The Korean economy, as well as the economies of several other East Asian countries, faced a currency crisis in 1997. The Korean government requested to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance and agreed to $55 billion dollars in relief finance, accepting with it the tight conditions of economic readjustment at the end of the same year.
The new Korean government carried out four Economic Structural Reform Policies, namely Financial, Corporate, Public and Labor sectors were targeted for the renewal and economic development since 1998. The main goal of these policies was to introduce the market oriented economic order or to establish the overall market principles. Among these reform policies, the corporate reform was actually a means of reorganizing the giant combines of Korea, although the government did not come out and say this.
Korean giant combines had been formed through a quite different way when compared to the process found in other advanced countries. There are three basic characteristics. First, they formed under government leadership and support. Second, the founders of such groups had strong motivation for achievement of their goals. Third, the formative period was very short, in some cases 20 years. Within this timeframe they accumulated huge capital and economic power.
The Korean people generally recognize that the giant combines have had a great role in economic development. At the same time, however, there are many criticism too, namely that they overly concentrated economic power, tended to disturb the market and were a moral hazard in the viewpoint of social justice.
Therefore the government took measures of reform the giant combines. These reforms were named “The Five Plus Three Principles”. The five basic subjects were the promotion of the clearness of management, the dissolution of the mutual guarantee of finance, improvement of the financial structure, selection of main business, and enforcement of the responsibility of big stockholders and executive officers. Three complimentary programs were the restriction of the control power to a non-bank financial institution, restraint of the circulative investment among the group, and prohibition of illegal succession of property.
The above mentioned reform policies provoked some controversy. The main criticism was that the basic objective should not be on regulation but on efficiency, because these policies seemed to place too much weight on the regulatory side.

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China's Banking sector is known to harbor an enormous amount of bad debt, making China's financial system extremely fragile, and one of the most fundamental causes of this problem is SOEs' low efficiency.
After the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, China has quickened its pace of SOE reform. After three years of campaign aiming to make most loss-making SOEs profitable, SOEs' profitability improved in 2000, indicating a limited success of the campaign. Along the way, stated-owned sector is shrinking, while the non-state sector is expanding rapidly.
Despite these development, though, China SOEs still face enormous challenges. This article seeks to present a broad review of issues facing SOE reform and several measures to tackle them.

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the characteristics and problems of industrial development in East Asian areas in terms of changing industrial structures and locational environment.
Industries that lead national economies and possess comparative advantages have historically altered with the evolution of industrial structure. If leading industries in countries are different, the evolution of industrial structure in countries simultaneously may continue. If leading industries in countries are similar, however, the evolution of industrial structure cannot simultaneously progress. This process has a great influence on the characteristics of industrial development in East Asian areas.
The foreign siting of Japanese manufacturing corporations appears to be playing an important role in the current changing industrial structures in East Asian areas because the locational practice seems to develop a spatial division of labour on an international scale. The data on geographical distribution of sales and purchasing by affiliates of Japanese manufacturing corporations help us understand the spatial division of labour.
The problem of hollowing out of domestic industries can be understood by the worsening locational environment through the foreign siting of Japanese manufacturing corporations, although we should not generalize by claiming that the foreign siting causes the problem. We should examine the impact of the locational practice of Japanese manufacturing corporations on the locational environment.
It is necessary for sustainable development in East Asian areas to start an economic system reform from the viewpoint of the improvement of locational environment and international cooperation.

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The purpose of the study is to investigate the changing relative competitive position of Japanese and Asian countries high-technology industries by analyzing international trade flows both in 142 high-technology products, which are defined according to SITC Rev. 2 and classified into the three groupings namely consumer products, capital products, and intermediate products.
A summary of my main conclusion is as follows:
1. the competitive position of Japanese industry as a whole is still high over the period 1980∼1998;
2. the competitive position of the each industry and each product group is different;
3. among the industries, the position of Telecommunications equipment, TV, gramophones declined;
4. among the three groupings, the position of consumer products are declining;
5. intermediate products account for the largest element in all high-technology exports and imports;
6. structure of the international splitting up of production processes are considered;
7. there are Regional complementarity of comparative advantages and technological competences in Asian market;
8. Asian countries including Japan keep competitiveness and comparative advantages against North America, Europe;
9. substitutive forces and complementary forces between trade and FDI can be investigated.

