Recycling law for promotion of circular economy and its characteristics in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The circular economy is emerging as an economic form to solve economic, environmental, and social problems around the world. In this regard, various countries and regions of the world are making every effort to establish and implement circular economy strategies and action plans. This paper discusses the Recycling Law adopted in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and its characteristics. To this end, this paper examines the cases of legalization in various countries and regions around the world related to the circular economy and recycling and explains the contents and characteristics of the Recycling Law in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea concerning it. The findings are that (a) the more science and technology develop and the more complete the economic structure becomes, the more complete the legal environment related to the circular economy should become and (b) if the transition to the circular economy is to be implemented with strong obligations, the planning lever must be regulated as a legal obligation, and the state needs to use the planning lever to thoroughly implement circular economy-related goals and strategies. These findings can be used as a reference to prepare a legal environment for promoting the circular economy in countries pursuing the realization of a circular economy in a top-down way, and it will also help fill the gap in research on the legal environment for promoting the circular economy.

State Economic Strength and Some Methodological Issues on Its Assessment.

At present, many international organizations and scholars, who are aimed to compare and assess country-specific economy or competitiveness, have set different standards and indicators and tried to assess the economic strength of individual country. But most of these standards and indicators are for the assessment of individual aspects and what is worse, they are not suitable for the real situation of the countries concerned. This paper deals with methodological issues on the assessment of state economic strength. To this end, authors investigate the preceding studies on the assessment of economy of a given country, conceptualize the state economic strength, set a new system of indicators for assessing it and on this basis, produce a methodology for the synthetic assessment of state economic strength. The findings are that state economic strength must be defined in a view of economic capability which any country can exhibit by itself even under uncertain external environment, the indicators for assessing it include a variety of indicators in line with its essence, and assessment methodology must be synthetic one based on considering the weights of indicators. These findings may help, on the one hand, in assessing the economy of a given country and taking an economic and technical measures for its strengthening for policymakers, and on the other hand, in comparing and assessing the country-specific economy for organizations or scholars in a new perspective.