| The world economy is increasingly globalized and regionalized as best shown through EU and NAFTA.. In Northeast Asia as well, a number of discussions between nations are underway regarding how to achieve economic integration. In October 2003, Korea and Japan commenced official dialogues on Korea-Japan Free Trade Agreement while three main Northeast Asian countries including China have agreed to conduct a joint study on the establishment of free trade area. In the meanwhile, North Korea has been excluded from these discussions of Northeast Asian economic integration for which North Korea itself is solely blamed. North Korea voluntarily counted itself out as it has stuck to a planned and isolated economy while other socialist regimes in the world have adapted to economic reformation and liberalization long before. However, North Korea has recently begun a few initiatives on open and reformative economic policies. It deserves to benchmark such experiences as EU and NAFTA before studying Northeast Asian economic integration any further. A look into the history of EU and NAFTA tells us that they started from a low level of integration evolving further up to a higher one and from a specific industry integration or small regional liberalization all the way up to an overall economic cohesion. For example, in Europe, an intra-industrial integration regime such as ECSC-European Coal and Steel Community- was initially formed before they have developed a comprehensive economic integration such as EC and EU. In North America, the US made an Auto Pact, a kind of intra-industrial integration, with Canada whose economic development level was not far behind the US. On the other hand, the US supported free and open economic zones called "Maquiladoras" with the developing nation, Mexico before they may be assimilated into NAFTA. It's quite important for East Asia to study the beginning stage of economic integrations of EU and NAFTA because the recent level of economic cooperation among East Asian nations is quite similar to the initial stage of European and North American economic integration. This thesis aims to suggest that East Asia countries begin with an intra-industrial integration in the IT (Information Technology) industry rather than a comprehensive one in pursuing regional economic integration. In dealing with North Korea whose economy is far behind other Northeast Asian countries (China, Korea and Japan in particular), it suggests the strategy of beginning the economic integration with free economic zones in the same way as the US formulated Maquiladoras with Mexico before. Meanwhile, the selection of an industry that should receive a focused attention for economic integration depends on the question of which economic era we are living in at the moment. ECSC focused on coal and steel industries because they were the core energy industries in the manufacturing age of 1950s. The auto industry was a key factor in the US and Canadian economy around the mid 1960s. Maquiladoras was not an industry-specific program but an area-specific one because Mexico, at that time, didn't have resources other than abundant labor forces. So they utilized labor-intensive industries such as textile, shoes and garments. In the 21st century, we have ushered in a new knowledge-based society in which IT industry takes the core part. IT industries in China, Korea and Japan have been rapidly growing with the knowledge economy deeply rooted in each society and even North Korea, the most underdeveloped in this region, has emphasized the importance of IT industry since the late 1990s with the strategy named as " Quantum leap strategy via IT industry". With the aforementioned as backdrop, this thesis proposes a new idea of "Northeast Asia IT Community" after analyzing IT industry, market, and inter-governmental cooperation of the region. With the result of studying on the current status, development strategy, and cooperation of IT industry of Northeast Asia, we learned a number of positive factors to promote the integra...
|
PDF Full Text Request