The Effects of Tax Penalty on Retained Earnings: Evidence from Quasi-Natural Experiment in South Korea

This paper evaluated how the tax penalty, corporate income feedback tax (CIFT), on retained earnings affected firms’ managerial decisions in South Korea. We focused on how the firms allocated the retained earnings to minimize the additional tax liability. We employed a quasi-natural experiment design resulting from the enactment of the CIFT in 2015 to identify how the tax penalty on earning retention affected investment, dividend, and employment. We took advantage of the eligibility condition of the CIFT to construct a quasi-natural experimental design. Our estimation results show that most firms subject to the CIFT paid out dividends to equity holders to avoid additional tax liabilities despite of modest increase of investment. They did not change wages much. Rather, they decreased wage payment. In sum, the CIFT was not as successful as Korean government wished.

Web-Based Text Analysis of the Patient Safety Concerns of Various Healthcare Stakeholders

Patient safety is a fundamental aspect of the quality of healthcare and there is a growing interest in improving safety among healthcare stakeholders in many countries. The Korean government recognized that patient safety is a threat to society following several serious adverse events, and so the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Korean government set up the Patient Safety Act in January 2015. This study analyzed text data on patient safety collected from web-based, user-generated documents related to the legislation to see if they accurately represent the specific concerns of various healthcare stakeholders. We adopted the unsupervised natural language processing method of probabilistic topic modeling and also Latent Dirichlet Allocation. The results showed that text data are useful for inferring the latent concerns of healthcare consumers, providers, government bodies, and researchers as well as changes therein over time.

Mercantilism Regime toward Dumping Policy on Paper Industry between Indonesia and South Korea

This thesis discusses Indonesia's efforts in dealing with allegations of dumping Indonesian paper products from the South Korean government. The lengthy process of negotiations and negotiations between the two countries is an obstacle in the process of settling trade disputes that occur. In this matter, Indonesia and South Korea conduct negotiations to resolve the problem of imposition of Anti-Dumping Import Duty (BMAD) for Indonesian paper products under the supervision of the authorized body of the WTO, namely the Disputes Settlement Body (DSB). The negotiations proposed by Indonesia as the claimant country to South Korea are a form of trade dispute settlement through a diplomatic mechanism. Through diplomatic steps, trade problems that occur between the two countries can be resolved concretely and peacefully. However, after the trial was running and the DSB had issued its results by winning Indonesia, both the Korea Trade Commission (KTC) and the South Korean government were reluctant to apply the results of the DSB panel session decisions. Therefore, Indonesia is trying to uphold the results of the DSB WTO panel decision through diplomacy. First, diplomacy is carried out by involving state actors directly, namely the Indonesian government. Both diplomatic efforts were carried out by Indonesian business actors in a cooperative manner at the time the KTC investigation was conducted. Indonesia is trying to uphold the results of the DSB WTO panel decision through diplomacy. First, diplomacy is carried out by involving state actors directly, namely the Indonesian government. Both diplomatic efforts were carried out by Indonesian business actors in a cooperative manner at the time the KTC investigation was conducted. Indonesia is trying to uphold the results of the DSB WTO panel decision through diplomacy. First, diplomacy is carried out by involving state actors directly, namely the Indonesian government. Both diplomatic efforts were carried out by Indonesian business actors in a cooperative manner at the time the KTC investigation was conducted. This thesis aims to describe the efforts and steps to resolve the allegation of dumping on Indonesian paper products by the South Korean government through KTC. Explain the chronology of the problem of accusations of dumping Indonesian paper products and the determination of dumping losses by the WTO. Then analyze how the efforts to resolve the problems made by the government and Indonesian businessmen in trying to implement the results of the WTO DSB panel session decisions through diplomacy.

