• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.37-45
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• 2013

Purpose - Appropriate response to the fast changing economic environment determines SMEs' competiveness in the era of globalization and open market and, therefore, government policies to strengthen SME's competitiveness will be very important in the future. It is time to investigate the element of strategic orientation that is necessary for strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs, and its effect on the success of a business start-up. This study analyzes the network orientation in addition to existing strategic orientation, and focuses on price and quality management capability as mediators for strategic orientation and outcomes of business start-ups. Research design/data/methodology - The orientations of technology-based business founders were classified into market, technology, network, and entrepreneurial orientation. We then investigated the effect of these orientations on product price and quality management capability, as well as the influence of price and quality management capability on the outcome of a business start-up. This study is based on the nation-wide survey of the founders and members of technology-based business establishments. The survey was administered to 300 selected companies via email for a period of one month, at the end of which 175 companies replied with valid answers. Further, for effective and objective research, we used SPSS 14.0 and Amos 7.0 for structural equation modeling assumptions and hypothesis verification. Results - Except for entrepreneurial orientation, the other three orientations, namely, technology, market, and network orientations, affect the price management capability according to our results. The price management capability relates significantly with the sales and customer satisfaction. Especially, technology orientation is the core competency of start-ups that affects price and quality management capabilities. However, technology and entrepreneurial orientation do not influence the outcome of business start-ups, but affect their quality management capabilities. Conclusions - This study confirms that the strategic orientation affects product price as well as quality management capabilities, to introduce new products and achieve successful outcomes. In conclusion, new business founders face the dilemma of trade-off between price and quality in the planning stage of new product development. In particular, price management capability directly affects the outcome. Therefore, price management is more important for a successful start-up than quality management. Especially, during the initial stages of starting up a new business, price management capability entails following the market-leading company, or price penetration strategy. In this stage, price management is dependent on the information from outside rather than on the founder's decision, and it directly affects sales performance and customer satisfaction. In contrast, quality management capability is directly related to the technology capability and market experience of founders. In this case, subjective and proactive decision making is required for differentiation and development of demand in the niche market, which does not directly influence the sales performance and customer satisfaction.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.663-670
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• 2016

This paper analyzes the asymmetric pass-through effects of crude oil price changes on export prices in Korea's manufacturing sector using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. These pass-through effects are important for Korean companies that are highly dependent on exports. Because the effects differ by industry, eight sectors of the manufacturing industry were examined. The model is effective for separately testing the long-term and short-term differences between the export-price pass-through effects when crude oil prices increase and decrease. The estimation results show that there is positive pass-through to export prices as crude oil prices change, and there are asymmetric effects in some manufacturing sectors. Short-term asymmetries were detected in the export prices of five sectors that include general machinery and transport equipment, and significant long-term asymmetries were found for petroleum and coal products and for textile and leather products. The long-term export price of oil and coal products rose by 0.992% with a 1% increase in the oil price and fell by 0.977% with 1% decrease. Therefore, corporate strategies and government export policies should be established in accordance with these asymmetric pass-through effects.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.7
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• pp.368-377
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• 2012

The comprehensive countermeasures against school violence recently announced by the government include some content on physical education classes. Physical education has long been ignored in school paradoxically in spite of the deteriorating physical strength and health of adolescents. The physical education subject undervalued in the middle of overly excessive competitions for college entrance exams finds its core goal in whole person education and officially emphasizes the development of personality aspects, which means that physical education claims important significance by providing diverse approaches to school violence prevention. This study thus set out to enhance the roles of physical education for school violence prevention. In Korean society, school violence has taken deep root due to the combined results of individual, family, school and community factors, the growth-first policy driven by compressed modern growth, and neoliberalism based on economic efficiency. School violence possesses such fixed value systems and convictions in Korean society. Education has failed to achieve some effectiveness because of the serious level of school violence, which calls for assessment of ideology having big impacts on educational environments. Given that it has been rediscovered that physical education has legitimacy of alleviating or preventing school violence through its value, an alternative to eradicate school violence should start with physical education normalization in school. Specific alternatives including the activation of sports clubs in school will be established as more fundamental practical alternatives when accompanied by the development of school violence-related programs and the operation of in-service training programs for physical education teachers.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.55-71
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• 2020

Digital accessibility of the middle-aged and elderly has been increasing at a faster pace than other groups such as the handicapped and adolescents. However, studies related to the digital accessibility of middle and older adults are scarce. In order to examine variables affecting accessibility to digital information of the middle-aged and elderly people, this study researches the impacts of sociodemographic, physical and mental health and social activity variables on the accessibility of digital information. We analyzed data of 1,661 people between the ages of 55 and 84 from the 2018 Status Survey on Digital Divide conducted by the National Information Society Agency. The hierarchical multiple regression analysis shows the higher education, economic, and life satisfaction levels are, the higher digital accessibility levels of both male and female are. The result of the analysis also shows that the aged male has a higher accessibility level when he does not live alone; meanwhile, the aged female has higher digital capability as her age is lower, which describes that there are differences between gender. We expect the result of this study to be used as an important reference to understand factors related to digital accessibility level and active intervention for improving digital accessibility of the middle-aged and elderly male and female.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.309-319
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• 2015

