North Korea and Zimbabwe, 1978–1982: from the strategic alliance to the symbolic comradeship between Kim Il Sung and Robert Mugabe

This article provides an explanation for North Korea-Zimbabwe bilateral relations from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, in the context of Cold War in the Third World. Supporting the military resistance of African nations, North Korea sought to gain its dominance over South Korea in the diplomatic war between the two Koreas. North Korea contributed to the liberation of Zimbabwe and helped Robert Mugabe establish his political foundations in the country. However, North Korea’s political gain from Zimbabwe was less than it expected and hence did not make any significant changes in its competition with South Korea.     

The politics of the Shanghai courts: the state,local elites,and social networks in Nationalist China, 1927–1937

This article explores the ways in which the Nationalist Party established dominance over the Shanghai courts in the foreign concession area to use them as weapons against political dissidents, and it analyzes the intricate relations among the Nationalist Party, local elites, and the Shanghai courts during the Nanjing decade (1927–1937). Building on recent studies that pay attention to the limited success of the Nationalist Party’s policy of putting the judiciary under Party control, this study demonstrates that the process of establishing the Nationalist Party’s dominance over the Shanghai courts was highly contested. The interplay between the Nationalist Party’s effort to gain control over the Shanghai courts by building formal and informal institutions and the local elites’ appropriation of their own social networks rendered the Shanghai courts vulnerable not only to the Party’s intervention, but also to the influence of social forces. I argue that due to the weak authority of the Shanghai courts, the Nationalist Party’s use of law against political foes could be a double-edged sword.     

Seismic Displacement Demands on Skewed Bridge Decks Supported on Elastomeric Bearings

The unseating of decks is one of the most prevalent failure modes of bridges after earthquake events, as observed in the 2010 Chile Earthquake. Damaged bridges in Chile often had skew angles and were supported on elastomeric bearings. Similar bridge construction practices with decks supported on elastomeric bearings are also common in the central and eastern U.S. (CEUS). The seismic displacement demands on skewed bridges are more complicated than those on bridges without skew angles due to the coupling of translational modes with the rotational mode of vibration. The study presented in this article seeks to understand the seismic response of skewed bridge decks supported on elastomeric bearings. The scope of the study is limited to one- and two-span bridges, which constitute a large portion of bridge inventory in the CEUS. The vibration modes of skewed bridge decks are derived in closed form and the modes are compared when the gaps between the bridge deck and the abutment are open and when one of the gaps is closed due to seismic excitation. Nonlinear response history analyses are carried out to understand the effects of vertical ground motion, skew angles, aspect ratios, and different ground motion types on the seismic displacement demand in these cases. Amplification factors that approximate the increase in the displacement demand due to the skew angle are proposed.     

Community-based legislative representation and postcolonial ethnic civil warfare in former British and French colonies

Recent research argued that the colonial policy of community-based representation in the legislative assembly strongly increases the risk of postcolonial ethnic warfare in former British and French colonies. This paper delves deeper into the relationship by using an updated dataset that codes the receipt or non-receipt of communal representation for nearly all ethnic groups in former British and French colonies. The results confirm the war-inducing effect of this communalising colonial policy and additionally find that such an effect applies relatively uniformly to groups that benefited from this policy as well as those that were excluded from it. In addition, based on sociological theory and previous research, it was hypothesised that a combination of precolonial receipt of communal legislative representation and postcolonial political exclusion would make an ethnic group particularly prone to postcolonial ethnic warfare. This hypothesis, however, was not supported by the data. This null result has theoretical implications for our understanding of the conditions that give rise to conflict-inducing psychological strain in the field of colonialism and ethnic warfare.     

