In the era of globalization, multinational corporations are the center in international economics. Most studies are based on investment flows between developed countries, however. With a firm-level dataset on South Korean multinational corporations, this dissertation adds new insights to the research of multinational corporations from the perspective of an emerging country. The first essay investigates the impact of the level of development of the destination country on employment growth of the multinational corporations in the home country. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we assess the impact of starting to invest in less-advanced countries compared with investing in more-advanced countries. To obtain suitable control groups in each case, we use the propensity score method. The method selects national firms that ex post did not take the investment decisions even though ex ante they would have been equally likely to. We find that moving to less-advanced countries decreases a company's employment growth rate especially in the short run. On the other hand, moving to more-advanced countries does not consistently affect employment growth in any significant way. Including investment decisions of established multinationals in the estimation somewhat weakens but does not overturn this conclusion. The second essay studies the location decision of South Korean multinationals across China's regions with a firm-level dataset. Our conditional logit estimates confirm previous studies that found agglomeration effects along industry and along national lines. In particular, South Korean investors target the region where there are more firms in an industry irrespective of their nationality. At the same time, more affliates from South Korean multinationals also attract new entrants. More importantly, however, we add an upstream and downstream (backward and forward) linkage effect. We find that the presence of upstream and downstream South Korean affiliates significantly increases the likelihood that a South Korean multinational invests in a particular region. At the same time, however, backward and forward linkages at the industry level that do not differentiate by nationality do not seem to matter much. As such, our analysis of investors' location choice brings together two perspectives: (backward and forward) linkages and agglomeration along national lines. The third essay explores regional production networks and off-shoring of material and service inputs in East Asia using the Asian International Input-Output Table (1990, 1995, and 2000). In process of doing so, off-shoring is directly measured from the Table which is not used in the previous literature on this issue. It turns out that East Asian countries source the significant share of inputs within East Asia. Besides material off-shoring, services off-shoring becomes more and more common in the era of globalization. In particular, countries in this region have used goods and services inputs mainly from Japan and the United States. However, in recent years, China and Korea started to supply greater amounts of goods and services inputs

Korean dramas gained popularity across Asia in the late 1990s, and their global fandom continues to grow. Despite cultural differences, non-Asian audiences find "K-dramas" appealing. They range from historical melodrama and romantic comedy to action, horror, sci-fi and thriller. Devotees pursue an immersive fandom, consuming Korean food, fashion and music, learning Korean to better understand their favorite shows, and travelling to Korea for firsthand experiences. This collection of new essays focuses on the cultural impact of K-drama and its fandom, and on the transformation of identities in the context of regional and global dynamics. Contributors discuss such popular series as Boys over Flowers, My Love from the Star and Descendants of the Sun.

This book, an outcome of the conference in 1983 held at the University of Birmingham, examines the varied roles played by multinational corporations in the economies of the Third World countries and concentrates more closely on regional, national, sectoral or corporate levels.

This volume represents the first substantive study of emerging multinationals (MNEs) from Asian economies, drawing on the unique experiences of South Korea and Taiwan. Combining an econometric investigation with detailed case studies of leading Korean and Taiwanese electronics companies, it aims to demystify the nature and theoretical implications of these dynamic economic regions. The author argues that many of these `new multinationals do not possess the characteristics typically ascribed to MNEs, such as technological leadership, strong marketing positions or advanced managerial capabilities. This is highlighted by documentation of recent developments in outward investment from Korea and Taiwan at both micro and macro level. The implications of the recent Asian crisis for the internationaliztion of Korean and Taiwanese firms are also explored.

South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force, even challenging Japan in some industries. This growth may be seen as an example of "late industrialization" and this book discusses this point.

In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision of why state involvement works in some cases and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties. Evans starts with the idea that states vary in the way they are organized and tied to society. In some nations, like Zaire, the state is predatory, ruthlessly extracting and providing nothing of value in return. In others, like Korea, it is developmental, promoting industrial transformation. In still others, like Brazil and India, it is in between, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Evans's years of comparative research on the successes and failures of state involvement in the process of industrialization have here been crafted into a persuasive and entertaining work, which demonstrates that successful state action requires an understanding of its own limits, a realistic relationship to the global economy, and the combination of coherent internal organization and close links to society that Evans called "embedded autonomy."