• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.129-155
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• 2008

The rate of antibiotics prescription for an acute airway infection significantly varies depending upon the diagnosis type, specialty, and the location of the hospital along with many other related factors. The objective of this study is to empirically investigate the possible relationship between the antibiotics prescription rates for an acute airway infection and the degree of competition in the hospital market regions of mainly the providers of primary medical care services such as clinics, internal medicines, pediatrics and otorhinolaryngology department. Using the data from Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) regarding the hospitals' antibiotics prescription rates for the acute airway infection and controlling for selected variables of demand and supply sectors, this study tries to figure out that the degree of competition in the hospital market, regardless of what type of competition indexes we employed, has a statistically significant effect on the variations of antibiotics prescription rate of the clinics in local areas. This result implies that as an economic consideration itself, the change in the degree of competition in the hospital market can play a crucial role influencing the treatment behaviors of the medical doctors. More specifically, this study reveals that as the degree of competition increases the antibiotics prescription rate goes up. This result means that if the market becomes more competitive in a specific region so that it might cause a reduction in doctor's income, doctors with rational decision-making process, recognize that the benefit created from inducing patients' seemingly unnecessary demand for medical care (income effect) would be higher than the costs associated with sustaining their targeted income (substitution effect). It is because that the doctors are more likely to prescribe antibiotics which create relatively higher margins than other medical care services in order to sustain their targeted income when the hospital market competition becomes tighter. Even though this study empirically confirms that antibiotics prescription can be affected by the economic incentives, it still raises following issues as limitations of the study: first issue is about the representativeness of the hospital regions segregated for this study, which might be weak in explaining whether these regions are mutually exclusive in reality. Patients actually consider the quality of services, transportation cost, time costs, and any other related factors choosing the doctors or hospitals, and in that sense, this study rules out 'border-crossing' in using the medical care services. Second issue arises in capturing the data of antibiotics prescription rate. Since we use the average rate for each medical institution, we cannot figure out the average rate for each patient so that we are not able to control for the variation of patients' medical conditions. It is because of the unavailability of data regarding each patient's medical condition from HIRA. Thirdly, since this study mainly analyzes the medical institutions providing primary care such as clinics, internal medicines, pediatrics, and otorhinolaryngology department, it is skeptical of whether those institutions can represent the hospital market in respective regions and truly reflect the degree of competition. It needs to extend the study areas and disease types as well as any micro data for future studies.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.187-202
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• 2017

The Korean Society for Clinical Laboratory Science publishes the Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science (KJCLS) as the official journal for the Korean Association of Medical Technologists. This year, 2017, marks the 50th anniversary of KJCLS. The original name was "the Korean Journal of Medical Technologists" (Volume 1, 1967~Volume 26, 1994), which was replaced with the "Korean Journal of the Clinical Laboratory Science" (Volume 27, 1995~Volume 35, 2003) and "the Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science" (Volume 26, 2004~Present). The purpose of this study was to provide a framework for further development of KJCLS. In 1998, the National Research Foundation of Korea began the journal assessment service. The major domestic databases are KCI, KOFST, and KAMJE; the major international databases are SCI Index; SCI Core, SCI-Extended), SCOPUS, MEDLINE, and PUBMED. KJCLS has been registered with KCI of the National Research Foundation of Korea since 2014. More than 1,300 articles have been published, which all have made tremendous contributions to the field. To index KJCLS in the journal databases, we measured the value to understand the vocational level and social position. KJCLS is faced with a great challenge; immense effort will be needed to accomplish the original goal of KJCLS to become an internationally recognized journal. Ultimately, the goal of the Korean Society for Clinical Laboratory Science and the Korean Association of Medical Technologists should be to register KJCLS in databases such as KCI and SCOPUS.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.558-565
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to work related musculoskeletal disorders are a major. Occupational disease of the dental care profession is no exception. The survey was self-reported questionars of 300 dental hygienists that 268 dental hygienists reply to self-reported survey. This study results are as follows: Subjects of research analyzing the degree of physical musculoskeletal disorders pain, shoulder 90.3%, neck 89.2%, leg 83.6%, 81.7% back, hand/wrist/fingers 75.7%, arm/elbow, according to 52.8%. Therefore the work province of the research object people the musculoskeletal disorders appeared different. Generally characteristic was taller dental hygienists lower back pain and were out of less weight, study subjects had neck and arm pain. 29~33 year-old age the shoulder, over the age of 34 the arm/elbow to be high (p<0.05). Working environment to become a career, the more hand/wrist/fingers and the pain increased (p<0.05). The neck, shoulders (p<0.05), arm (p<0.01), waist high in the 3~4 years experience. And leg/foot was in the 1~2 years experience. This increase in working hours had increased pain in the neck but the hand/wrist/finger pain in the small hours of experience in the high pain(p<0.01). Conclusion of the musculoskeletal disorders of the dental hygienists often than the average for this risk is recognized. When it occurs early in treatment can be simple, but time is left to revert to normal when you do not already. Therefore, maintaining proper posture and dental hygienists, pain or fatigue appeared to accumulate immediately treated continued efforts are needed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.103-122
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• 2011

Recently, numerous documents have been made available electronically. Internet search engines and digital libraries commonly return query results containing hundreds or even thousands of documents. In this situation, it is virtually impossible for users to examine complete documents to determine whether they might be useful for them. For this reason, some on-line documents are accompanied by a list of keywords specified by the authors in an effort to guide the users by facilitating the filtering process. In this way, a set of keywords is often considered a condensed version of the whole document and therefore plays an important role for document retrieval, Web page retrieval, document clustering, summarization, text mining, and so on. Since many academic journals ask the authors to provide a list of five or six keywords on the first page of an article, keywords are most familiar in the context of journal articles. However, many other types of documents could not benefit from the use of keywords, including Web pages, email messages, news reports, magazine articles, and business papers. Although the potential benefit is large, the implementation itself is the obstacle; manually assigning keywords to all documents is a daunting task, or even impractical in that it is extremely tedious and time-consuming requiring a certain level of domain knowledge. Therefore, it is highly desirable to automate the keyword generation process. There are mainly two approaches to achieving this aim: keyword assignment approach and keyword extraction approach. Both approaches use machine learning methods and require, for training purposes, a set of documents with keywords already attached. In the former approach, there is a given set of vocabulary, and the aim is to match them to the texts. In other words, the keywords assignment approach seeks to select the words from a controlled vocabulary that best describes a document. Although this approach is domain dependent and is not easy to transfer and expand, it can generate implicit keywords that do not appear in a document. On the other hand, in the latter approach, the aim is to extract keywords with respect to their relevance in the text without prior vocabulary. In this approach, automatic keyword generation is treated as a classification task, and keywords are commonly extracted based on supervised learning techniques. Thus, keyword extraction algorithms classify candidate keywords in a document into positive or negative examples. Several systems such as Extractor and Kea were developed using keyword extraction approach. Most indicative words in a document are selected as keywords for that document and as a result, keywords extraction is limited to terms that appear in the document. Therefore, keywords extraction cannot generate implicit keywords that are not included in a document. According to the experiment results of Turney, about 64% to 90% of keywords assigned by the authors can be found in the full text of an article. Inversely, it