Fertility differentials between Korean and international marriage couples in South Korea

Amid high hopes that the rise of international marriage will boost fertility rates in South Korea, this article assesses fertility differentials between Korean and international marriage couples. Espousing the theoretical position that fertility decisions need to be viewed from a couple perspective, we seek to build a new framework that goes beyond the traditional immigrant fertility literature. To test the formulated hypotheses, we compared fertility hazards among four couple types using the 2012 National Survey on Multicultural Families and the 2012 National Fertility Survey: couples consisting of a Korean wife and a Korean husband (Korean couples), couples consisting of a foreign wife and a Korean husband (foreign-wife couples), couples consisting of a Korean wife and a foreign husband (foreign-husband couples), and couples consisting of a foreign wife and a foreign husband (foreign couples). The results from Cox regression models revealed that the wives of Korean couples experienced the highest fertility hazards for the first birth, followed by the wives of foreign-wife couples. Furthermore, wives of Korean couples took the shortest time to give birth to the second child, followed by wives of foreign-husband and then foreign-wife couples. We discussed theoretical bearings of these findings and outlined a promising line of further research.     

SOLVING A THREE-DIMENSIONAL URBAN ACTIVITY MODEL OF LAND USE INTENSITY AND TRANSPORT CONGESTION*

ABSTRACT Recent developments in combining input-output and transportation planning models have made it possible to construct realistic comprehensive urban and regional activity models of land use intensity. These models form the basis for a rigorous approach to studying the interactions among urban activities. However, efficient computational solution methods for implementing such comprehensive models are still not available. In this paper, an efficient solution method for a nonlinear programming urban systems model is developed by combining Evans's partial linearization technique with Powell's hybrid method. The solution algorithm is applied to a small but realistic urban area with a detailed transportation network.     

Political party support in the Korean fifth republic: An ecological analysis 1981–1985

The absence of surveys detailing the voting intentions and past voting behaviour of Koreans has left obscure important aspects of party development during the Fifth Republic. Ecological analysis of district level voting returns for the 1981 and 1985 National Assembly elections is used to find two distinct patterns of voter continuity. In 1985 the ruling Democratic Justice Party was able to hold its 1981 voters while attracting considerable support from former opposition party voters. The opposition parties, in contrast, showed great turmoil, lost voters being compensated for by gains from other parties. These two patterns are attributed to a pro and anti‐government cleavage in Korean society. The pro‐government voters had a natural home in the ruling party while the anti‐government voters lacked a single focus and, hence, were more volatile.     

Ghostliness in Asian Diasporic Film and Literature

This paper examines the ways in which tropes of ghostliness and haunting are deployed in three recent books to describe the cultural effects of globalisation, modernisation and transnational movement in contemporary Asian and Asian diasporic film and literature.     

New age constraints for hominid footprints found on Jeju Island,South Korea

In 2004 numerous hominid footprints, along with diverse animal footprints, were found in the Late Quaternary strata of Jeju Island, South Korea. However, the age of the sediments in which the footprints were found is still controversial. Previous age estimates included radiocarbon ages of ca. 15,000 yr BP (Late Pleistocene) and quartz optically stimulated luminescence ages of ca. 7000 yr BP (mid-Holocene). In this study we report on 11 AMS ¹⁴C dating results from a new set of samples collected from the footprint-bearing strata and from associated sediments. Despite some variations and age reversal, all samples collected from the footprint-bearing strata yielded ¹⁴C ages of late Pleistocene. These ages are comparable with previous radiocarbon dating results. Furthermore, the presence of the proboscidean footprints attributable to woolly mammoths in the footprint-bearing strata supports the radiocarbon dating results. Based on the new radiocarbon dates and the presence of the alleged mammoth footprints, the age of the hominid footprints found at Jeju Island is thought to be late Pleistocene (about 19,000–25,000 cal yr BP). Therefore, this is the second discovery of hominid footprints dated to the Pleistocene age in Asia, and the first to be discovered in Korea.     

The failure of Asian American representation in All-American Girl and The Cho Show

This article examines Korean American comedian Margaret Cho's attempts to represent Asian American identity as the star of two television sitcoms, All-American Girl (1994) and The Cho Show (2008). It begins with All-American Girl, showing how its contradictions around race, ethnicity and gender demonstrate the ideological boundaries of the network sitcom genre. It then looks at how the post-network ‘celebreality’ sitcom, The Cho Show, reproduces the assimilationist identity politics promulgated in All-American Girl even as it purports to critique them. The commercial failure of these shows is traced ultimately to the broader institutionalised racism and sexism of the US entertainment industry, its perpetuation of the neoliberal ideology of the American Dream and the internationalisation of that ideology by social minorities.