Search results for ""asia/pacific research center, div of the institute for international studies""

Demographic transition, along with the economic and geopolitical re-emergence of Asia, are two of the largest forces shaping the twenty-first century, but little is known about the implications for innovation. The countries of East Asia have some of the oldest age structures on the planet: between now and 2050, the population that is age 65 and older will increase to more than one in four Chinese, and to more than one in three Japanese and Koreans. Other economies with younger populations, like India, face the challenge of fully harnessing the “demographic dividend” from large cohorts in the working ages.This book delves into how such demographic changes shape the supply of innovation and the demand for specific kinds of innovation in the Asia-Pacific. Social scientists from Asia and the United States offer multidisciplinary perspectives from economics, demography, political science, sociology, and public policy; topics range from the macroeconomic effects of population age structure, to the microeconomics of technology and the labor force, to the broader implications for human well-being. Contributors analyze how demography shapes productivity and the labor supply of older workers, as well as explore the aging population as consumers of technologies and drivers of innovations to meet their own needs, as well as the political economy of spatial development, agglomeration economies, urban-rural contrasts, and differential geographies of aging.

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As the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights from 2009 to 2017, Ambassador Robert R. King led efforts to ensure that human rights were an integral part of U.S. policy with North Korea. In Patterns of Impunity, he traces U.S. involvement and interest in North Korean human rights, from the adoption of the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004—legislation which King himself was involved in and which called for the creation of the special envoy position—to his own negotiations with North Korean diplomats over humanitarian assistance, discussions that would ultimately end because of the death of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un’s ascension as Supreme Leader, as well as continued nuclear and missile testing.Beyond an in-depth overview of his time as special envoy, Ambassador King provides insights into the United Nations’ role in addressing the North Korean human rights crisis, including the UN Human Rights Council’s creation of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK in 2013–14, and discussions in the Security Council on North Korea human rights.King explores subjects such as the obstacles to getting outside information to citizens of one of the most isolated countries in the world; the welfare of DPRK defectors, and how China has both abetted North Korea by returning refugees and enabled the problem of human trafficking; the detaining of U.S. citizens in North Korea and efforts to free them, including King’s escorting U.S. citizen Eddie Jun back from Pyongyang in 2011; and the challenges of providing humanitarian assistance to a country with no formal relations with the United States and where separating human rights from politics is virtually impossible.

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