also means that 10% to 36% of the keywords assigned by the authors do not appear in the article, which cannot be generated through keyword extraction algorithms. Our preliminary experiment result also shows that 37% of keywords assigned by the authors are not included in the full text. This is the reason why we have decided to adopt the keyword assignment approach. In this paper, we propose a new approach for automatic keyword assignment namely IVSM(Inverse Vector Space Model). The model is based on a vector space model. which is a conventional information retrieval model that represents documents and queries by vectors in a multidimensional space. IVSM generates an appropriate keyword set for a specific document by measuring the distance between the document and the keyword sets. The keyword assignment process of IVSM is as follows: (1) calculating the vector length of each keyword set based on each keyword weight; (2) preprocessing and parsing a target document that does not have keywords; (3) calculating the vector length of the target document based on the term frequency; (4) measuring the cosine similarity between each keyword set and the target document; and (5) generating keywords that have high similarity scores. Two keyword generation systems were implemented applying IVSM: IVSM system for Web-based community service and stand-alone IVSM system. Firstly, the IVSM system is implemented in a community service for sharing knowledge and opinions on current trends such as fashion, movies, social problems, and health information. The stand-alone IVSM system is dedicated to generating keywords for academic papers, and, indeed, it has been tested through a number of academic papers including those published by the Korean Association of Shipping and Logistics, the Korea Research Academy of Distribution Information, the Korea Logistics Society, the Korea Logistics Research Association, and the Korea Port Economic Association. We measured the performance of IVSM by the number of matches between the IVSM-generated keywords and the author-assigned keywords. According to our experiment, the precisions of IVSM applied to Web-based community service and academic journals were 0.75 and 0.71, respectively. The performance of both systems is much better than that of baseline systems that generate keywords based on simple probability. Also, IVSM shows comparable performance to Extractor that is a representative system of keyword extraction approach developed by Turney. As electronic documents increase, we expect that IVSM proposed in this paper can be applied to many electronic documents in Web-based community and digital library.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 1974

A considerable change of the Korean nursing system has been made during the last decade not only in its philosophy but also in its function and structure to meet political and scientific need of the modern society. The main purpose of this study is to develope the new concept of comprehensive nursing care, both its Philosophy and ethics, as the basic of modern clinical nursing theory and practice. Comprehensive nursing care is the concept of human centered nursing care, and it helps a man to meet the basic physical, psychological, environmental, socioeconomic and teaching needs. It also helps him to help himself to meet these needs. This concept starts from the individualized nursing care and its ultimate goal is to improve a man to have a better position in his own community so that he may able to have a meaningful life. To accomplish this goal, an individualized nursing care plan as a nursing diagnosis and problem solving method should be set up for different patients with similar diagnosis to meet their needs, because each patient has a different social background. from this viewpoint, nursing is a science as well as abstruse humanity. The performance of comprehensive nursing care is a goal and issue of modern clinical nursing care. If nursing is a science and a profession for man, it should have ethics which recognize the dignity of man and offers infinite service voluntarily, and should be able to show leadership in carrying out the nursing responsibility. This leadership finds a person's potential and encourages him to utilize it. Such concepts should develop into a nursing ideology and this ideology should become a priority in comprehensive nursing care. The following statements are the conclusion of this study. 1) Modern nursing has been developed from disease centered nursing care to comprehensive nursing care based on humanity. The primary principle of nursing was to assist in the treatment of disease, but it has been changed to the professional nursing system independently. 