South and North Korea

I have always wondered why theres a South and a North Korea.

What happened to Korea? According to history, it was a result of war,
specifically the Cold War. Now, they are different in many aspects.
Based on research, South Korea, over 40 years, has made
enormous growth and global incorporation to transform into a hightech industrialized economic country while North Korea, one of the
world's most centrally engaged and least open economies, faces
constant economic problems. North Koreas technology walks far
behind that of Souths.
South Korea currently runs to be the 12th largest economy. South
Korea accepted plentiful financial improvements succeeding the crisis,
including larger openness to overseas investment and importations.
The South Korean economy's perpetual challenges contains rapid
population growth, fixed labour market, supremacy over large
corporations, and huge dependence on exportations.
Large scale military expenditure causes the North Koreas
resources needed for consumption and investment to run out. Norths
industrial and power output have deteriorated over the years.
Recurrent weather-related crop catastrophes intensified long-lasting
food scarcities caused by on-going general difficulties, together with
lack of arable terrestrial, combined farming practices, deprived soil
class and inadequate fertilization, and tireless shortages of tractors
and fuel.
While the south focuses their industry on electronics,
telecommunications, automobile production, chemicals, shipbuilding,
steel. The north concentrates on military products, machine building,
electric power, mining, metallurgy, textiles, food processing and etc.
Now The North Korean government frequently climaxes its
objective of being a "strong and prosperous" country inviting foreign
investment, this is a big factor for improving their overall standard of
living.
North Korea stands to be a Communist state one-man
dictatorship type of government while the South Korea is a republic
country. North has 9 provinces and 2 municipalities while South has 9
provinces, 6 metropolitan cities, 1 special city, and 1 special selfBy:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

governing city. North Koreas Kim Jung Uns election is unopposed while
prime minister appointed by president with consent of National
Assembly is made in South.
North Koreas Legal system is a civil law system based on the
Prussian model, a system influenced by Japanese traditions and
Communist legal theory, while the South has a mixed legal system
combining European civil law, Anglo-American law, and Chinese
classical thought.
Human rights in South Korea have evolved significantly from the
days of military dictatorship and reflects the state's current status as a
constitutional
democracy.
Citizens
now
regularly
choose
the President and members of the National Assembly in free and fair
multiparty elections. Every citizen over the age of 21 has the right to
vote. Censorship is more notable in the media.
Human rights in North Korea are severely limited. Basically, there
is no right to free speech, and the only radio, television, music and
news providers that are deemed legal are those operated by the
government. Citizens cannot freely leave the country. North Korea's
human rights record is among the worst in the world and has been
globally condemned.
Education in South
Korea is
provided
by
both public
schools and private schools. Both types of schools receive funding from
the government, although the amount that the private schools receive
is less than the amount of the state schools. Academic success is
often a source of pride for families and within South Korean society at
large. Graduating from a top university is the ultimate marker of high
status, future socioeconomic status, marriage prospects, and
employment prospects. Gradually going to other countries perhaps.
Education
in
the North
Korea is general
and
state
funded schooling by the government. The national literacy rate for
citizens 15 years of age and older is over 99 percent. Children go
through one year of kindergarten, four years of primary education, six
years of secondary education, and then on to universities, And then
working for their country.
But when Children and young adults who defect to South Korea
from the Stalinist North often face a long battle in adapting to life and
By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

education in a capitalist country, educators say. Since many arrive in

the South having spent several years without schooling in a third
country. Many people wanted to escape the North Korea. This may be
caused by the harsh development forced in every citizen.
Their human rights affects the economy a lot. If the improvement
of human well-being, central to all human rights, including the right to
development, is threatened by the harsh governance. It will cause
financial crisis, many people will lose access to work, affordable food,
housing, water and other basic necessities, since it affects human
productivity and motivation.
Well, North Koreas a bit scary now but it is a developing country
and being helped by the nations united. South Korea is, as you may
say, advanced but they have their own problems. Each country has
their own highlights so lets not judge one another.

