• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.279-306
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• 2010

This study is to compare and analyze the policy decision process between Korea Long-term Care Insurance and Japan's using policy network theory as an analysis tool, and to lead political and theoretical implications. The result of the study is summarized as follows. First, a policy agenda about Long-term Care problem for the Elderly set up by the government-leading both Korea and Japan. and the number of policy participation(actors) increased to characteristics of policy process stage. but there is a difference between Korea and Japan in a background of setting up policy agenda about Long-term Care problem. Second, interaction among policy actors is corporative from early policy agenda establishment stage in Korea and Japan. but it changes to dissenting or critical rapidly as being announced the frame of system to the people. Also, it shows that main policy actors play a role in policy making decision and the connection structures of network is similar to both countries although it has a difference in the interaction frequency. Fourth, although the number of policy actors and the extent of their opinion reflection to the policy effect are different, it shows that policy network pattern is very similar to from policy agenda setting stage to parliament(The National Assemble) policy decision stage as a result of government-leading policy process. The theoretical and political implications of this study are as follows. The number and the variety of policy participation, the importance of establishing opened-interaction system, lots of limitation of policy making-decision process of Japan Long-term Care system, and exclusively the government-leading network has demerits about the reflection of too much government's opinion to the policy outcomes.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.133-144
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• 2020

The number of elderly people with dementia is increasing as fast as the proportion of older people due to aging, which creates a social and economic burden. In particular, dementia care costs, including indirect costs such as increased care costs due to lost caregiver hours and caregivers, have grown exponentially over the years. In order to reduce these costs, it is urgent to introduce a management system to care for dementia patients. Therefore, this study proposes a sensor-based abnormal behavior detection system to manage dementia patients who live alone or in an environment where they cannot always take care of dementia patients. Existing studies were merely evaluating behavior or evaluating normal behavior, and there were studies that perceived behavior by processing images, not data from sensors. In this study, we recognized the limitation of real data collection and used both the auto-encoder, the unsupervised learning model, and the LSTM, the supervised learning model. Autoencoder, an unsupervised learning model, trained normal behavioral data to learn patterns for normal behavior, and LSTM further refined classification by learning behaviors that could be perceived by sensors. The test results show that each model has about 96% and 98% accuracy and is designed to pass the LSTM model when the autoencoder outlier has more than 3%. The system is expected to effectively manage the elderly and dementia patients who live alone and reduce the cost of caring.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.470-475
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to propose the revitalization of the existing senior cultural activity centers as a new venue for the social and cultural activity of the baby-boom generation. Unlike the previous generation of seniors, the baby-boom generation (born in 1955-1963) has a strong desire to actively participate in various social activities, as well as working for their living. In order to meet their needs, it is proposed that the existing senior cultural activity centers be redesigned and transformed from an elderly welfare perspective. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire including questions on the socio-economic background, need for cultural activities, social activities, and job-training programs. The data collected from a total of 229 baby-boomers were used for the final analysis by cross-tabulation. The major findings are as follows: most of the baby-boom generation strongly agreed that they were very different from the previous elderly generation in terms of their education and social and economic environment. Therefore, a new system for the senior cultural activity centers which can integrate these various needs is suggested to encourage the baby-boomers to participate more actively, even after their retirement. Based on the research results, a new paradigm for the senior cultural activity centers is proposed in order to enhance their quality. The application and practice of our research results would be very important, because larger numbers of baby-boomers are gradually retiring from the workforce, and it is necessary to ensure their ongoing integration in society for the further development of society in general.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.3
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• pp.203-225
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• 2015

Social care service has grown much with the introduction of Long-Term Care Insurance, but it remains difficult to answer in the affirmative to the question: are we providing sufficiently good care? This study has its purpose in figuring out what conditions are necessary to realize good care in our society. The study has used focus group interview (FGI) as a way to acquire realistic knowledge on the conditions that create good care and its deterring factors. The focus group interview, which targeted long-term care workers and facility heads, was conducted three times from January through March 2014, with each session taking about 3 hours. The analysis showed that the components of good care were mutual understanding and recognition through active interaction, making a good relationship based on mutual trust and respect, professionalism of care worker with flexible judgment that provides customized services, professionalism of center manager with appropriate intermediation, and the tripartite partnership among family, elderly, and care worker. Meanwhile, the deterring factors of good care were identified as devaluation of care labor, ambiguous job description and abuse, unprofessionalism of care worker and manager, inappropriate interference and indifference of family, and the structural constraints on long-term care environment.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.679-688
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• 2013

