Cultural - Political Influence on the Mandatory Adoption of IFRS: Case of South Korea and Kenya

In current day South Korea pseudohistory pertaining to early Korea and northern East Asia has reached epidemic proportions. Its advocates argue the early state of Chosŏn to have been an expansive empire centered on mainland geographical Manchuria. Through rationalizing interpretations of the traditional Hwan’ung- Tan’gun myth, they project back the supposed antiquity and pristine nature of this charter empire to the archaeological Hongshan Culture of the Neolithic straddling Inner Mongolia and Liaoning provinces of China. Despite these blatant spatial and temporal exaggerations, all but specialists of early Korea typically remain hesitant to explicitly label this conceptualization as “pseudohistory.” This is because advocates of ancient empire cast themselves as rationalist scholars and claim to have evidential arguments drawn from multiple textual sources and archaeology. They further wield an emotive polemic defaming the domestic academic establishment as being composed of national traitors bent only on maintaining a “colonial view of history.” The canon of counterevidence relied on by empire advocates is the accumulated product of 20th century revisionist and pseudo historiography, but to willing believers and non-experts, it can easily appear convincing and overwhelming. Combined with a postcolonial nationalist framing and situated against the ongoing historiography dispute with China, their conceptualization of a grand antiquity has gained bipartisan political influence with concrete ramifications for professional scholarship. This paper seeks to introduce and debunk the core, seemingly evidential, canon of arguments put forward by purveyors of Korean pseudohistory and to expose their polemics, situating the phenomenon in a broader diagnostic context of global pseudohistory and archaeology.

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Political Determination of Intergovernmental Grants: Evidence from the General Shared Tax in South Korea

Lex localis - Journal of Local Self-Government ◽

10.4335/19.2.263-278(2021) ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 263-278

Author(s):

Sungchan Kim ◽

Soyoung Park

Keyword(s):

South Korea ◽

Political Ideology ◽

Local Governments ◽

Central Government ◽

Municipal Government ◽

Political Influence ◽

The Political ◽

Intergovernmental Transfers ◽

Allocation Mechanism ◽

Distribution Of Resources

Intergovernmental transfers can help coordinate resource distribution among local governments to address the disparities between them. Local governments in South Korea heavily rely on general shared tax as an unconditional grant from the central government. Yet, the central government modifies factors and weights in the formula to allocate the grants; thus, the final grants might not always reflect the formula accurately. We aimed to empirically investigate the political influence on the allocation mechanism in practice related to the general shared tax in South Korea. We found that political influence, based on the political ideology of the municipal government chief, which is the same as that of the president, affects the amount of increased general shared tax from the central government. This indicates that the framework for the distribution of resources between different levels of governments is neither efficient nor equitable.

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Asymmetrical Interdependence and Sanction: China’s Economic Retaliation over South Korea’s THAAD Deployment

Issues & Studies ◽

10.1142/s1013251119400083 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 55 (04) ◽

pp. 1940008

Author(s):

FLORENCE WEN-TING YANG

Keyword(s):

South Korea ◽

High Altitude ◽

Direct Investment ◽

Political Influence ◽

Economic Sanctions ◽

Insufficient Evidence ◽

Chinese Companies ◽

Economic Coercion ◽

High Altitude Area

Since China’s economic rise, there has been an upsurge of cases demonstrating that the country has translated its increasing economic capabilities into political influence over other states. The focus of this paper is to investigate the case of China’s economic sanctions on South Korea in response to its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment. Its goal is to deepen our understanding of how China has employed economic coercion in order to alter the policies of other states. China’s economic sanctions have included intentional ones like the Hallyu ban, a ban on tourism, non-tariff measures, the shutting down of Lotte Marts, and the fomenting of anti-Korean sentiment in its official media. There is however insufficient evidence to prove that these boycott movements and reductions in direct investment on the part of Chinese companies are government-mandated sanctions and not simply the choice of individual actors. Our findings indicate that due to its asymmetrical interdependence on China, South Korea was more vulnerable to economic sanctions and thus more likely to make political concessions.

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Democratization and the US-South Korean Alliance

Journal of East Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s1598240800002599 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 469-499 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Dong Sun Lee

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

South Korea ◽

Political Influence ◽

Transition Process ◽

The United States ◽

Security Threat ◽

South Korean ◽

Power Disparity ◽

Political Clout ◽

The Us

This article explains why, in the wake of South Korea's democratization, the US-Republic of Korea alliance has suffered a steady decline while avoiding an abrupt collapse. The author argues that democratization weakened this asymmetric alliance by increasing the political influence of nationalism in South Korea. New South Korean democratic elites, subscribing to nationalist ideals, demanded an autonomous, equal relationship with the United States regardless of the de facto power disparity between the two countries. These elites also deemphasized the security threat from North Korea—with which they perceived a shared national identity—and adopted an unconditional engagement policy with that nation. The United States, in turn, resented the apparently unrealistic policies of these elites and showed a decreased interest in the alliance. Democratization, however, did not cause an abrupt end to the alliance, for two reasons. First, North Korea's military strength preserved a significant strategic need in South Korea for allied support. Second, as the result of a measured transition process, old pro-alliance elites in South Korea retained enough political clout to proscribe a radical shift in foreign policy away from the alliance with the United States, while new elites had opportunities to reconcile their nationalist ideals with strategic realities.

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Asian Immigration: The View from the United States

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal ◽

10.1177/011719689200100104 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 64-99 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Robert W. Gardner

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

South Korea ◽

Ethnic Diversity ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Political Influence ◽

The United States ◽

The Philippines ◽

Asian Immigration ◽

Southeast Asian Refugees ◽

Interethnic Violence

Between the 1965 immigration law and 1990, Asian immigration to the United States increased tenfold to a quarter of a million annually. As sender of the most immigrants, Japan has yielded to the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, India, and China. From 1974–1989, over 900,000 Southeast Asian refugees entered the United States. Most Asians today are admitted in the family preference category. On average, the sex ratio is balanced, but over 55% of immigrants from South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan are female. Asians are occupationally diverse, with a greater number of professionals/executives (35%) than laborers (14%). Though relatively few in number, Asians concentrate geographically (notably in California) and exert growing political influence in those areas. Except for refugees, Asians are generally viewed as having a positive impact as students and workers. On the other hand, inas much as they contribute to ethnic diversity, they fan the current fears over threats to a common American cultural heritage. Anti-Asian hate crimes and interethnic violence have risen. Asian immigration is likely to continue to rise and show greater emphasis on employment preference categories.

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