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This paper has attempted an analysis of the actual state of “Silicon Island” Kyushu's integrated circuit industry during the 1990s. The results of this analysis have revealed the following facts.
(1) The integrated circuit industry once served as the leading industry in the fueling of Kyushu's industrial economy. However, Japan's integrated circuit industry found itself in difficult straits with the onset of the 1990s. The consequent sluggish growth also had a retarding effect on Kyushu's integrated circuit industry. The upshot was that hardly any change was visible in the number of integrated circuit plants as of the mid-1990s, while the number of personnel employed in the industry has tended to decline.
(2) Hence, although Kyushu's integrated circuit industry had accounted for 40% of the national production volume and 30% of the national production economic yield up to the onset of the 1990s, these figures had turned to 30% for both production volume and production yield alike by the close of the 1990s. This significant drop in production volume was due to lackluster growth in MOSIC. Kyushu, in particular, was hit by a significant decline in the production volume of MOS memory IC.
(3) In consequence, despite its erstwhile reputation as “the memory Mecca, ” Kyushu saw its share of the memory market dwindle faster than anywhere else in the nation as the trend away from DRAM gained momentum. On the other hand, the end of the 1990s saw the MOS logic IC account for nearly half of production yields, signaling that MOS logic IC had replaced memory as the mainstay product. At the same time, linear IC increased its share to account for more than 50% of production volume and constitute the prime force in these developments.
(4) Major plants in Kyushu began to introduce system LSI and concentrated production on the most advanced articles in linear IC and memory, with the result that the average Kyushu unit price for memory began to exceed the national average as of 1993, while average Kyushu unit prices for logic and linear ICs topped the national average as of 1996.
(5) The 1990s also saw a marked surge in IC trading. Both import and export figures for Kyushu increased at a far greater pace than increases elsewhere nationwide, so much so that Kyushu's export figures leapt to nearly 20% of the national performance by 1999 from under 5% at the beginning of the decade. Similarly, import figures rose to constitute well over 10% of the national figure.
(6) Such burgeoning IC trading has also led to a rise in an international division of labor on a process-by-process basis, whereby plants in Kyushu work in harness with plants overseas, with Kyushu exporting semiprocessed products (finished wafers). Such process-sharing has made particular headway with various nations in Asia, notably Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and China. In addition, Kyushu's IC plants are making a positive effort to serve as mother plants to these overseas plants by providing the transfer of mass-production technology, training, and instruction, among other support initiatives.

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The world's automotive industry is undergoing unprecedented restructuring. Carmakers promoted consolidation aiming at; 1) Cost saving by sharing R & D capabilities and components among alliance partners, 2) Reducing costs of purchased parts with increased volume, 3) Reducing capital investments by increasing outsourcing. To achieve these, carmakers are promoting global sourcing and modularity. With the diffusion of global sourcing and modularity, order amount per program increased significantly. Carmakers require drastic cost reductions for big orders, and downsize the number of suppliers.
Suppliers are now trying to obtain capability to support global supply and modularity by accelerating consolidation. The key part of this is to grow human resources and build up an organization that enables integration of modular products and coordination among carmaker and tier 2 suppliers, and across regions. Suppliers are required to acquire such capabilities while meeting carmakers' aggressive cost reduction targets.
On the other hand, as the number of tier 1 suppliers decrease, carmakers' bargaining power is likely to deteriorate over time and might lose control of suppliers. The allowance for such risk is quite different by company, depending on how the company wants to be in the future. U. S. carmakers are looking for sources of future profit in automotive-related business such as financial services. Therefore, it is a natural extension that such companies increase outsourcing in order to save capital investments for manufacturing, while increasing investments in new areas. On the other hand, companies like Toyota that keep focus on manufacturing are keen to maintain control of suppliers and does not promote outsourcing as quickly as Americans.
As a result, different forms of supplier systems remain in different parts of the world. However, with the dissolution of Keiretsu system, as seen in Nissan's example, suppliers are being more and more exposed to the pressure of capital markets for profitability. Direct comparison of profitability amongst Japanese, U. S. and European carmakers and suppliers in capital markets, is likely to force Japanese carmakers and suppliers to create new business models that continue to generate competitive profits.

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The export inspection system in Japan is one of the contributing factors in establishing high-quality of exported goods. The goods that were “MADE IN JAPAN” were viewed as “cheaper and inferior” by the advanced countries in the past. The export inspection system regulated to refrain from exporting “strategically nominated goods” whose quality levels were below certain levels. The export regulation was done by the Raw Silk Conditioning Houses Law (1895-1911), and the Export Inspection Law (1957-1997), etc. for about 100 years.
We investigated the role of this system focusing on the camera which developed into the export industry soon after World War II, and focusing on sewing machine, clock & watch, binoculars, and interchangeable lens. We confirmed that this system functioned effectively in improving the quality of these goods at one time. But, this system was one of the factors that improved the quality of Japanese goods and leaded to the establishment of Japanese goods as a high-quality image. The quality control movement and technical improvement in a company implemented this system effectively, too.
We concluded that this system was effective in strengthening non-price competitiveness of Japanese products and that it was instrumental in achieving export promotion from the aspect of quality improvement. The export inspection system through the guideline of government finished the original mission because of improvement at technical level of Japanese products. At present, this system was abolished.