This study figured out the influential factors of region-based characteristic factors in our country upon asthmatic occurrence. Research subjects were 2,266,451 people who were confirmed the diagnosis of asthma (J45~J46) among patients in national health insurance for the year in 2010. The influence in each of factors upon the asthmatic occurrence was analyzed through hierarchical regression after comparing difference in asthmatic occurrence by basic local government. As a result of hierarchical regression, the whole asthmatic occurrence had significant difference in infants ratio, $SO_2$,Temperature, basin and dam area. The asthmatic occurrence had significant difference in subjective awareness of health level, $SO_2$, basin and dam area. A case of asthmatic occurrence had significant difference in infants ratio, temperature, $NO_2$ and coastal area. Diverse characteristic factors by region were indicated to have influence upon the asthmatic occurrence by causing or weakening asthma through mutually complex action. Accordingly, a region-based customized environmental health measure will need to be arranged that infants and elderly people, who are vulnerable classes, can be protected and prevented from harmful environment of asthma.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.21-31
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• 2018

The rapid increase of the elderly living alone is a critical issue in worldwide as it leads to a rapid increase of a social support costs (e.g., medical expenses) for the elderly. In early stages of dementia, the activities of daily living (ADL) including self-care tasks can be affected by abnormal patterns or behaviors and used as an evidence for the early diagnosis. However, extracting activities using non-intrusive approach is still quite challenging and the existing methods are not fully visualized to understand the behavior pattern or routine. To address these issues, this research suggests a model to extract the activities from coarse-grained data (spatio-temporal data log) and visualize the behavioral context information. Our approach shows the process of extracting and visualizing the subject's spaceactivity map presenting the context of each activity (time, room, duration, sequence, frequency). This research contributes to show a possibility of detecting subject's activities and behavioral patterns using coarse-grained data (limited to spatio-temporal information) with little infringement of personal privacy.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.305-312
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• 2007

Objectives : To estimate the awareness, treatment and control rate, as well as to identify the awareness-related factors for hypertension. Methods : The study participants were 482 adults (men 206, women 276), aged 45 or over, diagnosed with hypertension and living in Chuncheon. The awareness rate was defined as the proportion of persons among those with hypertension who had previously been diagnosed by a physician. The treatment rate was defined as the proportion of persons who had used anti-hypertensive medication, among those who were aware of their hypertension. The control rate was defined as the proportion of persons who kept blood pressure normal, among those who had been treated for their hypertension. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was carried out for the awareness-related factors using SAS VER 8.1. Results : The awareness, treatment, and control rate were 55,8% (53.4% for men; 57.6% for women), 89.6% (87,2% for men; 91.2% for women), and 34.4% (28.1 % for men; 38.6% for women), respectively. The awareness-related factors included a family history of hypertension (odds ratio[OR], 5.63; 95% confidence interval[95% CI]=1.53-20.72), smoking([Ex; OR 0.38, 95% CI= 0.15-0.96)], [Current; OR 0.28, 95% CI=0.10-0.80]), and alcohol intake ([Ex; OR 3.22, 95% CI 1.03-10.09],[Current; OR 3.36, 95% CI=1.30-8.71]) for men, and education(OR 2.23, 95% CI=1.10-4.53), body mass index(OR 2.72, 95% CI=1.13-6.53), and self-rated health(OR 2.38, 95% CI=1.07-5.30) for women. Conclusions : The awareness rate of hypertension among the middle aged and elderly in Chuncheon was 55.8%. The related factors of awareness were gender specific. Further studies are needed to elucidate the putative reasons for these gender differences.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.315-338
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to propose actual operation condition of Japanese lecture based on social welfare organizations located in Seoul to investigate the current status and problems of Japanese language education in terms of lifelong education. According to the result of this study, the remarkable point was that a majority of Japanese lecture courses are highly focused on the elderly and 86% of the welfare organizations are providing free education. Regarding the effect of specialized business for the aged run by social welfare community center, it says, as Korea changing to aging society at the beginning of 21st century, it has put focus on strengthening personal competences of seniors through opportunities for participation in lifelong education, recreational activity programs and culture classes. It means foreign language classes are operating as one of the lifelong education programs for reinforcement of individual capability. Considering this tendency, it is expected that the lifelong education participation rate of the elder in Seoul will be raised. So, systematic improvements will be needed for this. First, it is required to recognize the existence of Educational and Cultural Industry and work hard to make it public so it could be invigorated and utilized by people usefully at the same time. Second, Japanese language training that mostly 55-year-old or more than 60-year-old people receive at the welfare center needs to be systematized for preparations on proper studying environment which provides the older with appropriate education method and content as well. Third, stable and systematic operation should be available through the link with experts in the field of Japanese language education and elderly education. Fourth, education program development is needed, which is able to satisfy one's desires for learning. Hence, targeting Japanese learners at each welfare center, we need to know the estimation of satisfaction degree and consciousness on learning Japanese. Finally, it has not been studied sufficiently regarding the instructors on teaching Japanese language in this paper, but it has been reported that most of social welfare centers, where Japanese language lectures are provided, are run by volunteers who can teach Japanese. Thus, the study on actual condition for Japanese language instructors will be conducted as well later on.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.61-79
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• 2021

