BACKGROUND Economic changes can be powerful determinants of health. In the late 1990s, South Korea experienced a steep economic decline. This study examines whether the massive economic changes affected trends in all-cause and cause-specific mortality in South Korea. METHOD Mid-year population estimates of 5 year age groups (denominators) and death certificate data (numerators) from the Natio...

This paper examines in the perspective of performance how politicians in political interviews rely on linguistic strategies to grapple with the conflict between being uncooperative and being polite. Three pairs of question-answer regarding North Korea nuclear crisis between the spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry and the reporters were illustrated. As the illustration shows, the spokesman di...

This paper investigates whether or not there are significant changes in the dependence between the Thai equity market and six Asian markets namely, Singaporean, Malaysian, Hong Kong, Korean, Indonesian and Taiwanese markets due to 1997-July financial crisis. If so, this may be an indication that the underlying bivariate joint distributions capturing the dependence between the Thai market and th...

a r t i c l e i n f o This paper estimates a Markov-switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (MS-DSGE) model that allows shifts in the monetary policy rule coefficients as well as the shock volatilities with Korean data ranged from 1976 to 2013. We find that allowing for the regime-switching aspect both in monetary policy rules and shock volatil-ities is a crucial setup in improving the...

The question of what effects nuclear weapons have on an actor’s success in coercive diplomacy is in part a function of how nuclear weapons change the perceived costs of conflict. We argue that states will be able to prevail in improving their allotment of a good or in convincing an opponent to back down, and have shorter crises, if their opponents have greater expected costs of crisis. Noting, ...

OBJECTIVE Post-traumatic stress disorder is common among North Korean refugees who have fled their country for economic, financial and humanitarian reasons. Co-morbid depression and anxiety are also common among North Korean refugees, due to the difficulties they have faced within their country and during their escape journey. Depression and anxiety complicate treatment for post-traumatic stres...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has played an important role in restructuring the Korean economy over the past three years. Relying upon survey data collected in 1998 and 1999, this paper explores the role of the IMF in Korea, as perceived by its citizens. In the eyes of the Korean people, the IMF helped their economy to recover from the crisis. However, those Koreans who experience a dec...