean Won than otherwise similar non-caregivers. Informal care is already an important economic issue in South Korea even though aging is still at an early stage.
