• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.79-99
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• 2019

Apologies are used with increasing frequency for mending damaged relations between groups after intergroup conflict. Past research revealed that members of a perpetrator group may engage in (animalistic) dehumanization of victim group members to cope with guilt and responsibility associated with the ingroup's past wrongdoing. We hypothesized that ingroup's apology would relieve perpetrator group members of the moral threat, and therefore would make them perceive more humanness in the victim group members. The study was conducted in the context of South Korea's alleged atrocities against Vietnamese civilians during its military involvement in the Vietnam War. Korean participants read an article on the incidents with Korean government's issuance of an official apology manipulated, and reported their thoughts on the incidents and perceptions of Vietnamese people including their humanness. Contrary to our prediction, apology further enhanced dehumanization of Vietnamese people, even while it also decreased dehumanization through heightened feelings of relief. This study documents a seemingly ironic effect of intergroup apology, and calls for a more careful examination of the consequences of apology before recommending it as a viable strategy for alleviating intergroup tensions.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.61-80
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• 2018

Individuals often receive smishing campaigns (mobile phishing messages), which they treat as spam. Thus, firms should understand how their customers distinguish their promotion messages from smishing. However, only a few studies examined this important issue. The present study employs the elaboration likelihood model to develop research hypotheses on the relationship between message cue and message credibility. The message cue in this study is classified as content cue, which is found in the content of promotion messages, and as leakage cue, which is found in peripheral information in the message. Leakage cue includes orthography (inclusion of special characters)and an abbreviated link sent by a faithless sender. We also propose that contextualization has a moderating effect on the relationship between content cue and credibility. We conducted a survey experiment to examine the effect of message cues on message credibility in the context of respondents receiving discount coupons through mobile messages. The result of data analysis based on 166 responses suggests that leakage cue had a negative effect on message credibility. A message with defective content cue has a marginally negative effect on message credibility. In particular, defective content cue in a high-contextual message has a strong negative impact on message credibility. This effect was not observed in low-contextual messages. Moreover, message credibility is significantly low regardless of the degree of contextualization if there is a leakage cue in the message. Our findings suggest that mobile promotion messages should be customized for message receivers and should have no leakage cues.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.71-96
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• 2011

Within the traditional medical delivery system, patients residing in medically vulnerable areas, those with body movement difficulties, and nursing facility residents have had limited access to good healthcare services. However, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provides us with a convenient and useful means of overcoming distance and time constraints. ICT is integrated with biomedical science and technology in a way that offers a new high-quality medical service. As a result, rapid technological advancement is expected to play a pivotal role bringing about innovation in a wide range of medical service areas, such as medical management, testing, diagnosis, and treatment; offering new and improved healthcare services; and effecting dramatic changes in current medical services. The increase in aging population and chronic diseases has caused an increase in medical expenses. In response to the increasing demand for efficient healthcare services, a telehealth service based on ICT is being emphasized on a global level. Telehealth services have been implemented especially in pilot projects and system development and technological research. With the service about to be implemented in earnest, it is necessary to study its overall acceptance by consumers, which is expected to contribute to the development and activation of a variety of services. In this sense, the study aims at positively examining the structural relationship among the acceptance factors for telehealth services based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Data were collected by showing audiovisual material on telehealth services to online panels and requesting them to respond to a structured questionnaire sheet, which is known as the information acceleration method. Among the 1,165 adult respondents, 608 valid samples were finally chosen, while the remaining were excluded because of incomplete answers or allotted time overrun. In order to test the reliability and validity of the assessment scale items, we carried out reliability and factor analyses, and in order to explore the causal relation among potential variables, we conducted a structural equation modeling analysis using AMOS 7.0 and SPSS 17.0. The research outcomes are as follows. First, service quality, innovativeness of medical technology, and social influence were shown to affect perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the telehealth service, which was statistically significant, and the two factors had a positive impact on willingness to accept the telehealth service. In addition, social influence had a direct, significant effect on intention to use, which is paralleled by the TAM used in previous research on technology acceptance. This shows that the research model proposed in the study effectively explains the acceptance of the telehealth service. Second, the research model reveals that information privacy concerns had a insignificant impact on perceived ease of use of the telehealth service. From this, it can be gathered that the concerns over information protection and security are reduced further due to advancements in information technology compared to the initial period in the information technology industry, and thus the improvement in quality of medical services appeared to ensure that information privacy concerns did not act as a prohibiting factor in the acceptance of the telehealth service. Thus, if other factors have an enormous impact on ease of use and usefulness, concerns over these results in the initial period of technology acceptance may become irrelevant. However, it is clear that users' information privacy concerns, as other studies have revealed, is a major factor affecting technology acceptance. Thus, caution must be exercised while interpreting the result, and further study is required on the issue. Numerous information technologies with outstanding performance and innovativeness often attract few consumers. A revised bill for those urgently in need of telehealth services is about to be approved in the national assembly. As telemedicine is implemented between doctors and patients, a wide range of systems that will improve the quality of healthcare services will be designed. In this sense, the study on the consumer acceptance of telehealth services is meaningful and offers strong academic evidence. Based on the implications, it can be expected to contribute to the activation of telehealth services. Further study is needed to assess the acceptance factors for telehealth services, such as motivation to remain healthy, health care involvement, knowledge on health, and control of health-related behavior, in order to develop unique services according to the categorization of customers based on health factors. In addition, further study may focus on various theoretical cognitive behavior models other than the TAM, such as the health belief model.

