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Working Papers | FDI in Korea | North Korea and Allies | Yearbook

Working Paper Series

USKI's Working Paper Series seeks to be both informative and policy relevant, covering some of the most topical issues facing Korea today.

The first series in 2008 addresses Korea's regional diplomacy options, examining strategic opportunities to increase cooperation and collaboration with Southeast and Central Asian states.

The second series looks at North Korea's foreign relations, tracing the issues and challenges North Korea has faced in normalizing relations with the U.S. and its regional neighbors.

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The Changing Nature of Foreign Direct Investment in Korea: Challenges to Economic Policy
Dr. Arthur Alexander, former president of the Japan Economic Institute and a noted economist

Foreign direct investment (FDI), defined as sufficient company ownership that provides some degree of managerial control, improves a nation’s productivity and economic growth. Until the 1997 East Asia financial crisis, the Korean government exercised a de facto policy of discouraging inward FDI. However, as part of its acceptance of IMF support to resolve the crisis, the government opened the economy to foreign ownership of domestic business. In the years after the crisis, foreign investment surged. However, despite these changes, Korea still lags other developed and developing countries as a target for FDI. We are investigating the changing nature of FDI into the country, the policy and political responses, and the concerns in the country that may induce a cautious approach by administrators.

In order to understand better the changing nature of Korean inward FDI, we are assembling data broken down by industry, financing method, and type of investor. We will analyze the policy and regulatory implications by considering the domestic industries and companies that may face greater competition; and the government agencies that will be involved together with their regulatory and organizational imperatives. New patterns of FDI create the potential for counterattacks by negatively affected parties. We shall attempt to predict such barriers in advance to alert policymakers and others about possible future problems. We will attempt to understand how the changing nature of FDI into Korea may affect future economic outcomes in ways that may differ from past influences.

The first report in this series examines the long-term economic perspective of FDI in Korea: Foreign Direct Investment in Korea: Trends, Implications, Obstacles. (July 2008)

The second report in this series takes an in-depth look at the trends of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), Korea's leading source of FDI: Mergers and Acquisitions in Korea: The Leading Edge of Foreign Direct Investment. (NEW)

The third report in this series, Policy Implications of Korea’s Low-Intensity Foreign Direct Investment, is forthcoming in December 2008.

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Learning Mistrust: North Korea and Its Allies, 1945-1991 
Dr. Kathryn Weathersby 

In their efforts to address the political, economic, and military challenges posed by North Korea, the other states of the region are stymied by a lack of common ground with Pyongyang and of confidence that the North Koreans will play by shared rules. While North Korea’s self-imposed isolation and secretiveness place it in a category by itself, for the bulk of its history—from the inception of communist rule in 1945 through the end of the Soviet era in 1991—the DPRK was in fact firmly embedded in the extensive and powerful set of multilateral economic and security structures of the communist world. Because these alliance relationships involved shared commitment to common goals and direct tutelage by the powerful leaders of the communist world, they constituted the school in which the DPRK leadership learned how to protect the country’s interests in the midst of a hostile and constantly changing environment. 

Drawing on extensive research in the archives of North Korea’s former allies, Dr. Weathersby’s book will analyze the evolution of the DPRK’s alliance relationships during the Soviet era. It will argue that for Pyongyang these essential relationships were experiences of betrayal and threat combined with profound and unwelcomed dependence. Even as North Korea adjusts to radically altered circumstances, the perceptions created by this troubled history will necessarily continue to shape the assumptions it brings to relations with other countries. Understanding these perceptions is thus the necessary first step toward comprehending the reasoning that drives North Korean actions. 

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 SAIS U.S.-Korea Yearbook

Each fall semester, as a part of the Korea Studies Concentration, SAIS offers The "Two Koreas: Contemporary Research and Record." This course allows students to prepare individual reports on selected issues for a U.S.-Korea Yearbook, published by SAIS. As part of their research, student authors make a one-week research trip to Seoul to test their ideas with experts and officials.

SAIS U.S.-Korea Yearbook 2007
SAIS U.S.-Korea Yearbook 2006

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