China, Japan and South Korea are three big economies in Northeast Asia that are innegotiations for a trilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA). A concluded FTA among them willcreate world’s third largest regional market that consists of of 1.52 billion people and thataccounts for 20% of world’s GDP. However the economic cooperation between the threecountries has constantly been interrupted by political issues that root back in the history of thethree countries. In the history the three countries have developed enemy images of oneanother, which have restrained their interaction over the years and influenced their currentrelationship. This thesis uses the enmification theory to explain how these enemy images andenmity feelings have emerged in the history and what impacts they have on political issuesand the economic cooperation between the three. Examples on political issues that are broughtup in this thesis are the recent intensified territorial disputes over Diaoyu/Senkaku islands andDokdo/Takeshima islands.

This essay outlines the problems in the cross-cultural communication between SKB International and the Korean market. After interviews with the vice president of SKB International and their representative in Korea I compare their strategy to cross-cultural communication theories and Korean business culture facts to see how their communication to Korea could be improved. In the results I state that the problem with getting a continuous dialogue is created by the big cultural difference between Sweden and Korea. If these differences can be tackled SKB International will be able to sell their public acceptance package to Korea to enable the project of a final repository. The biggest problems seem to be the difference of time horizons, way of building relations, hierarchy vs. flat organization and the Korean group dynamics in clash with Swedish individualism. As conclusion I state that the isolation of Korea has created a unique culture that needs special attention for successful cross-cultural communication. This calls for SKB International to develop a strategy for understanding Korean culture within the whole organization. The image of Korean culture needs to be continuously discussed through meetings or an intranet forum to get a correct image of how to communicate with Koreans. Also I find that SKB International need more staff to take care of all the Korean delegations that come on spontaneous visits. The best gateway into the Korean hierarchies was found to be through inter-governmental communication.

Numerous studies have shown that culture is a critical factor affecting leadership perceptions. Although these studies provide useful information about cultural differences, they overlook the fundamental difference between East Asians and Westerners, a holistic view versus an analytic view. In addition, these studies are based on methodologies in which verbal or pictorial stimuli are presented by researchers under conditions of high capacity, which does not allow other representational differences to be observed. This study investigates leadership representations in South Korea and the United States based on hypotheses about fundamental differences in social cognitive processing among South Koreans and Americans, as revealed in spontaneously generated visual productions. The results suggest that South Koreans have a holistic view, whereas Americans have an analytic view of leadership representations. Implications and future directions for research on cultural differences in leadership representations are discussed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-230). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-230). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 531-544).

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the geo-strategic and political factors which constitute the prevailing security environment in North East Asia, with particular emphases on the pivotal position of Korean peninsula and the crucial influence of superpower naval balances and strategic developments. A major element of this examination is the assessment of the health of the contemporary security arrangement in North East Asia, within and between the various 'camp'', and how best to remedy any shortcoming.This thesis suggests that the balance of power between the US and the Soviet Union is changing in favour of the latter and that military stability between East and West is being undermined. If not arrested, these trends will increase and exacerbate political-military divisions in the Far East. This situation could well result in any one of the states which have an interest in the region enhancing its arsenal to use such military hardware for the protection of its vulnerable interests.The thesis puts forward a number of propositions concerning the likely future evolution of the strategic environment and military situation, especially the political and naval dimensions, in the Far East. In its analysis the thesis considers a wide range of trends and developments, but does not lose sight of the central military-security issues, especially - in a region where the sea is such a vital strategic and economic issue - naval matters. It is the intention of the thesis to provide a unique examination of international security in North East Asia - unique in its contemporary nature, unique in its regional scope, and unique in relating internal and external political and economic issues of the interested regional states to central strategic issues, in particular superpower maritime strength. This thesis assesses the implications of these developments for South Korean security relations in particular, and suggests several issues for future consideration.