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With the “Lean production system” of Toyota having attracted world wide attention since 1990, major corporations in Europe and the United States have been trying to streamline their operation by adopting this method as if were a global standard. In China, too, several companies have introduced this system, but without satisfactory results.
Evaluations and criticisms of the “Toyota production system” have been presented in various papers since the beginning of the 1990s. The same is also true of the Chinese auto industry.
Many of those who evaluate the system place greater emphasis on the “production means” and “management technique.” Their discussions do not seem to be based on a fall analysis of an important part of productivity-“the labor force”-especially its qualitative aspect. High levels of worker' skills and motivation are essential to achieve the desired results of the lean production system, even if is complete with various types of high-performance machine tools, an integrated system of these machines and a control system to operate it under optimal conditions. From my visit to several Japanese and Chinese manufacturing companies and on-site surveys there, it seems that a high degree of automation is being supported by their constant education and training, as well as evaluations of their abilities.
Ironically, the reality is that the automakers in Japan, including Toyota, are making a major shift to a new production method called a “post-lean” or “super-lean” system, just when other countries are beginning to see success in the introduction of the lean production system.
The present paper aims to examine the activities of a Shanghai-based Chinese-German jointventure that introduced the lean production system in its own way in the latter part of the 1990s and to point out its future tasks with discussions focused on 1) the methods of worker education and training that will lead to the qualitative improvement of labor force, and 2) ways of evaluating workers' skills and a wage system that will boost workers morale.

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Previous studies on the Japanese IC industry have mainly focused on the period since the 1980s. Moreover, studies on IC production before 1980 are rare. To fill in these blanks in the history of research in this area, I investigate the automatization of mass production in the Japanese IC industry during the 1970's. For this paper, I interviewed a former engineers of Toshiba and NEC who direct promoted or were involved in the automatization of mass production of ICs in 1970's.
The automatization of mass production in the Japanese IC industry started from the assembly process of IC production which had largely depended on the hands of female laborers. It had some characteristics, different from the automatization of production in other manufacturing industries in Japan. For example, the automatization of production in the Japanese IC industry was only weakly influenced by the Oil Crises. And, the number of laborers in the Japanese IC industry rose in 1970's, in spite of automatization.
Automatization of production in the Japanese IC industry in 1970's was incremental. The incremental automatization made “learning” or the experience of maintenance engineers more important, and there was a good circularity between automatization of mass production and quality control.
In the end, automatization of production contributed significantly to improvements in the productivity of labor, quality improvements, and pushing costs down. In particular, in late 1970's, big establishments turned out more advantageous in achieving higher productivity of labor than small and medium-scale establishments. In addition, systems of shift working were introduced extensively due to the automatization of mass production. In turn, these systems affected the share of female in employees in the Japanese IC industry, cost cutting, and the improvement in the productivity of labor.

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At present the pharmaceutical industry is experiencing two significant changes. One is the increasing intensity of global competition, and the other is the rapid progress of gene-related technology. Therefore, the importance of innovation, i. e., drug discovery and development, has become an increasingly important element for firms' competitive power.
The purpose of this paper is to grasp the relations between R & D organizations related to the Japanese pharmaceutical industry and to investigate the changing processes within. In many industries innovations proceed through the interaction of many organizations and institutions, especially in the industry of our concern. Thus, in this paper, the R & D system of the Japanese pharmaceutical industry is analyzed both from the organizational and institutional aspect.
We obtained following results: First, a shift within some institutions-like the patent system, NHI Drug Price Revisions, the new drug approval system, caused a change in the orientation towards the discovery and development of new types of drugs. In the 1990s, the Japanese pharmaceutical firms had therefore to discover and development innovative drugs for the global market, instead for focusing only on the domestic market. Second, this orientation shift has lead to the changes of the relations between R & D organizations, i. e., industry, university, and governmental agencies. These changes appear as the increase of collaborations occurring in various stages of R & D, and the increase of collaborations with agencies abroad.

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Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) has played an important role in the growth of the electric industry in Asia-an industry that has grown steadily over the past 40 years.
Recently, the industry has faced two crucial tests: first, the Asian financial crisis which began in the financial sector but quickly spread to involve industrial sectors; and second, the growth of China's industrial power-particularly in the electric industry, which accounts for 30% of China's exports.
On the threshold of joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), the electric industry in China is surging while its automobile, high technology, and agriculture industries are suffering.
Globally, it is commonly understood that there is over-capacity within the electric industry. This situation is resulting in a rising sense of regionalism in NAFTA and the EU region. It is inevitable that the ASEAN electric industry will need to streamline and modify operations in order to meet the global competition.
The model of the “Geese flying economy” is coming to end and we are seeing a rise in a “level playing field” in the competition for general merchandise.
Furthermore, the electric industry is transforming its position to a “knowledge driven” industry with the introduction of greater information technology, EMS and emerging industry cluster in Asia and China which are enabling to supply necessary parts and components within the region.
Facing the challenge of regional and global competition, it is critical for ASEAN governments to enact effective common industrial policies such as AICO, CEPT, AIA, MRS and others. This will force domestic and foreign firms to modernize and re-organize in both a horizontal and vertical fashion.
Continuing its role in the region, Japanese FDI must play a positive role in assisting in the transformation of this industry to one that can be competitive in the 21^st century.

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