• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.97-104
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• 2016

In Korea, the number of crash accident victims per 100,000 population is three times higher than the average of OECD. In particular, 60% of it occurs on the community road. Thus, this study intends to analyze the causes of such accidents through a pedestrian and vehicle traffic survey. The purpose is to establish practical safety enhancement measures for community roads. In recent years, lots of changes have occurred in the pedestrian environment. A traffic survey shows that 65% of pedestrians walk on the right and 17% of people use smart-phones while walking. An eye camera experiment shows that the operation load of drivers on the community roads is more than 4 times higher than those in urban roads. According to a speed survey, 62% of vehicles drive at 30km/h or above. The characteristics of accidents on community roads are as follows. First, the ratio of accidents on the edge of the road is 2.3 times as high as those on other roads. Second, when people walk on the right, the ratio of accidents is 2.5 times as high as that of walking on the left. Third, it becomes more dangerous when people cross the road from the right to the left. The majority of accidents is caused by unsafe driving (84.4%). When a vehicle makes a left turn, the likelihood of accidents is 2.3 times as high as those caused by a right turn. The ratio of accidents caused by vehicles going backwards is 14% among all accidents. In community roads, the focus of drivers should be at least 4 times higher than those on urban roads. Thus, walking in the opposite direction of vehicles and careless behaviors are highly likely lead to accidents.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 1996

This study examines the spatial characteristics of postal office patronage in rural areas. in the light of future possible relocation and closures of the postal facilities. Most of private services have flown out small rural central places due to the decrease of supporting population, and there consequently remain only a few public services including government-run post offices at the Myon seats, the lowest level among rural central places in Korea. The small local population and its further decline undermine the rationale for maintaining such public services in depleted rural areas. For the worse of it, the government recently plans to transform the postal system to a quasi-private, corporational structure. One can fear that the profit-seeking nature of the new postal corporation will inevitably force to close many of such small rural facilities. The study first analysed nation-wide censuses of postal offices for the years of 1986 and 1992. The postal services examined are per capita number of postal stamps and revenue stamps sold, and letters, parcels, telegrams and monetary transactions handled at the post offices. It is found that, while the usage of postal services has increased substantially throughout the nation during the period of 1986-1992, the increment has largely been occurred by urban post offices rather than by those in Gun seats (i.e., rural counties); and that the gap of the service levels between urban and rural post offices is ever widening. The study further examined the service differentials among the post offices within rural counties to find that those post offices adjacent to the county (Gun) seats and larger urban centers rendered less amount of services than remote rural post offices, indicating that rural residents tend to partonize larger centers more and more than local Myon seats. At the second stage of the study, questionnaire surveys were conducted in Muju, Kimpo, and Hongsung-Gun's. These three counties are meant to represent respectively the remote, suburban, and intermediary counties in Korea. The analyses of survey data reveal that the postal hinterlands of the county seats extend to much of nearby Myons, the subdivisions of a Gun. It is also found that the extent of postal hinterlands of the three counties and the magnitude of patronage and quite different from each other depending upon the topography, population density, and the propinquity of the counties to metropolitan centers. The findings suggest to reappraise the current flat allocation scheme of public facilites to each of rural subdivisions throughout the nation. A detailed analysis on the travel behavior of the survey respondents yields that age is the most salient variable to distinguish activity spaces of rural residents. The activity spaces of older respondents tend to be more limited within their Myon, whereas those of younger respondents extend across the Myon boundary, toward the central towns and even distant larger cities. The very existence of several activity spaces in rural areas calls for an attention in the future locational decisions of public facilities. The locational criteria, employed by the Ministry of Communication of Korean government to establish a post office, are the size of hinterland population and the distance from adjacent postal facilities. The present study findings suggest two additional criteria: the order in rural central place hierarchy and the propinquity to the upper-level centers of the central hierarchy. These old and new criteria are complementary each other in that the former criteria are employed to determine new office locations, whereas the latter are appropriate to determine facility relocation and closures.