• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.20-20
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• 2011

The purpose of this research aims to evaluate the emergence of new business mode in the Chinese water market since the mid-2000s - Transfer-Operate-Transfer(TOT) Projects. The study pays special attention to the case of the Hefei Wangxiaoying Wastewater Treatment TOT Project, which was awarded to the consortium of Berlin Water International and its Chinese partner in late 2004. The consortium secured an exclusive operating right for 23 years on the basis of a TOT scheme and would take responsibility of all the profits and losses in the operation of the plant. The total investment for the transfer amounted to RMB 491 million(US$70 million). The price was more than 288% of the original value, RMB 170 million (US$24 million). The project can be regarded as a successful case because of the following three causes. First, the Hefei government followed a series of standardized procedures in the international bidding, which ignited best-performed international players' competition for the project. Second, the project will bring in cutting-edge operation skills and management know-how. Third, the government succeeded in raising public asset values, and thanks to this, the government is able to consider other similar projects not only in the water sector but also other sectors in public utility services. Nevertheless, Berlin Water's point of view, there are several challenges. First, the company took a risk to pay such a large amount of cash to the Hefei government. Although such premium can be recouped in the operation period of 23 years, whether or not the company would be able to recover the initial investment and realize profits is in question due to an uncertainty of socio-political circumstances in China. Second, Berlin Water should expect a steep rise of water tariffs over the contract period in order to get the investment back. Water pricing is still a sensible matter to Chinese authorities, and therefore, it is uncertain if such rise of water tariffs would be possible. Third, the TOT mode leads to creation of a large amount of cash to government officials, which might have caused corruption between those who are involved in TOT deals. Then, the final contract fee would soar, which often results in the burden of normal customers. As discussed, the TOT mode has drawn much attention of foreign investors as a new alternative to enter into the Chinese water market. But it is important to note that foreign investors should be aware of possible risks in water TOT projects, which reflects some features of the Chinese political economy landscape and social norms. The Hefei case indicates that benefits can overshadow risks in TOT projects, which will continue to attract foreign investors that are dedicated to establishing their strongholds in the Chinese water market.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.423-429
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• 2008

Microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) processes for removal of particulate materials (i.e., turbidity, microorganisms and viruses) have been used to produce drinking water with higher quality. As membrane filtration technique has become widely applied for drinking water treatment, the importance of membrane integrity test (MIT) has also been increasingly emphasized. The results of pressure decay test (PDT) were presented in the paper to monitor membrane integrity. In this paper the PDT was carried out with deliberately-defected membrane fibers to evaluate the sensitivity of PDT on membrane fiber damage. Variation of pressure decay rate and removal rate were investigated to evaluate the impact of defection (defection ratio) and pore size of membrane. The membrane integrity could be successfully monitored by the PDT. The pressure decay rate varied from $0.002{\sim}0.189kg_f/cm^2hr$ with the initial pressure ranged from 0.2 to $1.0kg_f/cm^2hr$. Higher initial pressure which provided with higher pressure decay rate was preferred to evaluate the defection of membrane fiber. As for the particle removal rate, the Log Removal Rate (LRV) of kaolin solution decreased significantly from 3.78 to 2.31 when one fiber out of 3,200 fibers was cut. The membranes with different pore size were tested to evaluate virus removal efficiency. The virus removal rate of the MF membrane ($0.1{\mu}m$) was about 30% although the poliovirus was smaller than the pore size of the MF membrane, indicating that the removal rate was much lower than Korea Water Works Association (KWWA) certificate LRV of 1.5.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.1035-1043
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• 1999

Bacteriocins are natural antimicrobial compounds produced by many microorganisms associated with foods, so that there is currently much interest in their use as food biopreservatives. Goal of this study was to partially evaluate lacticin NK24 as a food biopreservative by showing antimicrobial activity of L. lactis NK24 and lacticin NK24 against food-borne spoilage and pathogenic bacteria, respectively. Lactic acid bacteria NK24 isolated from jeot-gal, Korean fermented fish foods, was tentatively identified as Lactococcus lactis and showed broad spectrum of activity against all of spoilage and pathogenic bacteria tested by deferred method. Bacteriocin production in jar fermenter was detected at the mid-log growth phase, and reached the maximum at the early stationary phase, but decreased after the stationary phase. Lacticin NK24 was partially purified by 75% ammonium sulfate precipitation followed by subsequent dialysis. This partially purified lacticin NK24 showed antimicrobial activity against Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Clostridium perfringens, some bacilli, Listeria monocytogenes, Listeria ivanovii, Sphin-gomonas pausimobilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Thus, lacticin NK24 examined in this study show promise as a biopreservative be-cause of their broad spectrum of activity.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.87-104
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• 2017

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is based on the development of information and communication technology (ICT), is expected to replace human knowledge work, which will cause problems of mass unemployment and wide income gap from job polarization. Furthermore, the change is expected to be rapid and wide, demanding proactive measures to respond to such abrupt social changes. However, previous literatures assume that the traditional form of employment will continue and provide limited solutions only. On the other hand, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will enable transition to the Prosumer Economy, which will ultimately lead consumers to become producers through increased job flexibility. If the prosumer economy arrives and the consumers become producers, it will no longer be the matter of finding workplace but rather, the matter of finding the work itself. In this regard, the new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution can be the fundamental solution to such job issues. This paper suggests stable transition to the Prosumer Economy in order to solve the job issues in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In order to effectively support the process, this paper suggests first, ensuring the amount of education by shortening labor time; second, facilitating life-time education through free online education service; and third, closing the digital divide through mandatory use of the e-government system.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.1405-1412
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• 2015

In Korea, public infrastructure projects employ "long term continuation (LTC) contracts," which require budgets to be reevaluated and re-appropriated annually throughout the multi-year life of the project. However, such contracts also make it susceptible to frequently changing government policies, in which budgets required for existing projects are allocated to new projects and thus does not provide a consistent stream of capital to multi-year projects. Each year, the KEC needs to attain government funds for construction of its multiple highway construction sites. Because it is difficult to know the amount that may be actually appropriated to KEC in a given year, it is in turn difficult to anticipate and provide sufficient funds necessary for construction to run smoothly and continuously. The lack of a good logic for appropriation has resulted in projects having a skewed distribution of capital. To get better budget appropriations from the central government, the KEC first needs a systemized approach that rationalizes the annual construction capital optimally required for its individual sites. The goal of this research was to devise a way that allows the KEC to determine and calculate the optimal construction costs that would be required for its individual construction sites on an annual basis. Both the optimal progress rate and the essential work types were assessed through a workshop with 24 professionals (KEC employees and contractors) who had extensive experience in KEC projects and also were currently working in these projects.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.21-56
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• 2016

Despite many previous studies on catch-up, understanding on the effect of product architecture developed by latecomers on the catch-up performance remains limited. On the other hands, in contrast to the semiconductor, ship building, and automotive industry, even if Korean industry and government have invested the development of numerical controllers for machine tools in the past four decades, the industry and government have failed to achieve catch-up. Therefore, we newly examine the effect of product architecture on the catch-up performance of the Korea by implementing comparative research with periods on the evolution of product architecture of Fanuc's numerical controllers, which have achieved the largest market share in the world. We found that Fanuc developed open modular architecture based numerical controllers and provided product with customization of user requirements as well as cost effectiveness. Consequently, Fanuc has sustained market leader position since the mid-1980s. However, despite all the efforts of the industry and government, we found that the Korea failed to develop open modular architecture based numerical controllers and could not achieve significant catch-up performance. Our findings provide important theoretical backgrounds for examining the catch-up performance as well as investigating the reason why latecomers failed to achieve market catch-up even if they accomplished technological catch-up.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.5-62
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• 2018

Over the last 10 years, the fight against occupational diseases of semiconductor workers led by SHARPS(the Supporters for the Health And Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry, NGO) has accomplished considerable achievements, especially in the legal and institutional aspects. First, the court and the government accepted the claims that 24 injured workers respectively filed, recognizing their 10 types of diseases as occupational illness. The court not only expanded the list of work places and diseases that it recognized, but also presented more progressive logic of recognition. The most remarkable achievement among them is the case ruled by the Supreme court in July, 2017. In terms of 'worker's right to know', which is the most important factor in preventing occupational diseases, there have been significant legislative bills, court rulings and government guidelines. The revised bill of the Industrial Safety and Health Act to strengthen workers' rights to know and to introduce the pre-review system on trade secret is currently under review by the National Assembly. The court recently ruled that the government should disclose its inspection results on safety and health management at semiconductor factories. The ministry of labor has drawn up internal guidelines to more actively open its safety and health data to public. This study looks over recent developments in such rulings, bills and guidelines and then, analyzes their implications, laying the groundwork for future actions for worker health in the electronic industry.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.508-513
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• 2010

Ninety three strains (4.2%) of Vibrio parahaemolyticus were isolated from 2,239 samples of commercial marine products during 2006-2008 in Seoul, Korea. We examined 16 antimicrobial susceptibilities of 93 V. parahaemolyticus isolates. Antibiotic resistance of V. parahaemolyticus was most frequently observed to ampicillin (93.5%), followed by cephalothin (90.3%), streptomycin (87.1%), ticarcillin (55.9%), and amikacin (40.9%). Antibiotic susceptibility was most frequently observed to nalidixic acid, chloramphenicol and ampicillin/sulbactam (100%), followed by trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (98.9%), gentamicin and tetracycline (82.8%), and ceftriaxone (63.4%). In addition, the isolates also displayed intermediate resistance to kanamycin (79.6%), ciprofloxacin (64.5%), amikacin (47.3%) and cefoxitin (43.0%). All isolates were resistant to more than two drugs. The most prominent multiple drug resistance was 3 drug resistance (37.6%), followed by 4 drug (24.7%), 5 drug (17.2%), and 6 drug resistance (11.8%). The most prominent multiple drug resistance pattern was the cephalothin-streptomycin-ampicillin resistance pattern (22.6%), followed by cephalothinticarcillin-streptomycin-ampicillin (18.3%) and cephalothin-ticarcillin-streptomycin-ampicillin-amikacin (9.7%). Multiple drug resistance patterns of V. parahaemolyticus from marine products require continuous monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.211-232
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to verify whether the types of welfare attitudes are classified according to the welfare regimes. Specifically, this study tried to confirm whether the satisfaction and needs of the role of government for inequality reduction are divided into welfare regimes. For the purpose, this study conducted a comparative analysis of 24 European countries using the 6th European Social Survey (2012) and the Eurostat data. The main results of the analysis are summarized as follows. First, there is a difference in the satisfaction and needs of the role of government for the inequality reduction among the welfare regimes. Generally, the satisfaction is high in the Nordic countries, while the needs is high in the southern and eastern European countries. Second, there is a correlation that the country where the per capita welfare expenditure level is high and the redistribution effect is strong have high level of the satisfaction. Third, the types of welfare attitudes are classified according to the welfare regimes. In particular, the Nordic countries are converging into a cluster with low needs and high satisfaction. These countries have high level of social spending and strong redistributive effects. This study suggested policy implications based on the above results.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.24 no.7
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• pp.875-888
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• 2018

The Government of the Republic of Korea has been continuously improving its legal system to ensure marine safety as a precaution against marine accidents. However, despite the ongoing improvement of the legal system, the number of maritime accidents has been increasing steadily, suggesting that the efficacy of the legal system is insufficient. As for recent marine accidents, small fishing vessels (less than 10 tons) account for 44.9 % of marine accidents over 5 years ('13_'17). Therefore, this study investigated the improvement status of the Korean government's legal system for small fishing vessels and the characteristics of related overseas legal systems in order to find a way to further improve marine safety for small fishing vessels. Following the results, the Korean government's laws related to small fishing vessels show a hybrid phenomenon due to the history of merging ('97) and separation ('09) of legal systems for fishing and non-fishing vessels, and it has been concluded that only improvements to construct additional facilities are being performed, and those in a fragmentary manner. In addition, overseas legal systems for small fishing vessels were confirmed to have requirements strengthening the responsibility of owners and operators of fishing vessels and introduced a self-inspection program. Based on these results, a plan is suggested to improve the efficacy of the legal system to ensuree marine safety for small Korean fishing vessels.