China has become the second largest economy since 2010. China’s economy is supported by the rapid growth of its automobile industry. The rapid growth of the automobile and tire industry will increase the natural rubber (NR) demand as its primary raw materials. Although as a significant producer, China cannot fulfill the consumption by its domestic production. Thus China relies heavily on import from Southeast Asia countries as the primary producers of natural rubber in the world. China and Southeast Asia are dependent on their economy in terms of the availability of natural rubber as raw materials. But the economic slowdown in China since 2008 is expected to affect the international trading between China and Southeast Asia countries. This research aims to analyze the determinants of NR export from Southeast Asia to China using panel data analysis. The results show NR price, exchange rate, and China’s economic slowdown significantly affect NR export to China, while Southeast Asian NR production has no significant effect. China as the main importer of NR from Southeast Asia has a big role in growing NR export in Southeast Asia. If China's economy doesn’t improve soon, it will affect the economy in Southeast Asia.

This paper examines the impact of financial integration on economic growth in Southeast Asia over the period 1993-2013. This paper further investigates whether the relationship depends on the level of financial and economic development, government corruption, and macroeconomic policy. These questions raise important issues both from a theoretical and a policy perspective. We employ the generalized methods of moment (GMM) in the dynamic panel estimation framework to analyse several factors, including initial income, initial schooling, financial development, inflation, trade openness, corruption, and financial crisis. The study further analyzes the data using the EGLS model to examine the consistency of the GMM model. We found that financial integration has a significant positive effect on economic growth in Southeast Asia. Our findings suggest that increasing financial integration could improve the productive capacity of the economy, including more investments and efficient allocation of capital, and thus enhancing economic growth in this region. More specifically, the results suggest that the government should work towards eliminating corruption and stabilizing macroeconomics in order to enhance financial integration and economic growth. This paper sheds new insights on a better evaluation of the past and present theorizing on the subject of financial integration and economic growth; especially, in Southeast Asia.

This experiment was carried out to compare the morphological traits of Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian(SEA) soybeans from RDA genebank. Days to flowering were ranged from 51 to 125 days with an average of 75 days. Those of China were the shortest with an average of 58 days and those of SEA were the longest with an average of 99 days. Growth days were the shortest with 94 days from China, and longest with 188 days from Korea and SEA. The 100 seed weight of soybeans was ranged from 3.4g to 46.4g, with an average 22.2g. The 100 seed weight was the lightest with an average 11.8g from SEA and the heaviest with an average 24.6g from Korea. In growth habit, over 50% of being collected from Korea, Japan and China were erect type, but 94% from SEA were intermediate type. The highest percentage of seed coat color was yellow(66.1%), followed by yellowing green(10.0%). As a result of cotyledon color in 760 black seed was 76.1% with yellow, 23.9% with green. Green cotyledon was much more in Korea(38.6%) and Japan(33.3%) than other countries. One thousand seven accessions from Korea, Japan, China and SEA were analyzed using 7 SSR markers. One hundred eighty alleles were detected with a lowest 16 at the Satt537 and a highest 35 at the Satt390. The average polymorphism information content(PIC) was 0.68, the highest with 0.7 in Japan. Gene diversity was the highest with 0.73 in China and Japan, while the lowest in SEA with 0.68.

To better understand the morphological variation of the Perilla crop and their weedy types in East and Southeast Asia, we studied the morphological variation of 90 accessions by examining 10 morphological characteristics, such as flowering time, seed size, seed hardness, seed color, color of surface leaf, color of reverse side leaf etc. As a result, morphological variation determined that between cultivated var. frutescens and var. crispa, and between cultivated var. frutescens and its weedy type showed significant morphological differences in terms of seed size and seed hardness, whenever cultivated var. crispa and its weedy type could not showed significant differences in most morphological characters. In PCAs (principal component analysis), among 10 morphological characteristics, flower color (QL6), color of surface leaf (QL3), seed size (QN2), seed hardness (QL1), seed color (QL2), stem color (QL7), and color of reverse side leaf (QL4) contributed in negative direction on the first axis, while flowering time (QN1), leaf shape (QL5), and degree of pubescence (QL8) contributed in positive direction on the first axis. Among these morphological characters, particularly flower color (QL6), color of surface leaf (QL3), seed size (QN2), seed hardness (QL1), and degree of pubescence (QL8) were useful characters for discrimination between cultivated var. frutescens and weedy var. crispa, and between cultivated var. frutescens and its weedy type. However, most accession of cultivated and weedy types of var. crispa was not clearly discriminated by PCA analyses. Although the wild ancestral species of var. frutescens and of var. crispa are still unknown in East and Southeast Asia, the weedy types of Perilla crop may be the key taxon for our understanding of the origin of cultivated types of var. frutescens and var. crispa.

This study was conducted to assess the genetic diversity and population structure of 70 amaranth accessions collected from South and Southeast Asia using 14 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. In total, 67 alleles were detected, with an average of 4.79 per locus. Rare alleles comprised a large portion (46.3%) of the detected alleles, and 29 unique alleles associated with rice accessions were also discovered. The mean major allele frequency (MAF), genetic diversity (GD) and polymorphic information content (PIC) of the 14 SSR loci were 0.77, 0.36, and 0.34, respectively. A model-based structural analysis revealed the presence of three subpopulations. The genetic relationships revealed by the neighbor-joining tree method were fairly consistent with the structure-based membership assignments for most of the accessions. All 70 accessions showed a clear relationship to each cluster without any admixtures. We observed a relatively low extent of genetic exchange within or among amaranth species from South and Southeast Asia. The genetic diversity results could be used to identify amaranth germplasms and so facilitate their use for crop improvement.

In this study, 18 simple sequence repeat (SSR) primer sets were used to analyze the genetic diversity, genetic relationships, and population structure among 96 accessions of the two cultivated types of Perilla crop and their weedy types in East and Southeast Asia. A total of 168 alleles were identified at all the loci with an average of 9.3 and a range between 3 and 18 alleles per locus. Of the 168 alleles, 21 alleles (12.5%) were private, 67 alleles (39.9%) were rare (frequency < 0.05), 96 alleles (57.1%) were detected at an intermediate frequency (range, 0.05 - 0.50), and five alleles (3.0%) were abundant (frequency > 0.50), respectively. The gene diversity values varied from 0.443 to 0.898 with an average of 0.749. The PIC values varied from 0.397 to 0.890 with an average of 0.721. The gene diversity of each locus for accessions of cultivated var. frutescens, weedy var. frutescens, cultivated var. crispa, and weedy var. crispa were respectively showed 0.662, 0.744, 0.540, and 0.584. On the analysis of population structure using software program STRUCTURE 2.2, the 96 Perilla accessions were divided into Groups I, II, and admixed group. The phylogenetic tree revealed that the 96 accessions cluster into three major groups. No clear geographic structure and also between two cultivated types of Perilla crop and their weedy types were detected. The present study has demonstrated the utility of SSR analysis for the study of genetic diversity, genetic relationships and population structure among 96 accessions of the two cultivated types of Perilla crop and their weedy types in East and Southeast Asia. In our study, SSR markers helped improve our understanding of the genetic diversity, genetic relationships, and population structure of the two cultivated types of P. frutescens and their weedy types in East and Southeast Asia.

본 연구는 동남아 각국에서 시행되고 있는 레저 스쿠버 잠수 인증 제도에 대한 자료를 수집하고, 잠수 현황 및 인증 현황을 비교하였다. 자료 수집을 위해 인터넷에 게시된 내용을 많이 활용하였고, 관련 문헌을 조사하였으며, 자료 보완을 위해 잠수 협회 관계자, 2007년 동남아 각국의 DIVE EXPO에 참가한 동남아 각국의 관공홍보 정부 관계자, 잠수 리조트 운영자 및 강사들과 폭 넓은 인터뷰를 하였다. 논문에는 인증 제도에 대한 이해를 돕기 위해 스쿠버 인증과 국제 표준의 관계에 대해서도 언급하였다. 조사 결과, 동남아 지역은 레저 스쿠버 잠수 활동이 매우 활발한 지역으로 관광 산업에서 중요한 부분을 차지하고 있었으며, 전 세계 레저 다이버 인증 숫자의 30% 이상을 차지하고 있는 큰 시장으로 발전되어 있었다. 그러나 스쿠버 잠수 활동이 구미 지역에서 도입되었고 잠수 단체의 총 본부가 구미 지역에 있는 만큼 잠수 제도나 정책 문제에 있어서 조직 체계상 아시아에서 주도적인 역할을 하기 어려운 구조이며, 현재 상태로는 개선책을 찾기가 매우 어려울 것으로 예상된다. 또한 동남아시아에서는 유럽이나 미국과 같이 국제 표준 제도와 협력하여 교육의 질을 높이기 위한 프로그램 도입 및 단체 결성에는 아직 무관심한 것으로 나타났지만 이에 대한 필요성이 곧 대두될 것으로 예측되고 있다.