2) The concept of nursing is one of continuous or endless scope of dispersion. It proves that nursing is grasping the professional responsibility to be able to coordinate scientific principles Patient health problems are according to scientific principles rather than adhering to nursing technical discipline as a daily work. 3) In chapter I and Ⅱ, the philosophy and ideology of nursing have been discussed and the flow of concept of clinical nursing and the rate of progress which emerges from naturalizing performance of the concept of comprehensive nursing in clinical nursing studied. The discussion developed the theory that a nurse should be to embody nursing ideas and objectives by establishing definite conviction of professions and study. 4) In chapter lil, nursing planning based on nursing diagnosis as a method to attain ideal nursing care for humanity with a definite idea of establishing philosophy of nursing was presented. 5) From the result of survey on patient needs about treatment and nursing, it was observed that all patient had emotional stress from unknown factors. Therefore it was concluded that nurses should not only educate the patient but also give them the opportunity to communicate freely their needs and anxieties. Furthermore complaints and doubts of the patient should be carefully noted and must be considered to meet these needs. 6) Patient teaching is the most important part of comprehensive nursing care. In chapter, Ⅲ, the important of patient teaching was emphasized by demonstrating the effect of patient teaching for diabetic patient. 7) In Chapter Ⅳ, from the result of the study on nurses attitudes to comprehensive nursing care, it was pointed that the evolution of nursing education and the establishment of a complete concept and value of comprehensive nursing was necessary.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.77-88
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• 2008

This research was carried out a to investigate the food habit and preference of parents' social and economic level with 681 children (145 of Kindergarten, 300 of Children, 236 of Adolescences) in Seoul and Gyeonggi area using question naires. The parents' income level divided into 2 groups, less than 4 million won and equal or greater than 4 million won. Most of the middle years were over-weighing but kindergarten and adolescences had standard weights. The majority of parents had Bachelor degrees, most of father were office workers, majority of mothers of kindergarten with parents' income level less than 4 million won were professional women and mothers of the rest of the groups were mostly house wives. The middle years with parents income level less than 4 million son were skipping meals most frequently, but other groups didn't show much differences in their eating habits. All age groups showed that they like meats the most and dislike vegetables the worst. All age groups also showed that they mostly eat out 1-2 times a week and the next was 3-4 times a week. All age groups preferred ice creams, fruits, juices and snacks for their desserts. The middle years with parents' income equal or greater than 4 million won also showed high preference on strawberry and chocolate flavored milk, burgers and pizzas. The food s that preferred to eat when dining out were Chinese foods (Ja-jang-myeon and sweet and sour pork) for kindergarten group, Korean foods (kalbi and bulgogi) for the middle years with parents' income level less than 4 million won, family restaurant food (steak and rib) for the middle years with parents' income level equal or greater than 4 million won and Korean foods (kalbi and bulgogi) for the adolescences. The preferred cooking methods were roast (fish and sea weeds) for the kindergarten, roasted meat for the middle years, Kimchi and bean paste pot stew for the adolescences with parents' income level less than 4 million won and roasted meats for the adolescences with parents' income level equal or greater than 4 million won. The results showed that the adolescences with higher parental income lever preferred meats.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.236-250
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• 2016

This study was conducted to provide baseline data regarding functional cosmetics so that Inula. based cosmetics can increase its competitiveness in the market as well as to understand current trends to enable anticipation of demands for future product development. For this research, general consumers over the age of 20 residing in Seoul and the Gyeonggi district were surveyed. The results show consumers preferred serum-type products among various types of cosmetics, and that they purchased these once every 1-3 months. Consumers also preferred these products in less than 10-30ml capacity, and at costs of less than 30,000-50,000 KRW. For whitening, functional cosmetics consumers also preferred the serum type, in less than 30-50ml capacity and priced less than 30,000-50,000 KRW. Consumers preferred to purchase functional cosmetics in single units. The major purchasing location, with a high preference rate, was cosmetic stores, and the major sources of information, also with high preference rates, were 'experienced reviews from family, friends and acquaintances' and 'TV advertisements'. Respondents selected 'over 