Can religion give impetus for change in North Korea?

Characteristics of the Christian movement in North Korea and the former GDR are fundamentally different and based on the facts presented before. While the Christians in the North can only operate in the underground, at risk of being sentenced to work in a labour camp, to torture or even to execution when identified as Christian, the Christians in the GDR were freer although they suffered from repression, too. Compared to non-members they had clearly many disadvantages. However, as a state-independent organization, they were officially recognised and therefore an institution that was capable of leading a dialogue with the government. Moreover, they were able to connect themselves to other political alternative groups representing together a quite large group that was dissatisfied with the present situation without having the prior goal to overthrow the state. Awareness, dialogue and organization - these factors can be considered as decisive advantages in this process. As for North Korea creating awareness and dialogue seems to be a target for support. Even from a humanitarian angle alone. Awareness comes through information and that should be increased, e.g. through mutual development projects, continuous human and food aid, or why not initiating town twining? Just to name a few. More contact will generate more awareness and people will start rethinking their attitudes. Even if the elite benefits it may have a positive impact. Dialogue is pivotal in order to exchange one’s ideas und rethink one’s standpoints. Thus, a dialogue with the outside world shall be maintained and a dialogue among the people within the country shall be supported. Time will show if the introduction of mobile phones and the internet in North Korea will increase dialogue and will finally lead to the third suggested step of grass roots community building - organization. An ecclesial movement alone did not cause the change in East Germany and it will not do in North Korea. But it provided an important ground to connect people and accelerate change in the long run

Aspects of Inner-Korean relations examined from a German viewpoint

This paper series takes a look at several aspects of inner-Korean relations, primarily in the area of international relations and economic cooperation, from a German viewpoint. In fact, the complexity of the respective subjects touched in this frame would require a deeper and more comprehensive analysis than developed here. The underlying idea is to stimulate further thought in several areas of pre- and post unification aspects by deriving inspiration from Germany's historical experience. The pre-unification phase and, specifically, the post-unification experience in Germany are of value to both Koreas. Further joint research is recommended on historical and contemporary aspects of German reunification that is relevant and suitable to Korea. --international relations,policy,economic development,Korea,Germany

Der Einfluss kulturrelevanter Faktoren auf das Entscheidungsverhalten am Beispiel von Korea und Deutschland

Konventionelle wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Ansätze fassen nationale kulturelle Unterschiede oft in stark verallgemeinerte Dimensionen zusammenfassen. Damit vernachlässigen sie allerdings konkrete Eigenschaften von kulturellen Charakteristiken und sind somit begrenzt aussagekräftig. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Studie ist die Wirkungsweise kultureller Faktoren auf das wirtschaftliche Handeln präziser zu untersuchen als dies bislang der Fall war. Als Beispiel hierfür dienen die Länder Deutschland und Korea. Im Rahmen eines Multimethodenansatzes werden Faktoren des kulturellen Kontextes in Korea identifiziert, analysiert und mithilfe eines Verhaltensexperiments anhand von Testpersonen in Korea und Deutschland geprüft. Im Ergebnis lässt sich ein signifikanter Einfluss auf das Entscheidungsverhalten der aggregierten kulturellen Faktoren unter den koreanischen Testpersonen feststellen. Die deutschen Testpersonen hingegen zeigen kein unterschiedliches Verhalten. Desweiteren lässt sich feststellen, dass der Faktor Seniorität einen Einfluss auf Entscheidungen in Korea ausübt. In Deutschland hingegen zeigen Testpersonen, die der gleichen Hochschule angehören, ein kooperatives Verhalten. Neben diesen Erkenntnissen wird die Studie dem Ruf nach einer tieferen Kontextualisierung von Forschungsvorhaben zum wirtschaftlichen Handeln gerecht, indem sie ein mehrstufiges Forschungsdesign vorschlägt, anhand dessen kulturelle Faktoren identifiziert und deren Wirkung in einem weiteren Schritt empirisch geprüft werden können

Effect of the laser fluence on the microstructure and the relating magnetic properties of BaFe₁₂O₁₉ films grown on YSZ(111) by PLD for optimized perpendicular recording

High-quality BaFe$_{12}$O$_{19}$ (BaM) films with high uniaxial anisotropy fields of H$_A$ = 17.5 and 18.5 kOe were obtained by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) at two fluences of 1.5 and 5.1 J/cm$^2$ on YSZ(111) substrate, using a platinum interlayer for reducing lattice mismatch. We demonstrated that the microstructure, morphology, and stoichiometry of the hexaferrite BaFe$_{12}$O$_{19}$ films can be affected by raising the corresponding energy per pulse from 25 to 75 mJ. However, we also concluded that the increase of fluence leads to the formation of a non-stoichiometric BaM film through two nucleation steps and an output growth of small grains in addition to the increase of the defect density. In turn, this has contributed to the enhancement of the coercive field from H$_c$ = 1769 Oe to H$_c$ = 2166 Oe as it is required for the improvement of perpendicular recording resolution. We found that both the lateral coherent block size and misorientation of mosaic blocks are remarkably affected by the growth kinetics, which itself depends on the energy per pulse. For a deep understanding of the effect of laser fluence on the microstructure, chemical composition, and on the magnetic properties of thin BaM films, the results of complementary methods are combined. These methods comprise high-resolution X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning TEM combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and vibrating sample magnetometer

Tracking Progress Toward EU Biodiversity Strategy Targets : EU Policy Effects in Preserving its Common Farmland Birds

Maximizing the area under biodiversity-related conservation measures is a main target of the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. We analyzed whether agrienvironmental schemes (AES) within EU common agricultural policy, special protected areas for birds (SPAs), and Annex I designation within EU Birds Directive had an effect on bird population changes using monitoring data from 39 farmland bird species from 1981 to 2012 at EU scale. Populations of resident and short-distance migrants were larger with increasing SPAs and AES coverage, while Annex I species had higher population growth rates with increasing SPAs, indicating that SPAs may contribute to the protection of mainly target species and species spending most of their life cycle in the EU. Because farmland birds are in decline and the negative relationship of agricultural intensification with their population growth rates was evident during the implementation of AES and SPAs, EU policies seem to generally attenuate the declines of farmland bird populations, but not to reverse them.Peer reviewe

Meta-analysis identifies seven susceptibility loci involved in the atopic March

Eczema often precedes the development of asthma in a disease course called the a 'atopic march'. To unravel the genes underlying this characteristic pattern of allergic disease, we conduct a multi-stage genome-wide association study on infantile eczema followed by childhood asthma in 12 populations including 2,428 cases and 17,034 controls. Here we report two novel loci specific for the combined eczema plus asthma phenotype, which are associated with allergic disease for the first time; rs9357733 located in EFHC1 on chromosome 6p12.3 (OR 1.27; P=2.1 × 10 a'8) and rs993226 between TMTC2 and SLC6A15 on chromosome 12q21.3 (OR 1.58; P=5.3 × 10 a'9). Additional susceptibility loci identified

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe