Seminar overview
The first TCN International Seminar was held on December 26, 2025, at Souphanouvong University in Luang Prabang, Laos. The seminar brought together scholars and participants from Korea, Vietnam, and Laos for discussion across national and disciplinary boundaries.
Featured presentation
Market Economy from Transcultural Perspectives
Presenter: Wonjoon Kim
The presentation examined the market economy as a system shaped not only by prices and rational individual choice, but also by institutions, history, culture, trust, and relationships. It reviewed the strengths of mainstream economics while questioning its assumptions of perfectly rational actors, perfect competition, and a universal market model.
Main themes
- The limits of the rational economic agent and perfectly competitive market assumptions
- Behavioral and neuroeconomic accounts of emotion, bias, and bounded rationality
- Institutional and historical approaches to markets, including transaction costs and the role of government
- The influence of legal systems, social norms, historical development, and cultural values on real market economies
Comparative perspectives
The presentation compared four distinct market economy systems:
- United States: a free-market model shaped by individualism, private enterprise, and pragmatic state intervention
- Germany: a social market economy that combines competition with welfare and social protection
- China: a socialist market economy in which market mechanisms operate under strong state and party direction
- South Korea: a development-oriented market economy formed through state-led industrialization and export growth
Toward a transcultural market economy
The presentation proposed viewing the market as a multi-layered cultural structure:
- An exchange layer, where prices and quantities are coordinated
- An institutional layer, formed by laws, regulations, organizations, and public policy
- A cultural meaning layer, shaped by trust, identity, honor, and relationships
From this perspective, market norms change through contact, translation, hybridization, and institutionalization across cultures. A transcultural market economy is therefore not a single model exported worldwide, but a process through which different cultural and institutional traditions interact and create new forms of economic coordination.
Conclusion
The presentation argued that market economy theory should move beyond one-size-fits-all assumptions. More realistic analysis requires an interdisciplinary framework that integrates human behavior, institutions, history, and culture, while recognizing the diversity of market systems and the transformations brought by globalization, artificial intelligence, and climate change.