Suchergebnisse

This article analyzes a series of summit diplomacy efforts by the former United States President Donald Trump, and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in, to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up the country's nuclear weapons program. Through critical evaluation of the summits between Trump and Kim as well as Moon and Kim, the paper provides several important lessons on how to deal with North Korea. Kim Jong Un's mindset and strategic calculation of a denuclearization deal with Trump, amid the recent progress of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ICBMs programs, are investigated. Given the failure to reach a denuclearization agreement at the Hanoi Summit, Pyongyang is not expected readily to give up its nuclear weapons. North Korea had temporarily refrained from severe military provocations, such as test-firing ICBMs or conducting another round of nuclear weapon experiments by self-moratorium since April 2018. However, Pyongyang reversed direction with this policy in 2022 and resumed coercive diplomacy in order to achieve its desired goals. As North Korea's incessant efforts to advance its nuclear weapons and ICBMs programs brings with a dismal outlook for peace building both on the Korean Peninsula and the world, this paper investigates a series of policy lessons to manage the North Korean nuclear crisis. (Asian Aff/GIGA)

This paper analyzes the policy remedies for dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs. After six nuclear tests and three recent successful ICBM tests, North Korea is close to miniaturizing nuclear warheads and establishing a reliable delivery system, thus achieving a much-feared nuclear weapons capability. In defiance of the extraordinarily tough U.N. Security Council resolutions, Pyongyang persists in developing nuclear weapons. North Korea's nuclear weapons program already has exceeded the strategic patience, of the U.S.-ROK alliance. Harsher policy options to deal with the DPRK nuclear weapons are imperative. Several drastic options, including severe sanctions, preventive bombing, nuclear armament of South Korea, are evaluated in the final round of engagement policy on guaranteeing nonaggression and a peace agreement with Pyongyang. (Asian Aff/GIGA)

This paper investigates financial liberalization in Mexico and South Korea from a comparative international political economy perspective. Though the two countries have a different political economy background, their experiences with financial repression and liberalization were similar, as was the manner in which they handled the subsequent huge inflow of capital. During the process of financial liberalization, both governments had their policy autonomy undermined by strong domestic interest groups as well as by influential international actors. Similar situational effects also prevailed during these two countries' financial crises: both experienced surges of international financial capital, had presidential elections during the crisis, and joined the OECD around that time. This paper sheds light on how the two countries experienced macroeconomic imbalances and financial crisis as a result of financial liberalization. The experience suggests meaningful lessons for other developing countries regarding the policy dilemmas that can arise from financial liberalization. (Asian Aff/GIGA)

With the Occupy movement that recently took place on Wall Street and in other parts of the globe, a lot of attention has recently been given to growing income inequality. The 2008 United States financial crisis, the Great Recession, and the subsequent weak recovery have brought about a more serious focus on income inequality and the widening income gap between the top 1 percent and other groups. These events have brought about some social unrest and instability in American society perhaps not seen since the Great Depression. How much has the top 1 percent of households gained in terms of income versus the other 99 percent in the United States over the last 30 years or so? Mainstream economists and other social scientists point to various causes which have been mentioned in many scholarly and popular writings. All of these mainstream factors affecting inequality have been found to be statistically significant in one scholarly study or another. This research paper explores other major concepts to explain income inequality rather than to dispute the findings of other existing research efforts. The empirical findings of this paper support radical arguments that income accumulation of those at the top is not connected to the productivity of capital investment, but rather instead is connected to the declining incomes and exploitation of the rest of the U.S. population despite the rising output per worker of the U.S. workforce over the last 30 to 40 years.