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The purpose of this paper is to investigate key critical factors for developing transit trade corridors (TTCs) in optimizing trade and logistics performance, taking into account economic, geographic and political concerns among countries in the Northeast Asia region, which have been dynamically developing TTCs to optimize trade and logistics performance in association with development of transport infrastructure in the Greater Tumen Region located in the Northeast Asia.

This research explores key factors affecting the TTC through a comprehensive literature review in tandem with expert survey. Factor analysis, both exploratory and confirmatory, is employed to further investigate the underlying factors affecting more efficient development of a TTC.

This research has drawn eight underlying factors affecting the design of a TTC: development and policy implications; safety, security and political concerns; environmental protection; financing and investment; soft infrastructure; hard infrastructure; geography and landscape; and corridor performance.

This paper has a limited geographical scope of the Northeast Asia. Therefore, more primary data collection would be useful in future work. Development of International trade corridor and TTC is critical in northeast Asia for moving goods through designated geographical paths. The key factors drawn in this paper contributes not only to promoting its related services and information (across borders) with the provision of policy support and related facilities for TTC but also to lowering logistics costs and improving trades in the northeast Asian region. As a result, the countries in the region will accelerate their regional economies in collaboration with international bodies and framework, such as UNDP, Greater Tumen Initiative and One Belt One Road Initiative.

The eight underlying factors the authors identified in this research will be valuable for policy-makers to design TTCs and consequently the research will contribute to regional economies in northeast Asia by establishing efficient trade and transport routes among the countries in the region.

Developing TTCs is a kind of platform and infrastructure to accelerate cargo movements and people movements in the northeast Asia. Users of TTCs will benefit their businesses thanks to an efficient logistics system and lower logistics costs, which result in promoting international and regional trade in the region.

There has not been any research done on factors to consider in developing TTCs in the world, whose consequence is no readily available reference that can support a systematic assessment and decision-making in development of TTCs. The findings of this research provide a helpful reference for policy-makers, potential users and developers of TTCs to refer in planning and developing them.

This chapter examines the explosion in International Humanitarian Law between the US Civil War and World War I. The primary foci are the Hague Conventions on land warfare and the Geneva Conventions for the sick and wounded. This body of treaties is the foundation of IHL and the modern laws of war. Most of central issues in the international laws of war emerge in this period.

In the 21st century, disputes between military and civilians are to occur in the arena of security or defense policies. The civil–military relations of Korea might be shifted from the political conflicts between political elites and military leaders to the democratic governances of the military sector.

This chapter examines the existence of civil–military gap in the perceptions or attitudes on the security or defense issues. The samples are classified into six subgroups. The military is classified into “commissioned officers (COs) and non-commissioned officers (NCOs)” and “conscripted soldiers,” and the civilians into four subgroups according to sex and age. There is not much acute or urgent, serious civil–military gap in the analysis. Sometimes the perceptional gap rather resides between the male and the female or between the youth and the elder generation than in between the military and the civilian. But there are some differences in perceptions and attitudes between the military and civilians. These are related to the interests of national security affairs, to the military threat from North Korea, and to the confidence in the defense management. Owing to their different life conditions, the perceptional differences between civilians and military are inevitable to some degree. But to develop better civil–military relations and to enhance the consensus in the national security issues in the 21st century, institutionalizing the democratic governance might be necessary. It is recommended to have more discussions between the military and civilians, to share more information about the security issues, to increase transparency in the defense management, and to have more participation of the civilians in the security sector.

Building on the steps to war model, this paper seeks to examine the impact that territorial Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) have on the time it takes a dyad to go to war after it experiences its first MID.

A model common to epidemiological research, the hazard model, is employed to examine the dyadic relationship from the time of the first MID forward. This is an improvement to dyadic analysis, as most research examines the characteristics of individual MIDs in isolation.

Dyads with a history of territorial MIDs go to war much more quickly than dyads without a history of territorial MIDs. Future research should explore the relationship between territory, war, and power status to test the assertion that minor power states engage in power politics behavior less frequently.

Conflict resolution measures need to be employed more quickly when states have unresolved territorial issues. Mediation generally does not occur quickly, which may explain why territorial issues are less likely to be referred to mediators and less successfully mediated. The results presented herein highlight the need for flexible, quick responses to certain crises and the need to settle borders and other territorial disputes permanently to avoid war.

