Someday, I wanted to create an easy economics book for people who aren't preparing for the higher civil service exam.
It is truly remarkable that this hope has finally come to light in this book after such a long time.
This book is not a study guide for the higher civil service exam.
This book was created to help middle and high school students understand economic news more easily, and to help college students and the general public understand what economics is.
Of course, it may also help you read more easily economics-related texts that appear on the College Scholastic Ability Test or the Law School Admissions Test.

It has already been well over 20 years since I began teaching economics and international economics to students preparing for various higher civil service examinations.
I still vividly remember the confusion I felt when I first encountered economics after entering the Department of Economics.
It wasn't easy to learn the mathematical approaches that kept appearing, including unfamiliar expressions that are rarely used in everyday life.
These memories greatly helped me understand the similar feelings my students might be experiencing when I first started teaching, and they became the foundation for me to devise teaching methods that would make learning economics as accessible as possible for students.

Someday, I wanted to create an easy economics book for people who aren't preparing for the higher civil service exam.
It is truly remarkable that this hope has finally come to light in this book after such a long time.
This book is not a study guide for the higher civil service exam.
This book was created to help middle and high school students understand economic news more easily, and to help college students and the general public understand what economics is.
Of course, it may also help you read more easily economics-related texts that appear on the College Scholastic Ability Test or the Law School Admissions Test.

There are a total of 38 topics covered in this book.
Among them, 16 topics are related to microeconomics, 15 topics are related to macroeconomics, and 7 topics are related to international economics.
Economics is broadly divided into three fields.

Microeconomics is a field that deals with the choices that constantly arise in our daily lives.
That is, it is a field that studies whether the choices we make are rational choices.
For example, when I go to the supermarket today and choose what to buy or whether to buy this or that, the field of study that deals with which choices are rational is microeconomics.
Macroeconomics, on the other hand, can be thought of as the study of the large-scale outcomes that result from the choices that individuals like us make.
If our choices determine which products sell well and which don't, industries that produce the best-selling products will see increased production and more jobs, while industries that don't sell well will see the opposite.
The study of these things is macroeconomics.

Whether the US raises or lowers interest rates is a major topic of news, but why are US interest rates even on our news? Because they're a crucial event in our lives.
In other words, the economic situations of countries around the world are interconnected, so economic events in one country affect other economies.
The field that studies economic phenomena that cross borders is international economics.

I considered including more topics, but was worried that doing so would obscure the purpose of this book, so I eliminated many topics and left only the bare minimum, resulting in 38 topics.
Some of the topics presented include light quizzes that can be easily solved.
I hope you enjoy solving it.

If readers of this book find themselves recalling something they've read in this book while reading an article or reading a book, and if they feel a sense of joy from it, I hope this book has done at least half of its job.

I received help from many people during the process of conceiving and writing this book.
Friends who play important roles in various fields of society, as well as secretaries, officials, and diplomats who took my classes, gave me a lot of advice on the book's content and direction.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of them.

2025

Hwang Jong-hyu

--- From the introductory text