• Journal of forensic and investigative science
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.5-22
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• 2007

From the numerous social problems generated by the unbalanced social development and the social trend of belittling life overall, we found the causes of suicide getting worse in its seriousness day by day. In reality, the problem has been approached in a collateral level in contrast with other social problems. There have been an active involvement in studying the definition, causes and ways of prevention of suicide theoretically until now. However, different from other social problems, it is almost impossible to treat or fix the problem of suicide. Only ways to treat or fix the problem is when the suicide has ended in failure. Thus, this study intends to examine the suicide rate among the total accidents during the year 2005, perform the analyses on the actual causes according to the relations such as the means of suicide, occupation, age group, educational background, etc. In order to present a solution to the issue of suicide becoming serious each day. Among the total accidents in 2005, the suicide rate came out to be approximately 52.4%. Among the result, 52.4%, male with 69% resulted higher than female with 31%, which appears to be related to the social functions. While men tends to take more active(80%) means of suicide like jumping off, poison, hanging, etc., women tends to take more passive(60%) means of suicide like sleeping pills, slitting wrist, etc. In terms of the cause, pessimism, illness, denial, mental disorder, etc resulted more than 75%, and there were many cases of suicide after exhibiting the signs of depression. Also there were higher suicide rate of the unemployed engaged in direct labor with educational background lower than college level related to the pessimism regarding the family living cost. We were able to determine the recent increase in the suicidal tendency of the educated people higher than the college level and the retired people with depression caused by the sudden change in social status. Overall there are several reasons for suicide, however, in most cases the signs of depression were exhibited until the final suicide, which tells us the serious psychological problem of suicide. Assuming that the current development of suicide will continue in future, the result of this study will guide the corresponding social policies, be utilized in preparing the insurance or management at the national level dealing with the real social problems that are not just a conflict of an individual, but could spread like a fad and become much bigger than the present by the continuous support at the environmental, social and political levels, and be utilized as the basic data to establish the research plan.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.43-72
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• 2009

