Search results

This research is to investigate the effect of the improvement of investment environments with investment incentive on Korean national economy by looking into the foreign investment support system in Korea. To this end, first research model was set up based on our literary study and case study was conducted on 150 foreign companies that were located in industrial complex for foreign companies, received the tax benefit and government subsidization. And it was found that even though the foreign companies were contributing to the national economy in general such as in the area of production, export, employment, development of technology, there was no significant contributory difference between the investment incentive beneficiary and non‐beneficiary foreign companies. Therefore it deemed reasonable to reconsider the way Korean government supports foreign companies in Korea and to reinforce foreign companies’ relevance to national policy agenda with additional incentives to foreign companies located in comparatively less developed areas. As a way to promote foreign investment, promotion of investment infra such as improvement of follow‐up services, openness to foreign investment, industrial deregulations in capital area, revitalization of free economic zone, efficient system to promote foreign investment and the reinforcement of public relations were considered necessary, especially the upgrading of economic structure and the integrated management of domestic and foreign investors deemed necessary for the optimal distribution of the industries.

This chapter attempts to theorize the role of knowledge in the determination of the value of commodities. This draws from the South Korean controversy on the value and price of information commodities such as computer software and digital music. One group of writers has argued that the value of software copies (=commodities) is contributed by the labor time expended to produce the source code (=knowledge) in a piecemeal fashion. For another group, the source code has nothing to do with the production of the value of copies given that the source code is unnecessary for the (re)production of copies, and thus the value of software copies is approximately zero and its price is a high monopoly price. Both approaches are flawed. In the case of the former, no value can actually be transferred from the source code to copies because no changes are made to the source code before or after the production of copies. In case of the latter, knowledge is viewed as having nothing to do with value production. On the basis of this critique, an alternative view is put forward, in which knowledge plays an important role in value production by determining the productivity and/or complexity of labor. Knowledge “virtually intensifies” labor. It is also argued that intellectual property rights should be theorized in a way to refine and reproduce the role of knowledge – the virtual intensification of labor – at more complex and concrete levels of analysis.