Insolvency in the Corporate Sector and Financial Crisis in Korea

The paper shows that between the late 1980s and 1997, the year when Korea was engulfed in a financial crisis, its corporate-sector profitability was on a decreasing trend, albeit short-term ups and downs. The evidence presented in the paper suggests that Korea’s corporate and financial sectors had been highly vulnerable to a crisis for some years before 1997 and the actual timing of the crisis was triggered by the financial crisis in Thailand in July 1997 and its contagion effect.Asian crisis; Korean economy; corporate sector insolvency.

Korean Environmental Regulations: Ready to Take on One of the World\u27s Largest Private Real Estate Development Projects?

The South Korean government designated three new Free Economic Zones in an effort to become the financial and logistical hub of Northeast Asia. One of these zones, the Incheon Free Economic Zone (“IFEZ”), will encompass 209 square kilometers of completely new development on reclaimed land and is said to be the biggest real estate development project currently in the world. China started using economic zones much earlier in history and although China experienced economic benefits, it also experienced severe environmental degradation in its highly successful special economic zones. Similarly tremendous economic growth will result from the influx of foreign direct investment into IFEZ, which is likely to result in some environmental harm. This Comment argues that with such high levels of concentrated development, the existing South Korean environmental regulatory system will not to be able to protect the natural environment within the IFEZ. Although many Korean environmental regulations were modeled after proven Western regulations, the Korean regulatory regime requires improvements. The current Korean environmental regulatory system is inadequate because of poor enforcement, narrow definitions of judicial standing and justiciability for purposes of judicial review, inadequate judicial remedies, and inadequate environmental laws. Comparison with U.S. environmental regulations provides evidence that South Korean environmental regulations lack mechanisms to adequately protect South Korea’s natural resources. This comparison also shows some areas of the Korean environmental regulatory system that require change. Without government effort to enhance the effectiveness of existing regulations, South Korea will likely face the grave environmental degradation that China experienced. South Korea should make necessary changes to create a better regulatory system

Ultrafast vectorial and scalar dynamics of ionic clusters: Azobenzene solvated by oxygen

The ultrafast dynamics of clusters of trans-azobenzene anion (A–) solvated by oxygen molecules was investigated using femtosecond time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. The time scale for stripping off all oxygen molecules from A– was determined by monitoring in real time the transient of the A– rise, following an 800 nm excitation of A– (O2)n, where n=1–4. A careful analysis of the time-dependent photoelectron spectra strongly suggests that for n>1 a quasi-O4 core is formed and that the dissociation occurs by a bond cleavage between A– and conglomerated (O2)n rather than a stepwise evaporation of O2. With time and energy resolutions, we were able to capture the photoelectron signatures of transient species which instantaneously rise (2- for A–O2 and A·O4-·(O2)n–2 for A–(O2)n, where n=2–4. Subsequent to an ultrafast electron recombination, A– rises with two distinct time scales: a subpicosecond component reflecting a direct bond rupture of the A–-(O2)n nuclear coordinate and a slower component (1.6–36 ps, increasing with n) attributed to an indirect channel exhibiting a quasistatistical behavior. The photodetachment transients exhibit a change in the transition dipole direction as a function of time delay. Rotational dephasing occurs on a time scale of 2–3 ps, with a change in the sign of the transient anisotropy between A–O2 and the larger clusters. This behavior is a key indicator of an evolving cluster structure and is successfully modeled by calculations based on the structures and inertial motion of the parent clusters

Femtosecond dynamics of solvated oxygen anions. II. Nature of dissociation and caging in finite-sized clusters

Ultrafast dissociation and recombination dynamics of (O_2)^−_n, n=3–10 was studied using femtosecond,time-resolvedphotoelectron spectroscopy. The observed transients of nascent fragment anions, following 800 nm fs pulse excitation, exhibit a biexponential rise with two distinct time constants. The time constants, which vary with the number of solvent O_2 molecules, clearly show the solvation effect in two different dissociation pathways. Consistent with the bifurcation picture in the preceding paper, the direct subpicosecond dissociation(τ_1=110-620 fs, depending on n) is governed by electron recombination and kinematics of the half-collision. The second pathway is indirect (τ_2=0.7–8.0 ps, for O^−_6 to O^−_(20)) and controlled by intramolecular vibrational-energy redistribution. In the solvent cage, only O^−_(16), O^−_(18), and O^−_(20) show the reformation of the bond, with the caging time constant decreasing from 4 ps for the first two to 2 ps for the latter. This caging through ion-induced dipole interaction is then followed by vibrational relaxation on the time scale of 12 to 3 ps, for O^−_(16) to O^−_(20). The time scale for the initial direct caging is two to five times slower than that previously observed for diatoms, neutral, or ionic, in van der Waals clusters. We suggest that this initial slower caging is due to the reorientation of O^−_2 and O_2 to acquire a proper geometry for O^−_4 bond reformation. In these finite-sized homogeneous clusters, we compare theory with experiment. We also found a correlation between the vertical detachment energy and n^(−1/3), for n in the range of 2–10, which allow for a connection between the mesoscopic structures and a bulk-type dielectric continuum, with an effective dielectric constant

Femtosecond dynamics of solvated oxygen anions. I. Bifurcated electron transfer dynamics probed by photoelectron spectroscopy

The ultrafast dissociationdynamics of O−_6⋅X (X=O_2, N_2, Xe, or N_2O) was investigated by femtosecondphotoelectron spectroscopy. The transients, monitoring nascent O−_2, exhibit biexponential rises with two distinct time constants—the fast component (τ_1∼200 fs) corresponds to the joint rate constant for electron recombination and direct dissociation of the O−_4 core perturbed by solvent molecules, whereas the slow component (τ_2=2.0–7.7 ps, depending on the solvent) corresponds to the process for the liberation of O−_2, which is governed by vibrational predissociation and intramolecular vibrational-energy redistribution. These observations are consistent with the mechanism proposed in the earlier communication of this work [Paik et al., J. Chem. Phys. 115, 612 (2001)]. The wave packet bifurcates via two separate dissociation pathways: electron transfer followed by electron recombination, and electron transfer followed by vibrational predissociation. Unlike all other solvents, the anomalous behavior observed for O−_6⋅N_2O—a threefold increase in τ_2 value, compared to the other solvents, and a factor of 10 increase for τ_2, compared to that of O−_6—reflects the more effective energy dissipation via solute–solvent vibration-to-vibration and rotational couplings. Moreover, for all solvents, the ratio of the slow-rise contribution to the total signal can be correlated with the degree of cooling, supporting the concept of bifurcation in the two channels