• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.341-366
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• 2013

The term, Mittelstand, has no exact english translation for the definition, but, today, Mittelstand refers to small and medium-sized enterprises(SME), mostly family-owned firms in Germany. The Mittelstand is called the backbone of the German economy because it drove the economic miracle after World War II. During the global recession and the euro zone's debt crisis in recent years, in which european businesses have faced the near-collapse of competitiveness particularly in manufacturing, the German exports are booming and exceeded exports of China in 2012. Most importantly, the Germany economic performance has been widely attributed to the strength of the Mittelstand. Many of countries, even some leading public companies are seeking to emulate the success of the Mittelstand. Investors evaluate that many of Germany's investable "hidden champions" are Mittelstand companies. The purpose of this study is to present some of answers to the following questions: Firstly, what makes the German Mittelstand so successful? Secondly, what does the success of the German Mittelstand mean for the Korean SMEs in global competitiveness? Thirdly, what Korean government has to do improve the global competitiveness of the Korean SMEs? Some discussions in this study mention the managerial implications for Korean exporting SMEs particularly in manufacturing. Several factors that account for the success of the German Mittelstand are technological excellence and the tradition of family-owned management, concentration on niche market and globalization, and institutional supports. There are some of important lessons to be learned from the German Mittelstand. If the purposes of Korean SMEs want to remain in the sustainable competitive advantage and withstand unforeseen economic turbulences in the future, they must be able to meet the followings: 1) Technology that meets the global standard or exceeding it 2) Competitiveness in price in the global market 3) Active involvement in the globalization process, utilizing various entry modes Innovative products at globally competitive price are a crucial point for Korean exporting SMEs to achieve their competitive edge over others in the target markets abroad. It is time for Korean SMEs to cultivate a core competence in manufacturing in order to position Korea as a global manufacturing hub with SMEs leading.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.95-124
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• 2009

This study aims to introduce greenhouse gas emission trading in Korea as a highly cost-effective mechanism for controlling emissions. The Basic Act on Low-Carbon Green Growth will cover methods of emissions allocation, national inventory, and trading systems (i.e. emissions trading platforms, national registry,and clearing and settlement platforms). The Korean emission scheme will be based on the Korean Climate Change Act proposed by the National Assembly and Government with a cap-and-trade scheme. The national allowances will be allocated by the hybrid system. To establish the national inventory, TRADEMARKS (Telemetering System) and emissions factors are effective for greenhouse gas emissions measurement. It will likewise be effective for the national registry to be implemented via a Korean Integrated Registry, the emissions trading platform via the KRX (Korean Exchange), and the clearing and settlement platform via the KSD (Korean Securities Depository). In other words, the KRX will manage product development and marketing for Korean Carbon Financial Instruments (including commodities, futures, and options contracts) listed and admitted to trading on the KRX. All emissions trades will be standardized and cleared by the KSD.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.401-420
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• 2016

This study aims to investigate the changes in the occupational structure of employment in Korea during the last three decades, in which have transformed from industrialized economy to knowledge-based economy very rapidly as well as having experiences of both IMF and financial crisis. For this purpose, we analyze the trends occupational distribution and the socio-demographic characteristics of the occupational structure of employment since 1980. By applying correspondence analysis of Multidimensional Scaling(MDS) methods, we examine the inter-relationships between the employed persons by occupation and their characteristics such as gender, age group, educational attainment, industry, region. We found the occupational structure of Korea has been changed dramatically with the socio-economic transformations during the last four decades. In particular, the occupational (job) structure has been highered in general. However, it has also been dualized extremely into two groups, one is the specialized-skilled-white color jobs and the other is the simple-unskilled-blue color jobs. The results of this study could be utilized as the importation basis for the provision of labour supply and employment policy plan at the national level as well as at the local level.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.287-305
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• 2016

This study confirms that there is a correlation between managers' incentive-compensation system(introduction of the compensation committee) and corporate governance mechanisms (ownership structure, proportion of outside directors, debt ratio, competitive strength), and analyzes whether firm value is affected by corporate governance mechanisms. The purpose of this paper are empirically tested using 318 firm-year data listed on the KRX from 2001 to 2010 and 2SLS(two-stage least square method) were used for the analysis of the hypotheses. The results of empirical tests are as follows. Firstly, there is no correlation between introduction of the compensation committee and corporate governance mechanisms. In addition, the results show that there is a causal relationship between some variables. Secondly, results from the analysis of the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on firm value, only introduction of the compensation committee and foreign investors ownership were analyzed as a positive impact on the firm value. This result means that most domestic firm don't actively used for managers' incentive-compensation system as a useful control device for improving corporate governance.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.289-309
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• 2013

Social enterprise has moved from periphery to take center stage. Social enterprises are a truly global phenomenon and associated with solving social problems with business approaches. While the numbers of social enterprises have grown and their impact is likely to continue to do so, it would be dangerous to assume that the revolutionary momentum will automatically continue, because social enterprise faced sustainability challenges. This study collected the data from directory of Korean Social Enterprise to conduct a quantitative research on the growth of social enterprise in South Korea. This study conducted longitudinal analysis of 491 social enterprise certified between 2007 and 2010, of economic performance with financial index and social impact with employment structure. Though global financial crisis, Korean social enterprises show that there is a considerable increase in all of quantitative and qualitative aspects. Korean social enterprises have provided meaningful work to those normally excluded from the labour market and tried to raise their life of working. In the future, Korean social enterprises should find a way to balance social and financial performance and ensure the sustainability of the business.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.123-140
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• 2016