River characteristics in South Korea has been affected by seasonal climatic variability due to climate change and by remarkable land cover change due to rapid economic growth. In this regard, the roles of river management is getting more important to eco-system and human community in watersheds of South Korea. Understanding river characteristics including direct runoff and baseflow, the first step of river management, can give a significant contribution to sustainable river environment. Therefore, the objective of this study is to quantify the contributions of the direct runoff and baseflow to river streamflow. For this, we used the BFLOW and WHAT programs to conduct baseflow separation for 71 streamflow gauge stations in Han River system, South Korea. The results showed that baseflow index for 71 stations ranges from 0.42 to 0.78. Also, gauge stations which have baseflow index more than 0.5 occupied 76% of a total stations. However, baseflow index can be overestimated due to human impacts such as discharge from dams, reservoirs, and lakes. This study will be used as fundamental information to understand river characteristics in river management at the national level.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.27-60
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• 2016

An integrated assessment model of climate and the economy (IAM) has been a standard tool for the economic analysis of climate change and policy recommendations. Since policy measures to address climate change take places at a national level, a regional integrated assessment model of climate and the economy (RIAM) is gaining more importance. A RIAM is a useful tool for the assessment of regional (or national) impacts of climate change. This paper investigates the main features of the currently available RIAMs. The focus is social welfare functions and the regional aspects of climate change. The comparative analysis shows that there is a huge gap between the economics of climate change and its applications to RIAMs. As an application, this paper examines the effect of social welfare functions on optimal solutions of the RICE (Regional Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) model. It is found that optimal climate policy such as carbon tax or emissions control rate is very sensitive to the assumptions on social welfare functions of RIAMs. It is better for each country to have their own RIAM as a basic tool for national climate policy-making and for international bargaining in greenhouse-gas mitigation. This is because a country's own preferences such as efficiency, equity, and sustainable development as well as national circumstances can be reflected in RIAM. The Republic of Korea has not developed its own RIAM yet. The comparative analysis and the numerical model in this paper can be a stepping stone for the development of such a national model.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.113-144
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• 2020

Throughout various data sources, it is widely observed that air quality in South Korea has become improved. Koreans, however, insist that their health status and economic burden due to worsened air quality get degenerated. This study aims to explain the mismatch between perception and measured data, air pollution-led medical expenses, and consumption behaviors in the economics perspectives. First, we demonstrated data-driven evidence of mismatch in the perceived severity of air pollution and its enhancement in measured data. Second, using the health demand model, we theoretically derived and empirically showed a co-rising relation between air pollution severity and medical expenses. Last, we analyzed that the perception led to increased defensive expenditures in consumption. This result implies the possibility of overestimation in air pollution impacts on socioeconomic losses and its possible reverse interpretation from increased social benefit after improved air quality. Our results recommend policy consideration to strengthen air quality standards, to support socially vulnerable groups regarding defensive expenditures, and to improve the accessibility and credibility of air pollution information.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.13-36
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• 2012

This paper is to reconsider comprehensively and systematically major issues on transnational immigrants, increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s, and their impacts on socio-spatial changes in S. Korea. Foreign immigrants who have moved on the contexts of unevenness of globalization and advancces in transport & telecommunication technology on the global level and of economic development and shortage of cheap and unskilled workers have been distributed unevenly, concentrating on the Capital region and local areas with industrial complexes. Foreign workers seems to have some negative influences on regional economies in the long-term, though positive in the short-term. Domestic people seem to have an ambivalent attitude which accepts necessity of multi-culture, while simultaneously continues to be self-confident on ethnic homogeneity. The Korean government has launched multicultural policies for foreign immigrants by the mid-2000, but still continues some policies with assimilationism and differential exclusionism, marginalizing them socio-spatially, while lacking local government's policy and programmes. In conclusion, in order to resolve these problems and to transfer multicultural societal space of Korea, a geography of transnational migration which promotes especially discourse and policy with authentic multiculturalism, extending roles of local government, and ensuring glocal citizenships.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.109-130
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• 2012

In recent years, the volume of global fair trade has been increased rapidly. As the quality of life improves, consumers are increasingly concerned about fairness and environment and show positive attitudes toward ethical products. Fair trade is a social movement that aims to set fair prices for products, alleviate poverty, and assist producers marginalized by the traditional economic model. The study attempt to investigate empirically fair trade products purchase intention, so consumers attitude toward fair trade product purchase, normative belief, fairness restoration expectation, ethical responsibility are defined and their impacts on the purchase intention were analyzed. The statistical method used to test the hypotheses was multi-regression using SPSS 18 for window. The results of this study are follows. Purchase attitudes toward fair trade products and ethical responsibility had a significant effect on the purchase intention. The Effectiveness of the ethical responsibility had greater than that of the purchase attitudes. The result of the empirical study provides important implications for the fair trade related organizations and businesses.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.148-153
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• 2011

EMRAS-2 (Environmental Modelling for RAdiation Safety, Phase 2) is an international comparison program, which is organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in order to harmonize the modelling of radionuclide behavior in the environment. To do so, the urban contamination working group within EMRAS-2 has designed the hypothetical scenarios for a specified urban area. In this study, the importance of contaminated surfaces composing an urban environment was analyzed in terms of dose rate using METRO-K, which has been developed to take a Korean urban environment into account. The contribution of contaminated surfaces to exposure dose rate showed distinctly a great difference as a function of specified locations and time following a hypothetical event. Moreover, it showed a distinct difference according to the existence of precipitation, and its intensity. Therefore, if an urban area is contaminated radioactively by any unexpected incidents such as an accident of nuclear power plants or an explosion of radioactive dispersion devices (RDDs), appropriate measures should be taken with consideration of the type of surface composing the contaminated environment in order to minimize not only radiation-induced health detriment but also economic and social impacts.