Recently, user-created content (UCC) have emerged as popular medium of on-line participation among users. The Internet environment has been constantly evolving, attracting active participation and information sharing among common users. This tendency is a significant deviation from the earlier Internet use as an one-way information channel through which users passively received information or contents from contents providers. Thanks to UCCs online users can now more freely generate and exchange contents; therefore, identifying the critical factors that affect content-generating activities has increasingly become an important issue. This paper proposes a set of critical factors for stimulating contents generation and sharing activities by Internet users. These factors were derived from the theories of folklores such as tales and songs. Based on some shared traits of folklores and UCC content, we found four critical elements which should be heeded in constructing UCC contents, which are: context of culture, context of situation, skill of generator, and response of audience. In addition, we selected three major UCC websites: a specialized contents portal, a general internet portal, and an official contents service site, They have different use environments, user interfaces, and service policies, To identify critical factors for generating, sharing and transferring UCC, we traced user activities, interactions and flows of content in the three UCC websites. Moreover, we conducted extensive interviews with users and operators as well as policy makers in each site. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data, this research identifies nine critical factors that facilitate contents generation and sharing activities among users. In the context of culture, we suggest voluntary community norms, proactive use of copyrights, strong user relationships, and a fair monetary reward system as critical elements in facilitating the process of contents generation and sharing activities. Norms which were established by users themselves regulate user behavior and influence content format. Strong relationships of users stimulate content generation activities by enhancing collaborative content generation. Particularly, users generate contents through collaboration with others, based on their enhanced relationship and specialized skills. They send and receive contents by leaving messages on website or blogs, using instant messenger or SMS. It is an interesting and important phenomenon, because the quality of contents can be constantly improved and revised, depending on the specialized abilities of those engaged in a particular content. In this process, the reward system is an essential driving factor. Yet, monetary reward should be considered only after some fair criterion is established. In terms of the context of the situation, the quality of contents uploading system was proposed to have strong influence on the content generating activities. Among other influential factors on contents generation activities are generators' specialized skills and involvement of the users were proposed. In addition, the audience response, especially effective development of shared interests as well as feedback, was suggested to have significant influence on contents generation activities. Content generators usually reflect the shared interest of others. Shared interest is a distinct characteristic of UCC and observed in all the three websites, in which common interest is formed by the "threads" embedded with content. Through such threads of information and contents users discuss and share ideas while continuously extending and updating shared contents in the process. Evidently, UCC is a new paradigm representing the next generation of the Internet. In order to fully utilize this innovative paradigm, we need to understand how users take advantage of this medium in generating contents, and what affects their content generation activities. Based on these findings, UCC service providers should design their websites as common playground where users freely interact and share their common interests. As such this paper makes an important first step to gaining better understand about this new communication paradigm created by UCC.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.26
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• pp.121-144
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• 2011

The Framework Act on the Management of Disasters and Safety 2004(FAMDS) currently underpins Korean civil protection system, and under this FAMDS, Korean civil protection establishes a three-tiered government structure for dealing with crises and disasters: central government, provincial & metropolitan government, and local government tiers. In particular, the concept of Integrated Emergency Management(IEM) emphasizes that emergency response organizations should work and act together to respond to crises and disasters effectively, based on the coordination and cooperation model, not the command and control model. In tune with this trend, civil protection matters are, first, dealt with by local responders at the local level without direct involvement of central or federal government in the UK or USA. In other words, central government intervention is usually implemented in the UK and the USA, only when the scale or complexity of a civil protection issue is so vast, and thus requires a degree of central government coordination and support, resting on the severity and impact of the event. In contrast, it appears that civil protection mechanism in Korea has adopted a rigid centralized system within the command and control model, and for this reason, central government can easily interfere with regional or local command and control arrangements; there is a high level of central government decision-making remote from a local area. The principle of subsidiarity tends to be ignored. Under these circumstances, it is questionable whether such top-down arrangements of civil protection in Korea can manage uncertainty, unfamiliarity and unexpectedness in the age of Risk Society and Post-modern society, where interactive complexity is increasingly growing. In this context, the study argues that Korean civil protection system should move towards the decentralized model, based on coordination and cooperation between responding organizations, loosening the command and control structure, as with the UK or the USA emergency management arrangements. For this argument, the study basically explores mechanisms of civil protection arrangements in Korea under current legislation, and then finally attempts to make theoretical suggestions for the future of the Korean civil protection system.