Religion, Business, and Global Visions: An Exploration of South Korea’s Discourse on Halal

Driven by economic exigencies, the Korean government began to strategize entering the rapidly expanding Islamic economy during the early 2000s. Subsequently, decisions to invest into the global halal market ignited public opposition from Korean evangelicals who rejected the positive economic framing of halal—an Islamic concept most commonly used to inform Muslim dietary laws. Based on fieldwork in Korea and analysis of Korean media sources, this article tracks the development of this “halal discourse” through a frame analysis of the discourses created by the Korean government, economic actors, and anti-halal evangelicals, and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments. As these competing voices debated halal’s place in Korean society, the supporters of halal had to respond to evangelical pushback against halal, leading to notable shifts in the public discourse on halal, an issue that was rooted in deeper underlying debates concerning multiculturalism, globalization, and competing visions of Korea.

Commitment to Academic Exchanges in the Age of COVID-19

The closure of university campuses and the suspension of international student mobility programs have been common as a result of COVID-19, though not all programs have closed their doors. In the Republic of Korea, the relatively successful management of the pandemic allowed borders to remain open, nor have any national lockdowns been incurred to date, making student mobility possible throughout the pandemic. In Spring 2020, however, the Korean government started requiring quarantine-upon-arrival for all travelers from abroad. The sudden announcement, in addition to subsequent constantly changing policy provisions, created confusion; information from Korean government agencies and embassies both locally and abroad were conflicting. The fast approaching Fall 2020 semester would see students arrive en masse with no knowledge of how the quarantine process would work or in what ways (e.g., financially, psychologically, emotionally) the mandatory isolation period might affect them.

Change of Rural Development Policy in South Korea after Korean War

The industrial development of South Korea is an exceptional success story. However, there were several side effects of the strong economic growth, such as rapidly increasing city populations and severe socio-economic inequality. The population in the area of the capital currently amounts to half of the national population of South Korea. The Korean government has implemented various regional development policies for a more balanced national development. This paper investigates the series of Five-Year Economic Development Plans from 1962-1997 and the Saemaul Undong movement, who contributed to the record of economic development of South Korea, and discusses the rural development policies recently promoted by the South Korean government to address problems such as the progressive decrease and stagnation of agricultural productivity, the depopulation and aging trends in rural areas, the deterioration of farm household income structure, and import expansion and unstable grain supply by free trade agreement. Abstract. Perkembangan industri Korea Selatan adalah kisah sukses yang luar biasa. Namun, ada beberapa efek samping dari pertumbuhan ekonomi yang kuat, seperti populasi kota yang meningkat pesat dan ketimpangan sosial ekonomi yang parah. Penduduk di wilayah ibu kota saat ini berjumlah setengah dari penduduk nasional Korea Selatan. Pemerintah Korea telah menerapkan berbagai kebijakan pembangunan daerah untuk pembangunan nasional yang lebih seimbang. Makalah ini menyelidiki serangkaian Rencana Pembangunan Ekonomi Lima Tahun dari 1962-1997 dan gerakan Saemaul Undong, yang berkontribusi pada rekor pembangunan ekonomi Korea Selatan, dan membahas kebijakan pembangunan perdesaan yang baru-baru ini dipromosikan oleh pemerintah Korea Selatan untuk mengatasi masalah-masalah seperti sebagai penurunan progresif dan stagnasi produktivitas pertanian, depopulasi dan tren penuaan di daerah perdesaan, kerusakan struktur pendapatan rumah tangga pertanian, dan ekspansi impor dan pasokan biji-bijian yang tidak stabil oleh perjanjian perdagangan bebas. Keywords. Saemaul Undong, perencanaan penggunaan lahan, pembangunan perdesaan, pembangunan ekonomi, perubahan populasi.

Korea’s Early COVID-19 Response: Findings and Implications

South Korea was a hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic with confirmed infections quickly surpassing 10,000 people. However, the country quickly responded and contained additional infections with minimal costs of lives. Hence, the question, “what did they do differently?” Building on empirical fingerprints from over 1507 pages of South Korean government press briefings on their public sector response between 31 January 2020 and 1 July 2020, we capture the sufficiency-based mechanism in operation with two key findings. First, mechanisms matter in pandemic containment, i.e., sequence, complementary activities, and systematic settings are consequential to the witnessed outcome. Second, central government-led efforts were effective and in parts necessary to deal with invisible and rapidly spreading infections beyond a single jurisdictional boundary. These findings lead to a timely discussion on whether pandemics should be treated in the same scholarly limelight as other natural disasters.