Despite the rapid economic growth, people's quality of life has not been improved and the regional and hierarchical disparities of it have deepened. We analysed regional differences in quality of life and it was found that non-capital regions, provinces and rural areas compared to Seoul and capital region, metropolitan cities, and urban areas respectively, show a relatively lower level of satisfaction in the quality of life. An in-depth analysis of Chungcheongnam-do province shows that the trend was similar to that of the national analysis. The quality of life satisfaction of the elderly was lower than that of the young and middle-aged, and this trend was similar regardless of region. Young people living in the Dong area showed high satisfaction with the quality of life than the middle-aged and elderly living in the Myeon area. It was observed the level of Life SOC services in urban areas have been better than the one in rural areas. However, there is no clear relationship between quality of life satisfaction and the expansion of Life SOC, therefore, it is difficult to argue that the government intervention to expand Life SOC will improve the citizen's quality of life satisfaction. The implication of the study is that the future supply policy of the Life SOC should be based on the detailed analysis of the impact on the environment, and linking with the development of various programs in progress rather than supplying a Life SOC that provides a single service. Furthermore, in rural areas it is essential to enhance user demand by combining several services in supply and to improve the efficiency of managing the services.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.247-257
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• 2019

Objectives: The Korea Ministry of Environment regulates concentrations of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) through Atmosphere Environmental Standards to protect public health from HAPs. However, simply determining the exceedance of HAP concentrations has several limitations and more comprehensive assessment is required. In addition, integrated risk assessment is needed considering exposure in all microenvironments, including outdoor as well as indoor environments. The purpose of this study was to assess the differences in risk by sub-population groups according to time-activity patterns and reported concentrations, as well as the lifetime risk for Koreans. Methods: In this study, we calculated time-weighted average exposure concentrations for benzene and $PM_{10}$ among preschool-age children, students, housewifes, workers, and the elderly using residential time and concentrations for indoor (house, school or workplace, other), outdoor, and transport by the meta-analysis method. The risk assessments were conducted by excess cancer risk and disease death risk using 1,000,000 Monte-Carlo simulations for probabilistic analysis. Results: Preschool-age children, students, housewifes, workers, and the elderly spent 91.9, 86.0, 79.8, 82.2, and 77.3% of their day in their house, workplace, or school, respectively. The more than 99% excess cancer risk for benzene exceed 1.0E-06 in all sub-populations and lifetime. The acute disease death risk for $PM_{10}$ for housewifes and workers for lifetime were 3.35E-04 and 3.18E-04, and chronic disease death risks were 2.84E-03 and 2.70E-03, respectively. Conclusions: The risk of benzene and $PM_{10}$ by sub-population group and for the lifetime of housewifes and workers were assessed. Benzene showed risky results for this study. All disease death risks of $PM_{10}$ were higher than 1.0E-04 and showed different risks by sub-population. This study can be used as a basis for lifetime exposure and risk assessment to benzene and $PM_{10}$.