Hyuk-Rae Kim

Migration and Multicultural Contention in East Asia

Japan, Korea and Taiwan have experienced rapid and dramatic demographic changes during the last three decades. In all three countries, changes of fertility decline, ageing and sex imbalances preceded massive increases in international marriages and labour migration. In this article, we analyse how these demographic and social transformations affect policies of migration and integration in this region. Demographics are changing with the integration of foreign brides and professional migrants and with declining fertility rates. Despite this, the magnitude and speed of change within the policy provisions for migration and integration are still very limited and slow—Japan, Korea and Taiwan, for instance, all maintain ‘assimilationist’ or ‘passive multicultural’ migration and integration policies.

Foreigners Cometh! Paths to Multiculturalism in Japan, Korea and Taiwan

This paper has a four-fold goal: (1) it examines the difficulties faced by Japan, Korea and Taiwan in developing and implementing multicultural programs for their newly arriving migrants; (2) it offers an analysis of indigenous ethnic formation and migration of workers and marriage migrants in the context of ongoing debates on multiculturalism in East Asia; (3) it analyzes narratives behind the educational reforms to shed light on the political contention surrounding multicultural governance in the region; and (4) it discusses why educational institutions in East Asia seem uninterested in offering courses on multiculturalism. This paper suggests that the three countries will continue to face substantial difficulties in institutionalizing their own democratic multiculturalism(s) due to pressures from global and domestic forces. We expect that the three countries will continue to modify their approaches to multicultural governance despite institutional constraints.

Networked path towards technology innovation: the case of Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company

This paper deals with why flexible networks can be efficient in responding to rapidly changing consumer demands, developing new technologies, and disseminating information regarding commercialisation. Taiwanese small firms, along with their Italian counterparts, have often been cited as paradigmatic cases of demand-responsive network structures. In the semiconductor sector of Taiwan, the government research institutes and their policy networks with the private sector investors substantially cleared the hurdles of uncertainty regarding the initial investment decisions of R&D. Simultaneously, international networks that exploited the richness of structural holes facilitated smooth and speedy transfers of new technologies. This paper finds that technological innovation within a small firm network cannot be successful without the establishment of a domestic policy network and an international supply network.

The viability and vulnerability of Korean economic governance

Abstract This study addresses the question of how Korean economic governance has been shaped over time. Primarily, it analyzes the four inter-related dimensions of economic governance: organizational vitality, size dispersion, managerial hierarchy, and market integrity. Although economic governance is quite viable in that the young members dominate the population of organization in numbers, the analysis of size dispersion illustrates the pattern of dominance of large-scale production units across a wide range of industries. Korean economic governance is distinctively characterized by large-scale business groups whose managerial hierarchies are highly concentrated and vertically integrated. Finally, the governance of the national economy also shows aggressive strategies of vertical integration and horizontal predation without the establishment of extensive networks of subcontracting relationships. The current economic crisis raises the question of whether Korean economic governance is viable enough to survive through or vulnerable enough to be replaced by an alternative form under the pressures of financial liberalization and domestic restructuring. An analysis of economic governance will illuminate the unique nature of Korean capitalism and further assist us in understanding the historical roots of the current economic turmoil.

Knowledge integration capabilities of Japanese companies: reconstructing intra-firm networks for technology commercialisation

Despite aggressive investments in R&D and its success, Japanese companies demonstrate poor results in technology commercialisation. Almost half of all technological patents that Japanese companies hold are dormant, being unused. The purpose of this paper is to explore why technologies become dormant and how firms can overcome the problem to facilitate the process of technology commercialisation. Based upon the questionnaire survey of Japanese manufacturing companies, we find that exposing technology to the public in early stages of the commercialisation process plays an important role in enhancing overall commercialisation performance. Technology is an equivocal and context-dependent entity and changes its meaning from one context to another. Exposing a new piece of technology to the public enables firms to acquire more information about its market potential, which in return propels the commercialisation process more effectively. This research also implies that an early market exposure of new technological innovation contributes to building an effective inter-firm R&D network.

National R&D Investments in Korea

This chapter offers an empirical investigation of how decisions regarding national R&D investments are made in Korea. We are interested in locating structural problems within the Korean NIS in the face of globalization and mad technologies through a system of dynamic simulation and modeling. In so doing, we intend to devise ways of ameliorating problems within the NIS investment decision-making process by providing policy implications. Korea offers an interesting testing ground for a system of dynamic modeling because of the drastic changes in the NIS sector which have occurred as a result of rapid economic development and its combative response to the threat of mad technologies.

Prospects for East Asian Economic Governance

The previous chapter discussed how large corporations in Korea are defending their technological advantage from external threats, including mad technologies, by reinforcing transactional governance through a policy of constant organizational innovation. In our case study chapters, we discovered that the private sectors in Japan and Taiwan are also strengthening their capacities to undertake technological and organizational innovations in order to fight back against mad technologies. All of this indicates that macroeconomic governance by the public sector is weakened to the extent that it no longer seems to be able to regulate global economic contingencies, as the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s clearly indicated.

The Semiconductor Industry in Taiwan

Taiwan’s semiconductor industry was the result of carefully orchestrated long-term planning by the government and private firms. It offers an evident example of how the interplay of domestic policy and international supply networks can fend off the encroachment of mad technologies. However, this statement poses three questions that warrant attention from network theorists. First, do small firm networks, such as the family firm networks that exist in Taiwan, despite their limited financial reserves, have hidden network resources that can support risky diversification into semiconductor industries? Secondly, do small firm networks, with severely restricted marketing capabilities, have other network resources that encourage the commercialization of new technologies? Thirdly, if the network resources of Taiwanese family firms have overcome the above two difficulties in innovation and technology commercialization, what are the unique organizational advantages that have made their success possible?

Why Governance Reforms are Not Effective

In the previous chapters, we discussed how large firms in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have been defending their technological advantages in an age of globalization and mad technology. We noticed that the NIS structures in these three countries were becoming increasingly alike and that Korean and Taiwanese firms are quickly changing their R&D strategies by adopting some of the main features of mad technologies. Korean firms were particularly effective in obtaining knowledge integration skills for new technologies (i.e., commercialization), while Taiwanese firms had proven remarkably successful in organizing international networks of specialized and reciprocal division of labor. Japanese firms were found to be very efficient in knowledge patenting, although they were slow to adopt quick knowledge integration skills.

Japan’s Commercialization Problem

In the preceding chapters, we saw how some Korean and Taiwanese firms overcame the threats of global mad technologies and succeeded in developing and commercializing new technologies. In this chapter, we want to consider why Japanese corporations are experiencing commercialization problems and what can be done to change this situation.