• Korean Journal of Comparative Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.127-154
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• 2017

EIU has evolved diversely depending on the national environment and culture on the basis of the philosophy of individual human rights and world peace articulated in the "1974 Recommendation on EIU". However, the global environment surrounding EIU has been changed socially, economically, culturally and ecologically in the 21st century, and therefore it is necessary to raise the following questions: Is the concept of EIU initiated for international understanding and cooperation for world peace in the 20th century still valid in the 21st century? Which direction should we take in order for EIU to be efficient in the globalized world? To answer these questions, this study reviewed and analyzed the historical development and current trends of the EIU in the regions of Europe, North America, Asia Pacific area, and Africa. For the empirical study, thirty-four experts in EIU selected from the four regions were interviewed by the researchers. Based on the interviews and the related literature review, it was found that the diverse terms of EIU were used in the four regions and the focus on EIU was different depending on the geographical, historical and social environment of each region. But, despite of the diversity in terminology in EIU, human rights, peace, equity and social justice which are emphasized by UNESCO, were universally taught in EIU. The EIU in these regions is currently dealt with in school education, social education and lifelong education, and particularly global citizenship allowing multiple identities is importantly treated together with citizenship education. Another important aspect of EIU that was commonly found in these four regions was that global citizenship education for solving global problems was coexistent with the reinforcement of nationalism for the economic competency of each nation in a globalized world. The issue of global inequality was particularly dealt with in EIU, and the teaching of voluntary civic involvement and responsibility were particularly emphasized in EIU. Based on these research findings, the study proposes "glocalism", connecting global issues with local issues for solving global problems, as a new approach to the EIU of the 21st century.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.81-113
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• 2011

This study investigates leisure activity, involvement and self-concept in cyberspace of various age groups of adolescents. A total of 1,388 students (elementary school=337, middle school=326, high school=361, university=364, consisting of 696 male and 692 female) participated in the study. The results are as follows. First, although the vast majority of adolescents (96.9%) had a computer at home, majority of adolescents visited Internet cafe. Second, 70.3% of adolescents visited Internet cafe to play Internet games, followed by engaging in information search, chatting, and participated in cyber community. Third, on average adolescents spent 5.43 hours per week playing Internet games, with more males playing Internet games than female adolescents. As for information search, the weekly average was 2.60 hours, with university students spending more time than the other groups. As for chatting, the weekly average was 1.69 hours, with no significant differences among the groups. The weekly average of Internet use was 9.65 hours, with older groups spending more time. The weekly average use of computer was 10.91 hours, with older groups spending more time and more males using more computer than females. Fourth, as for self-concept in cyberspace, elementary and middle school students reported that they had fun, while high school and university students reported that they were the same as in the regular daily life. In addition, adolescents reported that they spent leisure activity in cyberspace and they become a fictional character in cyberspace. Fifth, when they played Internet games, regardless of age and gender, adolescents reported that they had fun, followed by that they were absorbed, that they became aggressive, and that they were the same as in the regular daily life. Sixth, when they chatted on Internet, regardless of age and gender, adolescents reported that they had fun, followed by that they were not interested, that they were the same as in the regular daily life, and that they do not chat on Internet. Seventh, when they interacted with their friends on Internet, regardless of age and gender, majority of adolescents reported that they had fun, followed by that they conversed, that they were the same as in the regular daily life, and that they felt closer. These results indicate that Korean adolescents view Internet as a place to spend their leisure time and that they enjoyed spending time on Internet.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.139-166
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• 2010

