Dr. Park, Sung jun (Associate Research Fellow) has studied on changes in Korea-Japan and Korea-China bilateral relationships with the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) project, which is a big data service that offers various data collected and analyzed while monitoring the world’s broadcast, print and web news. In particular, major Korea-Japan/Korea-China conflicts and trade disputes in the late 2010s were compared with the GDELT data to find a pattern how those conflicts had been reflected in the GDELT, visualizing the aspect of international conflicts to ensure more intuitive observation and analysis.
According to the comparison made by Dr. Park, it was confirmed that the number of cases recorded in the GDELT database increased during the trade dispute, and negative tone was appeared in documents. Especially harsh languages were observed between Korea and Japan immediately after the South Korean Supreme Court’s ruling that workers used as forced labor by Japan during World War II were entitled to financial compensation and Japan’s restriction on the export of high-tech materials used in semiconductors and displays.
The number of verbal and material conflicts between two countries were elevated during the trade disputes. Verbal conflicts tended to increase upon the background events, such as the Supreme Court’s ruling on war-time forced labor and the THAAD system on the Korean Peninsula, while both verbal and material conflicts significantly boosted at the same time when “economic reprisal” had intensified the trade dispute.
“The GDELT database leads to more intuitive observations for changes in relations between Korea and major countries by visualizing conflict degree,” said Dr. Park. “I’m sure that GDELT will be of great help in the main study with its excellent visibility.”
* “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).
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