50,000 KRW' the most for all items when responding to 'Purchase Intent for Functional Cosmetics containing Inula', and responded that they were willing to pay 10%-30% more for functional cosmetics containing Inula compared to standard functional cosmetics. These results show that businesses in the cosmetics industry need to take consumer demand into account when developing new functional cosmetic products, as well as establish plans to create specialized spaces that provide better quality service and increase word of mouth effect through better utilization of various types of offline media, social media, and blogs. The study also shows a need for businesses to develop products fully utilizing the Inula flower, which has been shown to be effective as a natural skin whitener, wrinkle reducer and skin moisturizer, to appeal to the increasing number of customers interested in health and beauty.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.117-140
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• 2019

As the aging phenomenon accelerates and various social problems related to the elderly of the vulnerable are raised, the need for effective elderly care solutions to protect the health and safety of the elderly generation is growing. Recently, more and more people are using Smart Toys equipped with ICT technology for care for elderly. In particular, log data collected through smart toys is highly valuable to be used as a quantitative and objective indicator in areas such as policy-making and service planning. However, research related to smart toys is limited, such as the development of smart toys and the validation of smart toy effectiveness. In other words, there is a dearth of research to derive insights based on log data collected through smart toys and to use them for decision making. This study will analyze log data collected from smart toy and derive effective insights to improve the quality of life for elderly users. Specifically, the user profiling-based analysis and elicitation of a change in quality of life mechanism based on behavior were performed. First, in the user profiling analysis, two important dimensions of classifying the type of elderly group from five factors of elderly user's living management were derived: 'Routine Activities' and 'Work-out Activities'. Based on the dimensions derived, a hierarchical cluster analysis and K-Means clustering were performed to classify the entire elderly user into three groups. Through a profiling analysis, the demographic characteristics of each group of elderlies and the behavior of using smart toy were identified. Second, stepwise regression was performed in eliciting the mechanism of change in quality of life. The effects of interaction, content usage, and indoor activity have been identified on the improvement of depression and lifestyle for the elderly. In addition, it identified the role of user performance evaluation and satisfaction with smart toy as a parameter that mediated the relationship between usage behavior and quality of life change. Specific mechanisms are as follows. First, the interaction between smart toy and elderly was found to have an effect of improving the depression by mediating attitudes to smart toy. The 'Satisfaction toward Smart Toy,' a variable that affects the improvement of the elderly's depression, changes how users evaluate smart toy performance. At this time, it has been identified that it is the interaction with smart toy that has a positive effect on smart toy These results can be interpreted as an elderly with a desire to meet emotional stability interact actively with smart toy, and a positive assessment of smart toy, greatly appreciating the effectiveness of smart toy. Second, the content usage has been confirmed to have a direct effect on improving lifestyle without going through other variables. Elderly who use a lot of the content provided by smart toy have improved their lifestyle. However, this effect has occurred regardless of the attitude the user has toward smart toy. Third, log data show that a high degree of indoor activity improves both the lifestyle and depression of the elderly. The more indoor activity, the better the lifestyle of the elderly, and these effects occur regardless of the user's attitude toward smart toy. In addition, elderly with a high degree of indoor activity are satisfied with smart toys, which cause improvement in the elderly's depression. However, it can be interpreted that elderly who prefer outdoor activities than indoor activities, or those who are less active due to health problems, are hard to satisfied with smart toys, and are not able to get the effects of improving depression. In summary, based on the activities of the elderly, three groups of elderly were identified and the important characteristics of each type were identified. In addition, this study sought to identify the mechanism by which the behavior of the elderly on smart toy affects the lives of the actual elderly, and to derive user needs and insights.

• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.283-296
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• 2006

Along with the development of scientific technologies, health care has been growing remarkably, and as the social life quality improves with increasing interest in health, the demand for medical service is rapidly increasing. However, medical accident and medical dispute also are rapidly increasing due to various factors such as, increasing sense of people's right, lack of understanding in the nature of medical practice, over expectation on medical technique, commercialize medical supply system, moral degeneracy and unawareness of medical jurisprudence by doctors, widespread trend of mutual distrust, and lack of systematized device for solution of medical dispute. This study analysed 30 cases of civil suit in the year between 1994 to 2004, which were selected among the medical dispute cases in dental field with the judgement collected from organizations related to dentistry and department of oral medicine, Yonsei university dental hospital. The following results were drawn from the analyses: 1. The distribution of year showed rapid increase of medical dispute after the year 2000. 2. In the types of medical dispute, suit associated with tooth extraction took 36.7% of all. 3. As for the cause of medical dispute, uncomfortable feeling and dissatisfaction with the treatment showed 36.7%, death and permanent damage showed 16.7% each. 4. Winning the suit, compulsory mediation and recommendation for settlement took 60.0% of judgement result for the plaintiff. 5. For the type of medical organization in relation to medical dispute, 60.0% was found to be the private dental clinics, and 30.0% was university dental hospitals. 6. For the level of trial, dispute that progressed above 2 or 3 trials was of 30.0%. 7. For the amount of claim for damage, the claim amounting between 50 million to 100 million won was of 36.7%, and that of more than 100 million won was 13.3%, and in case of the judgement amount, the amount ranging from 10 million to 30 million won was of 40.0%, and that of more than 100 million won was of 6.7%. 8. For the number of dentist involved in the suit, 26.7% was of 2 or more dentists. 9. For the amount of time spent until the judgement, 46.7% took 11 to 20 months, and 36.7% took 21 to 30 months. 10. For medical malpractice, 46.7% was judged to be guilty, and 70% of the cases had undergone medical judgement or verification of the case by specialists during the process of the suit. 11. In the lost cases of doctors(18 cases), 72.2% was due to violence of carefulness in practice and 16.7% was due to missing of explanation to patient. Medical disputes occurring in the field of dentistry are usually of relatively less risky cases. Hence, the importance of explanation to patient is emphasized, and since the levels of patient satisfaction are subjective, improvement of the relationship between the patient and the dentist and recovery of autonomy within the group dentist are essential in addition to the reduction of technical malpractice. Moreover, management measure against the medical dispute should be set up through complement of the current doctors and hospitals medical malpractice insurance which is being conducted irrationally, and establishment of system in which education as well as consultation for medical disputes lead by the group of dental clinicians and academic scholars are accessible.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.27-36
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• 1975

The success of the family planning program in Korea is reflected in the decrease in the growth rate from 3.0% in 1962 to 2.0% in 1971, and in the decrease in the fertility rate from 43/1,000 in 1960 to 29/1,000 in 1970. However, it would be erroneous to attribute these reductions entirely to the family planning program. Other socio-economic factors, such as the increasing age at marriage and the increasing use of induced abortions, definitely had an impact on the lowered growth and fertility rate. Despite the relative success of the program to data in meeting its goals, there is no room for complacency. Meeting the goal of a further reduction in the population growth rate to 1.3% by 1981 is a much more difficult task than any one faced in the past. Not only must fertility be lowered further, but the size of the target population itself will expand tremendously in the late seventies; due to the post-war baby boom of the 1950's reaching reproductive ages. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the age at marriage will continue to rise as in the past or that the incidence of induced abortion will continue to increase. Consequently, future reductions in fertility will be more dependent on the performance of the national family planning program, with less assistance from these non-program factors. This paper will describe various approaches to help to the solution of these current problems. 1. PRACTICE RATE IN FAMILY PLANNING In 1973, the attitude (approval) and knowledge rates were quite high; 94% and 98% respectively. But a large gap exists between that and the actual practice rate, which is only 3695. Two factors must be considered in attempting to close the KAP-gap. The first is to change social norms, which still favor a larger family, increasing the practice rate cannot be done very quickly. The second point to consider is that the family planning program has not yet reached all the eligible women. A 1973 study determineded that a large portion, 3096 in fact, of all eligible women do not want more children, but are not practicing family planning. Thus, future efforts to help close the KAP-gap must focus attention and services on this important large group of potential acceptors. 