"Visualizing Race: Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the Struggle for Koreanness in Contemporary South Korean Television" investigates visual representations of multicultural subjects in both celebrity culture and the reality television genre to examine the struggle for Koreanness in contemporary Korean television. My aim is to explain the transformation from a modern monoracial Korea to a multicultural, global Korea as a national project of what I call "neoliberal multiculturalism" and to problematize the implicit tie between the two words, "neoliberal" and "multiculturalism." Using the category of mixed-race as an analytical window onto this cultural shift, I attempt to link the recent explosion of multiculturalism discourse in Korea to the much larger cultural, institutional, and ideological implications of racial globalization. To illustrate this shift, the dissertation analyzes both black and white mixed-race celebrities as well as ordinary multicultural subjects appearing on Korean reality programs. I examine historical archives, popular press sources, policy documents, and television programs in order to analyze them as an inter-textual network that is actively negotiating national identity. Utilizing the concept of neoliberal multiculturalism as an overarching framework, the dissertation explicates how concepts such as nationality, race, gender, class, and the television genre are intricately articulated; it also critically deconstructs the hegemonic notion of a multicultural, global Korea presented by the Korean media. I argue that Korean television deploys racial representations as a way to suture national anxiety over an increasing number of racial others and projects a multicultural fantasy towards Koreans. This interdisciplinary project contributes to several fields of study by explicating the changed cultural meaning of mixed-race in the age of globalization, defining the organic relation between the medium of television and racial representation, broadening our understanding of Asian multiculturalism and the racial politics in the region, and examining the particulars of ethnic nationalism appearing in the Korean media and popular culture. / text

Generally the skyscraper has been the great architectural contribution of modern capitalistic society and treated as the pride of a city’s urban development with significantly embossed positive aspects over the past few decades. Yet the fact that the ripple effects resulting from these buildings don’t always proceed to only a bright future urban life has also been confirmed through our recent experiences, and is especially more easily observed in high density and congested areas such as Asia Pacific cities. Therefore the evaluation for the justification of skyscraper development projects would be different depending on the specific conditions that a city faces. It is a start point of this paper. In this aspect, this study is based on the case study, the 2nd LOTTE WORLD Project in Seoul, South Korea. Because this project is an unprecedented building type in South Korea and there are no standard of measurements to evaluate its adequacy, establishing a decision model for verifying the real value of this project would be worth for the systematic urban planning in Seoul City. Furthermore, because the author got directly involved with this project as an architectural planning consultant in CB Richard Ellis firm1, the author can be in seeing this project with credible data as well as several unopened documents. Notably, this project will contribute to a boom in local economy, improving the brand image of Seoul. However, as long as conflicts incurred exist those benefits cannot be only absolute grounds to define the real value of this project. Therefore this study analyzes credible factors, which are potentially influenced by the 2nd LOTTE WORLD Project, to make an evaluation tool. The result from the survey research shows that most responders select ‘Tourism industry’ and ‘Unique identity’ as main factors substantially resulting from the completion of this project and all factors belonging to the two ‘Economic effects’ and ‘Social / Political benefits’ highly preferred to those belonging to the ‘Social / Political conflicts’. And this supports the fact that the 2nd LOTTE WORLD TOWER project is worth proceeding with a huge amount of positive effects for local communities as well as Seoul City. However, because there is a limit to this survey research in that the small collected sample size is not enough to generalize the characteristics of this project, a more specific study is necessary to find real value and more specific relationships between skyscrapers and urban fabric in Seoul City in the future. / text

South Korea has been evaluated as having the weakest primary care system. In South Korea, the health care delivery system is concentrated too heavily in the private sector. Increased concern on keeping one’s health and reducing the burden of health care costs led community members to gather and form health care co-operatives. Currently, 19 health care co-operatives have been established through residents’ participation and even more are preparing to be incorporated. As a nonprofit organization, a health care co-operative is a voluntarily established co-operative organization that tries to solve health, medical, and life problems in communities. This report examines how these health care co-operatives work in the health care system, whether they can be effective alternatives to a future health care system in South Korea, and finally the report provides recommendations. Given the fact that the nation already has national health insurance, health care co-operatives in South Korea mainly operate several clinics by focusing more on managing chronic diseases and increasing access to care, rather than developing affordable health care insurance or lobbying in policy sectors as they do in other countries. Health care co-operatives’ motivation is to keep people healthy; hence, they put a great deal of effort into delivering primary care and helping patients deal with chronic diseases. Health care co-operatives are encouraging because of their democratic structure. Health care co-operatives emphasize the idea that the owners of the health care co-operatives are in fact the members. The overall satisfaction of users in the current health care cooperatives is moderately high. Taking the lessons from the examples of health co-operatives in other countries, health care co-operatives should be able to function as a good complementary to the health care system. / text