Engineering

Lets think for a moment about our day. We were woken up by our
alarm clock, brushed our teeth with a fine toothpaste, bathe on a cold
shower, clothed on the best suit, rode on a fast jeepney, wrote an
assignment on a laptop in a tall building in our school, played some games
on the internet and walked home to sleep in a very comfortable bed. Well,
how is this all possible anyway?
Most of it come from Engineering. What is it anyway? Basically, I think
it involves the design of engines, buildings, machines and structures. But
technically, it is the application of mathematical, scientific, economic, social
and practical knowledge for the design, invention, building, maintenance and
improvement of materials, structures, machines, tools and etc.
In simple words, anything that is built must first be engineered, or
planned out. But first engineers identify a problem, and come up with a
solution and maybe creates something completely new along the way. But in
solving something, the engineering design a process which is a sequence of
steps that engineers use to guide them.
By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

Engineering is hard though. Thats why its worked as a team. Many

types of engineering must be performed to design and build a complicated
system such as a spacecraft. For example, a spacecraft has electrical,
mechanical, electronic and communications, propeller and structural designs,
and also the fuel maybe provided by mining engineers. All these distinct
systems must be calculated and designed before the whole spacecraft can
work. Others may not be mentioned but theres civil, metallurgical, ceramics,
chemical, aeronautical and other engineering. Each one play a huge role in
creating a particular structure or systems that is currently working today.
Most people think engineering is about infrastructures. Well thats in
the past, now engineering is also acknowledged as a direction or control that
opens up opportunities and creates technology and products that help make
our lives easier. Thats what we all want, an easier life.
Some people just accept how things work and move on but I was told
one time that Engineers always want to know how and why things work.
Indeed, they know how and why things work, which is why they know how to
improve it, to propose a better way.
While the country provide certain resources and energy, Engineering,
perhaps, helps a lot in the optimum conversion of the provided resources. In
other words Engineers come up with the best way to reconstruct specific
resources by calculating in order to create a system or structure, even
beyond expected results.
Our country is very abundant in resources, including the people, thats
why many people here wants to be engineers. It is very hard, yes, but very
satisfying. Thats what they say.
In the simplest way, Engineering combines the fields of science and
maths to solve real world problems that improve the world around us and
make our lives easier.

Economics

A student walked into his class to learn about economics, but he

doesnt know about it yet, he might have hear something like,
economics is the study of money or getting rich. Or economics is what
will happen to the stock market. Well, they might put it that way of
other people. But thats not it. What is it anyway?
By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

Basically, we all have needs or desire, we want that something.

But not all things are provided easily, all resources are not infinite.
Some may be abundant but some maybe inadequate. All we can do is
to have a choice of what is better in the provided supply. All the same
for the supplier, of whether to produce a new or not. Like should the
phone maker make a new design of the phone, well it depends on what
people want. What the majority choose to desire? Or like in bigger
thinking, when should a country have debts? When is the right time?
There are so many questions we make of what is better. Now heres
economics.
I think economics is the study people and choices. On how people
get their income and how they use it. Yes, it studies something about
wealth. For example, a high school graduate deciding whether to go to
college, how college affects their income, will it be beneficial?
Technically it is the study of scarce resources that have an alternative
or better way of use. Scarcity is the tension between infinite wants and
finite resources. Scarcity means we must have a choice. But
alternatives do not come just one. People create alternative solutions,
many solutions. Thats why we have now a choice ourselves of what is
better.
Economics helps us describe and analyze a certain production,
distribution and consumption of goods and services. Deduces a
possible problem and calculates for a solution. It helps us decide
whether the benefit outweigh the cost. Since everything has a cost, we
want it badly but we cant get it, is there an alternative? Theres
always an alternative. We analyze the cost of production, do we get
much profit as we distribute? When we buy something, did we become
that much satisfied over the money we spent?
Economics helps us choose which is safer (safety first right?),
whether which gamble gives us more life expectancy, more health
insurances. Or even environmental benefits. Does it cause pollution?
Does it destroy the healthiness of our area? Should we plant some
more?
The maximum amount of goods and services an economy can
turn out when it is most efficientthat is, at full capacity might be the
maximum economy operation. The situation in which it is impossible to
generate a larger welfare total from the available resources.
By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