The supply chain management (SCM) systems have emerged as strong managerial tools for manufacturing firms in enhancing competitive strength. Despite of large investments in the SCM systems, many companies are not fully realizing the promised benefits from the systems. A review of literature on adoption, implementation and success factor of IOS (inter-organization systems), EDI (electronic data interchange) systems, shows that this issue has been examined from multiple theoretic perspectives. And many researchers have attempted to identify the factors which influence the success of system implementation. However, the existing studies have two drawbacks in revealing the determinants of systems implementation success. First, previous researches raise questions as to the appropriateness of research subjects selected. Most SCM systems are operating in the form of private industrial networks, where the participants of the systems consist of two distinct groups: focus companies and vendors. The focus companies are the primary actors in developing and operating the systems, while vendors are passive participants which are connected to the system in order to supply raw materials and parts to the focus companies. Under the circumstance, there are three ways in selecting the research subjects; focus companies only, vendors only, or two parties grouped together. It is hard to find researches that use the focus companies exclusively as the subjects probably due to the insufficient sample size for statistic analysis. Most researches have been conducted using the data collected from both groups. We argue that the SCM success factors cannot be correctly indentified in this case. The focus companies and the vendors are in different positions in many areas regarding the system implementation: firm size, managerial resources, bargaining power, organizational maturity, and etc. There are no obvious reasons to believe that the success factors of the two groups are identical. Grouping the two groups also raises questions on measuring the system success. The benefits from utilizing the systems may not be commonly distributed to the two groups. One group's benefits might be realized at the expenses of the other group considering the situation where vendors participating in SCM systems are under continuous pressures from the focus companies with respect to prices, quality, and delivery time. Therefore, by combining the system outcomes of both groups we cannot measure the system benefits obtained by each group correctly. Second, the measures of system success adopted in the previous researches have shortcoming in measuring the SCM success. User satisfaction, system utilization, and user attitudes toward the systems are most commonly used success measures in the existing studies. These measures have been developed as proxy variables in the studies of decision support systems (DSS) where the contribution of the systems to the organization performance is very difficult to measure. Unlike the DSS, the SCM systems have more specific goals, such as cost saving, inventory reduction, quality improvement, rapid time, and higher customer service. We maintain that more specific measures can be developed instead of proxy variables in order to measure the system benefits correctly. The purpose of this study is to find the determinants of SCM systems success in the perspective of vendor companies. In developing the research model, we have focused on selecting the success factors appropriate for the vendors through reviewing past researches and on developing more accurate success measures. The variables can be classified into following: technological, organizational, and environmental factors on the basis of TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework. The model consists of three independent variables (competition intensity, top management support, and information system maturity), one mediating variable (collaboration), one moderating variable (government support), and a dependent variable (system success). The systems success measures have been developed to reflect the operational benefits of the SCM systems; improvement in planning and analysis capabilities, faster throughput, cost reduction, task integration, and improved product and customer service. The model has been validated using the survey data collected from 122 vendors participating in the SCM systems in Korea. To test for mediation, one should estimate the hierarchical regression analysis on the collaboration. And moderating effect analysis should estimate the moderated multiple regression, examines the effect of the government support. The result shows that information system maturity and top management support are the most important determinants of SCM system success. Supply chain technologies that standardize data formats and enhance information sharing may be adopted by supply chain leader organization because of the influence of focal company in the private industrial networks in order to streamline transactions and improve inter-organization communication. Specially, the need to develop and sustain an information system maturity will provide the focus and purpose to successfully overcome information system obstacles and resistance to innovation diffusion within the supply chain network organization. The support of top management will help focus efforts toward the realization of inter-organizational benefits and lend credibility to functional managers responsible for its implementation. The active involvement, vision, and direction of high level executives provide the impetus needed to sustain the implementation of SCM. The quality of collaboration relationships also is positively related to outcome variable. Collaboration variable is found to have a mediation effect between on influencing factors and implementation success. Higher levels of inter-organizational collaboration behaviors such as shared planning and flexibility in coordinating activities were found to be strongly linked to the vendors trust in the supply chain network. Government support moderates the effect of the IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support on collaboration and implementation success of SCM. In general, the vendor companies face substantially greater risks in SCM implementation than the larger companies do because of severe constraints on financial and human resources and limited education on SCM systems. Besides resources, Vendors generally lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal SCM expertise. For these reasons, government supports may establish requirements for firms doing business with the government or provide incentives to adopt, implementation SCM or practices. Government support provides significant improvements in implementation success of SCM when IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support and collaboration are low. The environmental characteristic of competition intensity has no direct effect on vendor perspective of SCM system success. But, vendors facing above average competition intensity will have a greater need for changing technology. This suggests that companies trying to implement SCM systems should set up compatible supply chain networks and a high-quality collaboration relationship for implementation and performance.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.111-131
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• 2007

