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Gross domestic product grew 0.7% from the previous quarter, down from the 1.6% expansion seen at the end of 2007. Falling exports were largely to blame for the quarterly slowdown along with weak consumer spending. President Lee Myung-bak took office in February promising to boost annual growth to 7% - it grew 5% in 2007. The investment bank Goldman Sachs said it was keeping its growth forecast for the full year at 4.8% despite the weak quarterly figures. It predicted the government's programme of tax-cuts and deregulation would boost growth while the weak currency would help exporters. Inflation figures were also released on Friday, with consumer prices rising 3.9% in the year to the end of March. That figure is above the government's target of between 2.5% and 3.5% for the fourth month running.

REQUIREMENTS TO OBTAIN VISA TO ENTER SOUTH KOREA Requirements for U.S. Citizens, Tourist or Business TravelRequirements for U.S. Official or Diplomatic Passport HoldersRequirements for U.S. Military DependentsRequirements for Non-US Citizens Applying in USA

oting has begun across South Korea in parliamentary elections that observers say are critical to the country's economic and political future. The elections come amid now-robust economic performance, as well as on the heels of the announcement of improved ties with North Korea. Rival candidates made last-ditch appeals for votes as the world focused on the first-ever summit between the two Koreas.

Another pressing issue for Kim's 2-year-old government is the reform of South Korea's inefficient economic systems, especially its family-owned conglomerates, or chaebol. About a dozen of the conglomerates collapsed under debts in 1997, forcing South Korea to accept a record $58 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund.

President Kim has publicly said reunions of those separated family members will top the agenda. Only 50 people from each Korea were allowed to cross the border in 1985 for the first temporary family reunions. No further reunions have since been arranged because of military and political tensions. The Korean border, the world's most heavily armed, is sealed with nearly 2 million troops deployed on both sides.

Family welfare is much more important than the needs of the individual.

Meeting Etiquette

Wait to be introduced at a social gathering.

current research interests include real interest rates in Korea

1) the period of Malthusian stagnation up to 1910, when Japan annexed Korea; 2) the colonial period from 1910-45, when the country embarked upon modern economic growth; and 3) the post colonial decades, when living standards improved rapidly in South Korea, while North Korea returned to the world of disease and starvation.

IN THE FIRST THREE decades after the Park Chung Hee government launched the First Five-Year Economic Development Plan in 1962, the South Korean economy grew enormously and the economic structure was radically transformed. South Korea's real gross national product (GNP) expanded by an average of more than 8 percent per year, from US$2.3 billion in 1962 to US$204 billion in 1989. Per capita annual income grew from US$87 in 1962 to US$4,830 in 1989. The manufacturing sector grew from 14.3 percent of the GNP in 1962 to 30.3 percent in 1987. Commodity trade volume rose from US$480 million in 1962 to a projected US$127.9 billion in 1990. The ratio of domestic savings to GNP grew from 3.3 percent in 1962 to 35.8 percent in 1989.

Over the last three decades, the Republic of Korea has achieved what is widely acclaimed as "the economic miracle on the Hang-gang River." Since Korea embarked on economic development in earnest in 1962, its economy has grown at one of the fastest paces in the world. As a result, Korea, long one of the world's poorest agrarian societies, has emerged as an upper middle-income, fast-industrializing country.

1) the administrative structure of the system, (2) the choice about who would be covered, and (3) the policy for mobilizing financial resources for the system

intervened in Korean financial affairs, causing a dramatic increase in the NHI’s deficit, which then grew each year until 2002. When the government announced that NHI would separate