This study investigates whether tax subsidy is associated with the information effect of future earnings (Future Earnings Response Coefficient, hereafter 'FERC'). Prior studies related with tax subsidy suggest that high- tax subsidy is associated with high-Conservatism. And high-tax subsidy is associated with low-information asymmetry. The hypothesis is tested by using sample firms listed on the Korean Stock Exchange from the year of 2002 to the year of 2009 inclusively. We followed methodology of Tucker and Zarowin (2006). We find that the regression coefficient for tax $subsidy{\times}X_{t3}$ shows a significant positive sign. Also, we performed additional test after controlling for variables related with FERC. The regression coefficient for tax $subsidy{\times}X_{t3}$ is consistent with main results. This result means that the changes in the current stock price of higher-tax subsidy contain more information about their future earnings than the changes in the stock price of lower-abnormal audit hours. The evidence suggests that investors positively understand high-tax subsidy.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.3491-3498
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to identify demand of fusion education in the field of architecture and urban, according to architecture and urban market changing, product changing, increasing fusion education demand. We conducted online surveys targeting construction and non construction field practitioners so that we want to identify consumer's needs about fusion education in the field of architecture and urban. Research findings can be summarized in three parts. First, practitioners need to fuse business-related majors (Frequency changing ratio : financing(716.7%), management(633.3%), planning(454.5%) etc.) and traditional majors. Second, the survey results show that 79 percent of those questioned were in favor of switching the cyber and off-line operation methods for fusion education. They require the complementary education system between off-line and cyber education based on education accessability. Third, the survey results show that 70.9 percent of those questioned were in favor of limited freestyle(Freedom of choices without required subjects). The curriculum should be arranged according to the flow of construction business process including fusion subjects.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.12-20
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• 2016

With the enhancements in existing major industries, cloud computing-based converging services have been created, as well as value-added industries. A variety of converging services are now provided, from personalized services up to industrial services. In Korea, they have become the driving force behind existing industries throughout the whole economy, but mainly in finance, mobile systems, social computing, and home services, based on cloud services. However, not only denial of service (DOS) and distributed DOS (DDOS) attacks have occurred, but also attack techniques targeting core data in storage servers. Even security threats that are hardly detected, such as multiple attacks on a certain target, APT, and backdoor penetration have also occurred. To supplement defenses against these, in this article, a protocol for authority management is designed to provide users with safe storage services. This protocol was studied in cases of integration between a cloud environment and big data-based technology, security threats, and their requirements. Also studied were amalgamation examples and their requirements in technology-based cloud environments and big data. With the protocol suggested, based on this, security was analyzed for attack techniques that occur in the existing cloud environment, as well as big data-based techniques, in order to find improvements in session key development of approximately 55%.

• Korean Journal of Family Social Work
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• no.60
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• pp.133-173
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• 2018

This paper analyzes the consistency and the discrepancy between system and practices of the old age pension(Nyunronyungeum) in North Korea. The literature review is conducted to analyze the system. Specifically, the North Korean law and North Korean dictionaries were carefully examined. The interviews with 25 North Korean refugees were conducted to grasp the exact state of the old age pension in North Korea. Major findings are as follows: the consistency between system and practices of the old age pension in North Korea is identified only certain portions of that. Beneficiaries(blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, farmers, soldiers, and employees in foreign-invested enterprises), contribution periods, earning-related schemes, the totalization of periods of coverage(workplace transitions), the absence of double benefits and early retirement pension, and the delivery system around Civic Service offices(Dong offices) are confirmed by complete consistency. Preservation age, variations in the implementation of the pension system by region, and premium of the old age pension are confirmed by partial consistency. The length of service, the labor regulation, lump-sum payment, and double dipping are confirmed by discrepancies. It's important that this study brings about a better understanding the old age pension in North Korea through various original texts of North Korea and interviews with refugees. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the policy production for the age income security system after the unification and to the spread of unification perspectives.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.13-32
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• 2018

Btcoin has made a big progress through anonymity, decentralized authority, sharing economy, multi-ledger book-keeping, block-technology and the convenient financial vehicle. Bitcoin has the characteristics of mining and supply by decentralized suppliers, limited supply quantity and the partial money-like function as well as gold. The paper studies the hedge and safe-haven of Bitcoin and gold on daily frequency data over the period of July 20, 2010-Dec. 27, 2017 employing Asymmetric Vector GARCH. It finds that gold has the hedge and safe-haven against inflation and capital markets while Bitcoin has the weak hedge and the weak safe-haven. It shows insignificant effects of inflations of US and Korea on the volatilities of Bitcoin and gold. It also suggests the necessity of clearing of vagueness behind the anonymity for fair and transparent trade through the law application in the absence or fault in law (Lucken im Recht). following the spirit of the living constitution (lebendige gutes Recht oder Vorschrift). The relevant institutions are hoped to be given some of obligations such as registration, minimum required capital. report, disclosure, explanation, compliance and governance with autonomous corresponding rights. The study also suggests the reestablishment of the relevant financial law and taxation law. The hedge would not be successfully accomplished without the vigilant cautions of investors.