As a brand becomes a core asset in creating a corporation's value, brand marketing has become one of core strategies that corporations pursue. Recently, for customer relationship management, possession and consumption of goods were centered on brand for the management. Thus, management related to this matter was developed. The main reason of the increased interest on the relationship between the brand and the consumer is due to acquisition of individual consumers and development of relationship with those consumers. Along with the development of relationship, a corporation is able to establish long-term relationships. This has become a competitive advantage for the corporation. All of these processes became the strategic assets of corporations. The importance and the increase of interest of a brand have also become a big issue academically. Brand equity, brand extension, brand identity, brand relationship, and brand community are the results derived from the interest of a brand. More specifically, in marketing, the study of brands has been led to the study of factors related to building of powerful brands and the process of building the brand. Recently, studies concentrated primarily on the consumer-brand relationship. The reason is that brand loyalty can not explain the dynamic quality aspects of loyalty, the consumer-brand relationship building process, and especially interactions between the brands and the consumers. In the studies of consumer-brand relationship, a brand is not just limited to possession or consumption objectives, but rather conceptualized as partners. Most of the studies from the past concentrated on the results of qualitative analysis of consumer-brand relationship to show the depth and width of the performance of consumer-brand relationship. Studies in Korea have been the same. Recently, studies of consumer-brand relationship started to concentrate on quantitative analysis rather than qualitative analysis or even go further with quantitative analysis to show effecting factors of consumer-brand relationship. Studies of new quantitative approaches show the possibilities of using the results as a new concept of viewing consumer-brand relationship and possibilities of applying these new concepts on marketing. Studies of consumer-brand relationship with quantitative approach already exist, but none of them include sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship, which presents theoretical proofs for measurement. In other words, most studies add up or average out the sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship. However, to do these kind of studies, precondition of sub-dimensions being in identical constructs is necessary. Therefore, most of the studies from the past do not meet conditions of sub-dimensions being as one dimension construct. From this, we question the validity of past studies and their limits. The main purpose of this paper is to overcome the limits shown from the past studies by practical use of previous studies on sub-dimensions in a one-dimensional construct (Naver & Slater, 1990; Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Chang & Chen, 1998). In this study, two arbitrary groups were classified to evaluate reliability of the measurements and reliability analyses were pursued on each group. For convergent validity, correlations, Cronbach's, one-factor solution exploratory analysis were used. For discriminant validity correlation of consumer-brand relationship was compared with that of an involvement, which is a similar concept with consumer-based relationship. It also indicated dependent correlations by Cohen and Cohen (1975, p.35) and results showed that it was different constructs from 6 sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship. Through the results of studies mentioned above, we were able to finalize that sub-dimensions of consumer-brand relationship can viewed from one-dimensional constructs. This means that the one-dimensional construct of consumer-brand relationship can be viewed with reliability and validity. The result of this research is theoretically meaningful in that it assumes consumer-brand relationship in a one-dimensional construct and provides the basis of methodologies which are previously preformed. It is thought that this research also provides the possibility of new research on consumer-brand relationship in that it gives root to the fact that it is possible to manipulate one-dimensional constructs consisting of consumer-brand relationship. In the case of previous research on consumer-brand relationship, consumer-brand relationship is classified into several types on the basis of components consisting of consumer-brand relationship and a number of studies have been performed with priority given to the types. However, as we can possibly manipulate a one-dimensional construct through this research, it is expected that various studies which make the level or strength of consumer-brand relationship practical application of construct will be performed, and not research focused on separate types of consumer-brand relationship. Additionally, we have the theoretical basis of probability in which to manipulate the consumer-brand relationship with one-dimensional constructs. It is anticipated that studies using this construct, which is consumer-brand relationship, practical use of dependent variables, parameters, mediators, and so on, will be performed.