Word: koreas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tall. He was a weight lifter, and is still devoted to fitness: he jogs every day at 5 a.m. and is an ardent skydiver. Ramos went on to earn a master's degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois. As a young officer he saw combat in Korea and Viet Nam, but it is said he has no taste for bloodletting. With his sound military record and family connections, Ramos rose to become Deputy Chief of Staff in 1981 under General Fabian Ver, a Marcos crony...
...Japan's troubles can be traced to the yen. Some of the country's older industries, including steel, shipbuilding and coal mining have been declining for the better part of a decade. One reason: they face fierce competition from what economists call the newly industrialized countries, like South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil. The NICs compete largely by paying lower wages. The average hourly salary of a South Korean steelworker, for example, is one-sixth the level of his Japanese counterpart...
...year's end. One 90-year-old shipbuilder, Hakodate Dock, was once the largest employer in the city of Hakodate. Now the company has no orders at all for next year and beyond. In shipbuilding, as in steel, the most forceful challenge comes from South Korea, whose currency, unlike the yen, is pegged to the dollar. South Korea's share of world shipping is expected to climb by year's end from 10.7% to 28.4%, while Japan's portion will drop from 49% to 41%. Says Kazuichi Murai, director of planning at the Shipbuilders' Association of Japan: "It's warfare...
Japanese manufacturers, for their part, are maneuvering to meet the challenges that have been posed by a strong yen and weakening exports. Companies are increasingly purchasing parts from low-cost foreign suppliers or & moving production to such cheap-labor countries as South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Many manufacturers are opening plants in the U.S., in part to avoid restraints imposed on imports...
Finally, U.S. observers speculate that North Korea's poor economic performance and military buildup could have led to an internal political rift. In the past decade Kim has more than doubled the size of the North Korean army, from 409,000 to 885,000 men, turning it into the world's sixth largest fighting force. Meanwhile, North Korea has fallen into arrears on its foreign debt of some $2 billion. The country achieved only about half of the growth called for in its last long-term economic plan (1978-84), and has yet to produce a new one. Both...