The paper tests a critical component of the steps to war model and examines the assertion that the historical relationship between states affects conflict decisions.

This article explores the ways in which hegemony and power impact on the emergence, development and conflict management function of regional organizations. It compares the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), both of which include a strong regional power. These powers have contrasting postures: South Africa is a keen regionalist, a reluctant hegemon and a pacific power, whereas India is a keen hegemon, a reluctant regionalist and a militarist power. The presence of the hegemon has stimulated regionalism in Southern Africa but retarded regionalism in South Asia. Despite these differences, SADC and SAARC have similarly failed to manage regional conflict effectively. This has been due in large measure to the conflictual relationship between the hegemon and another powerful state in each region, Zimbabwe in the case of South Africa, and Pakistan in the case of India. Some of these dynamics are well explained by neorealist theory, but other dynamics are best explained by constructivist and liberal positions. This supports the argument by Katzenstein and Okawara (2001–2002) that in the field of international relations an eclectic analytical approach is required to comprehend complex processes that combine material, ideational, international, domestic, contemporary and historical factors.

Purpose – This chapter aims to position regional integration in the Kantian peace tripod and to test whether regional economic integration has a significant effect in reducing militarised interstate disputes.

Methodology – It uses logistic regression on cross-sectional–time-series data and a generalised estimating equation.

Findings – The analysis shows that regional integration had a significant impact in reducing militarised interstate disputes between 1950 and 2000.

Practical implications – This chapter may provide a new dimension to the academic discussion on the Kantian peace proposition, and encourage policy makers in less integrated regions to integrate with their neighbouring states in a bid to minimise political tensions.

Originality – The chapter is based on original data on regional integration collected by the author.

While the origin of Korean Industrial Relations goes back 150 years when the country opened its seaports to foreign countries, it didn’t emerge as a field of study until 1950s when academics began to write books and papers on the Korean labor movement, labor laws, and labor economics. In this paper, we sketch this history and describe important events and people that contributed to the development of industrial relations in Korea. Korean industrial relations in the early 20th century were significantly distorted by the 35-year-Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). After regaining its independence, the U.S. backed, growth-oriented, military-based, authoritarian Korean government followed suit and consistently suppressed organized labor until 1987. Finally, the 1987 Great Labor Offensive allowed the labor movement to flourish in a democratized society. Three groups were especially influential in the field of industrial relations in the early 1960s: labor activists, religious leaders, and university faculty. Since then, numerous scholars have published books and papers on Korean industrial relations, whose perspectives, goals, and processes are still being debated and argued. The Korean Industrial Relations Association (KIRA) was formed on March 25, 1990 and many other academic and practitioner associations have also come into being since then. The future of industrial relations as a field of study in Korea does not seem bright, however. Issues regarding organized labor are losing attention because of a steadily shrinking unionization rate, changing societal attitude toward labor unions, and the enactment of new and improved laws and regulations regarding employment relationships more broadly. Thus, we suggest that emerging issues such as contingent workers, works councils and tripartite partnership, conflict management, and human rights will be addressed by the field of industrial relations in Korea only if this field breaks with its traditional focus on union and union–management relations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how military strategic knowledge managers consider and respond to digitalization of operational processes in their revision of military knowledge management technologies. The research question is: which strategic considerations and professional concerns impact decisions about how far digitalization should be incorporated into Army planning doctrine?

The paper presents material from a qualitative research study which observed the process of revising Danish Army Field Manual III. The empirical data include 12 in-depth interviews as well as documents related to the revision process. Data were analysed using a thematic approach.

The paper identifies and discusses strategic dilemmas arising from incorporating digitalization into planning doctrine. Two major areas of concern are addressed. The first involves considerations about the extent of digitalization, including concerns about risk and issues of timing regarding choices of specific digital solutions. The second involves potential limits of digitalization in relation to military notions of the role and identity of the commander. The article suggests that digitalization may impact on professional roles and identities and that strategic knowledge management developers need to be cognizant of this.

The paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, the paper draws attention to the notions of risk and timing in relation to strategic decisions on how far knowledge management technologies should make use of possibilities brought about by digitalization. Second, the paper provides insight into how digitalization may profoundly alter professional roles and identities.