2. CONTINUATION RATES Dissatisfaction with the loop and pill has resulted in high discontinuation rates. For example, a 1973 survey revealed that within the first six months initial loop acceptance. nearly 50% were dropouts, and that within the first four months of inital pill acceptance. nearly 50% were dropouts. These discontinuation rates have risen over the past few years. The high rate of discontinuance obviously decreases the contraceptive effectiveness. and has resulted in many unwanted births which is directly related to the increase of induced abortions. In the future, the family planning program must emphasize the improved quality of initial and follow-up services. rather than more quantity, in order to insure higher continuation rates and thus more effective contraceptive protection. 3. INDUCED ABORTION As noted earlier. the use of induced abortions has been increase yearly. For example, in 1960, the average number of abortions was 0.6 abortions per women in the 15-44 age range. By 1970. that had increased to 2 abortions per women. In 1966. 13% of all women between 15-44 had experienced at least one abortion. By 1971, that figure jumped to 28%. In 1973 alone, the total number of abortions was 400,000. Besides the ever incre.sing number of induced abortions, another change has that those who use abortions have shifted since 1965 to include- not. only the middle class, but also rural and low-income women. In the future. in response to the demand for abortion services among rural and low-income w~men, the government must provide and support abortion services for these women as a part of the national family planning program. 4. TARGET SYSTIi:M Since 1962, the nationwide target system has been used to set a target for each method, and the target number of acceptors is then apportioned out to various sub-areas according to the number of eligible couples in each area. Because these targets are set without consideration for demographic factors, particular tastes, prejudices, and previous patterns of acceptance in the area, a high discontinuation rate for all methods and a high wastage rate for the oral pill and condom results. In the future. to alleviate these problems of the methodbased target system. an alternative. such as the weighted-credit system, should be adopted on a nation wide basis. In this system. each contraceptive method is. assigned a specific number of points based upon the couple-years of protection (CYP) provided by the method. and no specific targets for each method are given. 5. INCREASE OF STERILIZA.TION TARGET Two special projects. the hospital-based family planning program and the armed forces program, has greatly contributed to the increasing acceptance in female and male sterilization respectively. From January-September 1974, 28,773 sterilizations were performed. During the same time in 1975, 46,894 were performed; a 63% increase. If this trend continues, by the end of 1975. approximately 70,000 sterilizations will have been performed. Sterilization is a much better method than both the loop and pill, in terms of more effective contraceptive protection and the almost zero dropout rate. In the future, the. family planning program should continue to stress the special programs which make more sterilizations possible. In particular, it should seek to add the laparoscope techniques to facilitate female sterilization acceptance rates. 6. INCREASE NUMBER OF PRIVATE ACCEPTORS Among the current family planning users, approximately 1/3 are in the private sector and thus do not- require government subsidy. The number of private acceptors increases with increasing urbanization and economic growth. To speed this process, the government initiated the special hospital based family planning program which is utilized mostly by the private sector. However, in the future, to further hasten the increase of private acceptors, the government should encourage doctors in private practice to provide family planning services, and provide the contraceptive supplies. This way, those do utilize the private medical system will also be able to receive family planning services and pay for it. Another means of increasing the number of private acceptors, IS to greatly expand the commercial outlets for pills and condoms beyond the existing service points of drugstores, hospitals, and health centers. 7. IE&C PROGRAM The current preferred family size is nearly twice as high as needed to achieve a stable poplation. Also, a strong boy preference hinders a small family size as nearly all couples fuel they must have at least one or more sons. The IE&C program must, in the future, strive to emphasize the values of the small family and equality of the sexes. A second problem for the IE&C program to work. with in the: future is the large group of people who approves family planning, want no more children, but do not practice. The IE&C program must work to motivate these people to accept family planning And finally, for those who already practice, an IE&C program in the future must stress continuation of use. The IE&C campaign, to insure highest effectiveness, should be based on a detailed factor analysis of contraceptive discontinuance. In conclusion, Korea faces a serious unfavorable sociodemographic situation- in the future unless the population growth rate can be curtailed. And in the future, the decrease in fertility will depend solely on the family planning program, as the effect of other socio-economic factors has already been maximumally felt. A second serious factor to consider is the increasing number of eligible women due to the 1950's baby boom. Thus, to meet these challenges, the program target must be increased and the program must improve the effectiveness of its current activities and develop new programs.