Breaking News – Death of Kim Jong Il

North Korean state media has announced, to its own people and the world, the death of Kim Jong Il. Reports indicate that he died on a train in Pyongyang from a heart attack, which if true is the same illness that claimed his Father’s life and propelled Kim Jong Il into power in 1994

Liberalization of Trade in Services and Productivity Growth in Korea

This paper investigates the changes in productivity growth rates of Korean service and manufacturing subsectors in relation to the liberalization of trade in services. Since Korea underwent accelerated liberalization of the service sector in the 1990s, we try to examine whether the service subsectors which were liberalized, and the manufacturing subsectors which use liberalized services as inputs, experienced productivity gains in this period.liberalization, trade services, Korea

The Yonmenkaigi System Method for Disaster Restoration of a Local Community in Korea

AbstractThis paper introduces the Yonmenkaigi System Method for creating collaborative action plans for community building to improve disaster restoration at the local community level using a participatory method. A Yonmenkaigi system method workshop was carried out in the Garisan-ri community, County of Inje, Province of Gangwon, Korea in 2012. The Garisan-ri community case shows how inhabitants who was damaged caused by the flood disaster in 2006 can collaboratively develop action plans of the Garisan-ri disaster education camp for their community restoration. The Yonmenkaigi System Method, originally designed in a local community in Japan, comprises four stages: clarifying the main theme by SWOT analysis, drawing up a Yonmenkaigi chart by four groups, debating to improve the implementation of collaborative action plans among four groups, and presenting joined-up action plan of the groups. A participatory workshop by the Yonmenkaigi System Method be summarized as follows; 1) Making collaborative action plans to carry out community building activities for disaster restoration, 2) Providing a sharing space between local community and local government, 3) Sharing vision among local community people for community building from the flood disaster, 4) Improving capacity of human resources in a local community

A Historical-Critical Examination of North Korea\u27s Juche Ideology Using Fantasy Theme Analysis: A Vision Transformed

Scholarship on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is severely limited due to the secretive nature of Kim Jong Il and his regime; much of this secrecy and, generally, the closed nature of North Korean society is due in part to an ideology based on self-reliance, Juche. Through a communication scholarship based rhetorical examination this thesis aims to understand and explain how Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have been able to create and sustain the Juche ideology in spite of North Korea’s poor economic and social condition. The research traces the evolution of North Korea’s Juche ideology from 1955 to 1990, using Ernest Bormann’s Fantasy Theme Analysis, by examining two key speeches. The first speech was given by Kim Il Sung and has been pinpointed by scholars as the symbolic inception of Juche. The second speech is thematically similar and was given by Kim Jong Il in 1990. The two orations are compared and the ideological differences between the two are parsed out and summarized. This thesis found that the Juche idea began as a legitimate lifestyle rhetorical vision cast to the people by Kim Il Sung which met the needs of the people. The purpose of the original Juche idea proved effective at overcoming the conditions present in 1955 and was adopted by the nation as a whole. However, under Kim Jong Il the nature of Juche changed from serving to the people to serving the Korean Worker’s Party. The implications extend to the North Korean situation today and this thesis suggests a new paradigm for understanding North Korea’s possession of nuclear and biological weapons, hostility towards South Korea, and general attitude towards outsiders