• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.503-521
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• 2017

Demands in a sustainable coffee certification program have increased steadily in the global coffee market. Along with this trend, recently the introduction of sustainable coffee certification programs in Vietnam has increased significantly. However, Vietnam's the coffee certification programs led by a single state-owned company, which is called Vinacafe, shows some differentiations from other sustainable coffee programs certified in other countries. The structure of exclusive decision-making in Vinacafe has been interfered with economic impacts in accordance with the introduction of sustainable coffee certification programs in Vietnam. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify changes in and limits of the value chain of the coffee industry with the introduction of Vietnam's sustainable coffee certification program by investigating the case of Vinacafe. To this end, the research has attempted 1) to concern with the role of Vinacafe in the process of growth in the coffee industry in central highland of Vietnam, 2) to analyze changes stemmed from the introduction of Vinacafe's sustainable coffee certification programs, and 3) to examine the limits to the introduction of sustainable coffee certification programs in Vietnam. As a result, it found out that Vinacafe subsidiaries shifted the losses resulted in the payment of additional environmental costs to produce sustainable certification coffee onto coffee farmers depended on Vinacafe subsidiaries, because the price of premium emerged from supports for certificated coffee production has not been guaranteed by Vinacafe mother firm.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.146-153
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• 2009

The year 2008 was a hard year for Korea's construction companies. The real estate downturn resulted in halting new construction and stopping existing work, and inflation of global oil prices caused price hikes in rebar and concrete materials. As a solution to reducing the budget, the newly appointed government announced plans to increase low cost bid contracts from 10 billion to 30 billion won. When such economical and political factors negatively impact the construction market, projects based on low cost contracts are the hardest hit. Many problems already inherent in low cost bid contracts become accentuated. Consequently, this provides an opportune time to actually study and analyze the issues in these projects. This paper introduces the findings made from investigating four projects struggling to make ends meet in the year 2008. Results show that flow of cash (i.e., liquidity), or lack thereof, was the root cause which in turn was hampered by failed mechanisms for design changes, material inflation. Attributing cash flow risk to the bottom of the production structure (i.e., small business subcontractors) was also a problem within the industry. Contractors need a better way to prepare against material price fluctuations, and owners need to assist in expediting payment during times of extreme downturn.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1-9
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• 2016

Railroad bridges account for 25% of the entire high-speed rail network. Railway bridges are subject to gradual structural degradation or fatigue accumulation due to consistent and repeating excitation by fast moving trains. Wireless sensing technology has opened up a new avenue for bridge health monitoring owing to its low-cost, high fidelity, and multiple sensing capability. On the other hand, measuring the transient response during train passage is quite challenging that the current wireless sensor system cannot be applied due to the intrinsic time delay of the sensor network. Therefore, this paper presents a framework for monitoring such transient responses with wireless sensing systems using 1) real-time excessive vibration monitoring through ultra-low-power MEMS accelerometers, and 2) post-event time synchronization scheme. The ultra-low power accelerometer continuously monitors the vibration and trigger network when excessive vibrations are detected. The entire network of wireless smart sensors starts sensing through triggering and the post-event time synchronization is conducted to compensate for the time error on the measured responses. The results of this study highlight the potential of detecting the impact load and triggering the entire network, as well as the effectiveness of the post-event time synchronized scheme for compensating for the time error. A numerical and experimental study was carried out to validate the proposed sensing hardware and time synchronization method.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.47-75
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• 2023

Compared to the EU, which legislates the Carbon Border Adjustment System (CBAM), the United States' carbon border adjustment policy movement is still relatively slow. Recently, however, a related bill has been proposed in the United States, and research institutes have been presenting research results on how to introduce an upstream carbon tax rather than an emission trading system and carry out carbon border adjustment based on it. Therefore, in this study, we looked at the economic and environmental effects of introducing this type of upstream carbon tax and carbon border adjustment in Korea. If an upstream carbon tax of KRW 30,000 per ton of CO₂ is applied to the net supply of domestic fossil energy, the expected carbon tax revenue is approximately KRW 22.9961 trillion, equivalent to about 5.7% of the total revenue of the Korean government of KRW 402 trillion in 2019. In addition, the carbon dioxide content of the steel sector, calculated based on the energy supply and demand status of the steel sector, which emits the most greenhouse gas emissions in Korea and has a considerable amount of overseas exports, was 106.22 million tons of CO₂. On the other hand, assuming that the upstream carbon tax of 30,000 won per ton of CO₂ embodied is directly passed on to the production cost of the steel sector, the carbon tax burden in the steel sector is estimated to reach approximately KRW 3.1865 trillion. Even after deducting KRW 1.1599 trillion in export refunds estimated by using the share of exports of steel products, the net carbon tax burden on steel products for domestic demand amounts to KRW 2.0266 trillion, which is analyzed to act as a factor in increasing the price of steel products.