In short, economics is another tool that makes our lives easier,

safer and better.
Science
When we meet a stranger, we show no care of who he was or what he
is doing. Until his activity concerns us. We are aware of the situation yet it is
unknown to us. But for us thinkers, we tend to be curious of what is
unknown. Is it unfavourable to us? Or does it cause problems? Or maybe,
does it harm us? There are so many questions we think every day if we have
something we are not informed with.
Now here comes science. Humans exert a lot of effort just to
understand what is unknown. I think Science is a human activity which helps
understand the natural and physical world better. And we do this by studying
the natural or physical world by observing or experimenting. Like observing a
natural happening occurring in one place and its behaviour from time to
time. We do the observations without prejudice for or we accept all the
possible results easily. Collecting the unbiased results and analysed for
truthful conclusions. Most of the people do a step by step method for an
organized and precise outcomes like us engineering people.
Even if we havent witnessed an undetermined phenomena, we
became curious and form our own ideas of what will happen, or we create
our own hypothesis. And then we conduct experiment to verify our
hypothesis, Perhaps a systematic experiment to simulate natural processes
with, of course, controlled conditions to generate a detailed and accurate
results.
But for some people, when they think about science, its the
mathematics, physics, biology and etc., just information provided to be
informed, to be knowledgeable, and to be not ignorant of what will happen.
And some students think its just some ideas imposed to them just to pass
something, Just to have an accomplishment of what they do.
Well, theyre not wrong. It is indeed a lot helpful. It makes us walk our
daily lives confidently, aware of the problems and danger lurking behind the
shadows. Like when we discovered cure for illnesses, preventing us from
dying and separating us from our loved ones. And we formed our civilization,
creating roads and better shelter, safe from unwanted beings. Building better
communications, avoiding much fighting with our own kin (well except for
the world wars, which was a major one). And weve named most of the
creatures in our planet, making it safer for us to make contact with each and
every one of them.
By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

In other words, it makes our lives easier to live without much fear or
the world. I guess its thanks to the people who contributed all their
discoveries to science.
However, our present science are just theories, it can never give an
absolute truth forever. We all know that a lot better statement or fact will be
manufactured in the future, it may be replaced since other people are
working on their own experiments to disprove the other. But our present
theories are the ultimate explanations available.
Well, some theory became scientific law. Which was thoroughly tested
and proven, and is accepted by majority. It becomes hard to disprove
anymore, or it may be impossible.
Today, we are living our lives peacefully, accepting knowledge, proving
and disproving hypotheses. Some people study and some people accept it. It
already became a norm for us, since its the best way. Thats science I guess.
Population Increase
A thousand years ago, there are only a third of a billion people living in
our planet. Today there are about 7 billion plus. How did we multiply so much
so fast? Of course thats normal now since people always reproduce. Long
ago some children barely survive to be adults. May be the death count per
year almost cancels out the birth count.
Now here comes medicine. If a person becomes sick, the family
worries. Thats why they treat him and prevent him from dying. Thats one
death cancelled out. Everyone does this thing of course. And so the death
count becomes less and less than the birth count as the time passes and the
technology develops.
Every person die of course, but more persons are born which then
multiplies to another. In just a few centuries, weve grown exponentially. Can
we hold out these population? Or will our planet become unsustainable in
time? Well, it all depends on how we manage our resources, on what we
choose to live.
Population increase causes poverty for a less productive or economic
country. Now thats a big problem indeed. But some people control birth. Like
the one child policy in china. Since the population of their country may be
too big for the country.
Here in our country, today we have almost a hundred million of
population making it the worlds twelfth most populous country, according to
research. Fertile women in the Philippines have, on average, 3.1 babies each. Well
given its size and increasing growth, the needs of the Philippines are enormous, the
By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91

education, health care, better sanitation and etc. As we are informed about daily
updates in our country, there are really a lot of problems being projected today. But
is population growth really the root cause of these problems and needs? Its for the
authority to figure that out.
In the recent years, there are a lot of disagreement whether to implement the
reproductive health bill. But I think that the current bill in the Philippines aims to
provide a roadmap for responsible parenthood. The Responsible Parenthood,
Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011, as this bill is
officially titled, is in essence an attempt to limit the growing population of the
Philippines through a selection of measures, most notably, a new sexual-education
program, greater access and distribution of contraceptives, and eventually,
government-funded abortion. Of course majority would attempt to disagree as our
country is at presently conservative one.
In Mindanao, we comprise about 25 percent of the countrys population with
an increasing 2.44 percent growth rate. With Davao having the highest population.
Most of the people here dont live at cities as this is a vastly agricultural land.
Compared to the other side of the Philippines, people here do not suffer from that
much starvation. Most of the people have work even theres a few job opportunities.
Here in Lanao del Norte, we have at least 600,000 of population with
population growth rate at 1.53 percent which is a decrease from before. Well I do
see a lot of children in the streets these days with no shelter, abandoned by their
former guardians. I can see that even if we have abundant resources, people tend
to live to a place of a lot and easy opportunities.
Population may always cause problems but people always find a better
choice. Its all economic in the end.

By:

Xyrex Calang
BS ECE
ES 91