This article analyzes the impact of political regime and state bureaucracy on policy responses to the 1997 financial crisis in Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The political regime type — classified broadly into democracy and authoritarianism — is found to shape the direction of policy responses by influencing the political elites' understanding on causes, processes, and consequences of the crisis, whereas the state bureaucracy — classified into hybrid and Weberian types — decides the implementation of reform plans by determining the power of big business to resist policy change, as well as the state's organizational capacity to counter that resistance. The article argues that only when the political regime is democratic and the state Weberian will comprehensive — as opposed to partial — reform succeed.

What determines the public evaluation of South Korean president? Is it a temporal cycle of presidential tenure, the economy or political events? This paper explores these questions by examining the case of President Kim Dae Jung who enjoyed high popularity in the early phase of his tenure but experienced consistent decline of popularity after 18 months in office, much like his predecessors did. The paper argues that the high and low of public support for the president is not simply a function of the temporal cycle and that the fluctuation of public rating is strongly influenced by the public's consideration of economic matters and corruption scandals. In the case of the current South Korean president, one's performance in resuscitating the economy could not rescue a president besieged by one corruption scandal after another. Also, the improved economic conditions did not save Kim Dae Jung's public approval rate from tumbling, because reforms failed to alleviate the economic hardship felt by the lower class. All of this demonstrates that the public does separate economic and political issues and weigh them disproportionately in evaluating presidential performance.

We attempt to trace the Hyundai crisis back to its roots with the following questions in mind. What actions taken by the Hyundai Group since its birth contributed to Hyundai's post-1997 afflictions and to the split and the subsequent fall of the parent group? What changes in the corporate environment, in particular, the changes in business-government relationships, brought on by the national financial crisis of 1997 determined the Hyundai Group's fate? The Hyundai crisis was ultimately a test on whether the old business- government relationship could survive the new market environment generated by the 1997 financial crisis. In spite of the government's indecision and inconsistency, however, it was the government itself which eventually yielded and accepted the new market environment it had helped to create after 1997. The government reluctantly transferred the control rights of Hyundai Construction and Hynix Semiconductor to creditor banks via debt-equity swaps starting from March 2001.

This paper examines Japan's security policy after the September 11 terrorism, arguing that its response has been part of a larger process of redefining its security role in the Asia-Pacific region for the last decade. The passage of the 1992 Peacekeeping Law and the 1999 US-Japan security guidelines were an important part of the drastic changes. The paper also discusses the Japanese government's response to the September 11 terrorism, looking into the question of how the government sought to maintain a balance between military contributions to US-Japan security alliance and the restriction on the “threat and use of force” prescribed in the Constitution. Japan's recent pro-activeness toward Asia and entry into regional politics is also examined. The paper concludes by arguing that the combination of continued Japan's security relationship with the US and its strenuous efforts to enter Asian regional politics will be the first step toward real “normalcy” of Japan.