Korea and East Asia in a Changing Regional and Global Environment

Han Baran addresses the role of transnational consumer activism in international development cooperation. As examples of consumer campaigns with development impacts, the international anti-sweatshop campaigns in the 1990s, the Fair Trade coffee industry, and the Product (RED) program supporting HIV/AIDS funds are discussed. In order to increase the effectiveness of transnational consumer activism, Independent Monitoring and Labeling Agencies as well as a framework for active coordination with other development actions need to be encouraged.Professor Kang Insoo offers an overview of Korea's ODA policy in chapter eight. Korea is ranked 19th among 27 OECD DAC members in 2008 in terms of the size of ODA. Professor Kang argues that Korea needs to increase ODA through Country Partnership Strategies (CPS) in the future. Korea leaves something to be desired in terms of ODA including ambiguous objectives in ODA policy, inefficient and ineffective structure of ODA policy administration, lack of evaluation system, and opaque decision making system in choosing partner countries. In the future, Korea should conduct more actively new programs such as Knowledge Sharing Programs (KSP), while following the global trend of “More Aid, Better Aid, and Changing Aid architecture.” In the last chapter, Professor Park Sung-Hoon and Professor Kim Jung-Ho introduce Korea's ODA policy towards CLMIV countries. The biggest recipient of Korea's ODA has been Asian countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Mongolia and Afghanistan. More than fifty percent of Korea's ODA has gone to the Asian countries. Among them, CLMIV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia and Vietnam) countries are among the key countries for Korea's ODA in Asia. Korea can increase ODA elements such as training of industrial workers, encouraging development studies, and building socio-economic infrastructure projects, which can contribute to the expansion of its counterparts' development and human resources capacity for their sustainable development