• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.22
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• pp.137-165
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• 2007

It seems high time to increase productivity by adopting e-business to overcome challenges posed by both external factors including the appreciation of Korean won, oil hikes and fierce global competition and domestic issues represented by disparities between large corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Seoul metropolitan and local cities, and export and domestic demand all of which weaken future growth engines in the Korean economy. The demands of the globalization era are for innovative changes in businessprocess and industrial structure aiming for creating new values. To this end, e-business is expected to play a core role in the sophistication of the Korean economy through new values and innovation. In order to examine business performance in e-business-adopting industries, this study analyzed the home shopping industry by closely looking into the financial ratios including the ratio of net profit to sales, the ratio of operation income to sales, the ratio of gross cost to sales cost, the ratio of gross cost to selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense, and return of investment (ROI). This study, for best outcome, referred to corporate financial statements as a main resource to calculate financial ratios by utilizing Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) of the Financial Supervisory Service, one of the Korea's financial supervisory authorities. First of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of net profit to sales is as following. CJ Home Shopping has registered a remarkable increase in its ratio of net profit rate to sales since 2002 while its competitors find it hard to catch up with CJ's stunning performances. This is partly due to the efficient management compared to CJ's value of capital. Such significance, if the current trend continues, will make the front-runner assume the largest market share. On the other hand, GS Home Shopping, despite its best organized system and largest value of capital among others, lacks efficiency in management. Second of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of operation income to sales is as following. Both CJ Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping have, until 2004, recorded similar growth trend. However, while CJ Home Shopping's operating income continued to increase in 2005, GS Home Shopping observed its operating income declining which resulted in the increasing income gap with CJ Home Shopping. While CJ Home Shopping with the largest market share in home shopping industryis engaged in aggressive marketing, GS Home Shopping due to its stability-driven management strategies falls behind CJ again in the ratio of operation income to sales in spite of its favorable management environment including its large capital. Companies in the Group B were established in the same year of 2001. NS Home Shopping was the first in the Group B to shift its loss to profit. Woori Home Shopping has continued to post operating loss for three consecutive years and finally was sold to Lotte Group in 2007, but since then, has registered a continuing increase in net income on sales. Third of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to sales cost is as following. Since home shopping falls into sales business, its cost of sales is much lower than that of other types of business such as manufacturing industry. Since 2002 in gross costs including cost of sales, SG&A expense, and non-operating expense, cost of sales turned out to have remarkably decreased. Group B has also posted a notable decline in the same sector since 2002. Fourth of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to SG&A expense is as following. Due to its unique characteristics, the home shopping industry usually posts ahigh ratio of SG&A expense. However, more than 80% of SG&A expense means the result of lax management and at the same time, a sharp lower net income on sales than other industries. Last but not least, the result of the trend analysis on ROI is as following. As for CJ Home Shopping, the curve of ROI looks similar to that of its investment on fixed assets. As it turned out, the company's ratio of fixed assets to operating income skyrocketed in 2004 and 2005. As far as GS Home Shopping is concerned, its fixed assets are not as much as that of CJ Home Shopping. Consequently, competition in the home shopping industry, at the moment, is among CJ, GS, Hyundai, NS and Woori Home Shoppings, and all of them need to more thoroughly manage their costs. In order for the late-comers of Group B and other home shopping companies to advance further, the current lax management should be reformed particularly on their SG&A expense sector. Provided that the total sales volume in the Internet shopping sector is projected to grow over 20 trillion won by the year 2010, it is concluded that all the participants in the home shopping industry should put strategies on efficient management on costs and expenses as their top priority rather than increase revenues, if they hope to grow even further after 2007.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.27-45
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• 1990

Two opposing views prevail regarding the economic impact of rural out-migration on the rural areas of origin. The optimistic neoclassical view argues that rapid rural out-migration is not detrimental to the income and welfare of the rural areas of origin, whereas Lipton (1980) argues the opposite. We developed our own alternative model for rural to urban migration, appropriate for rapidly developing economies such as Korea's. This model, which adopts international trade theories of nontraded goods and Dutch Disease to rural to urban migration issues, argues that rural to urban migration is caused mainly by two factors: first, the unprofitability of farming, and second, the decrease in demand for rural nontraded goods and the increase in demand for urban nontraded goods. The unprofitability of farming is caused by the increase in rural wages, which is induced by increasing urban wages in booming urban manufacturing sectors, and by the fact that the cost increases in farming cannot be shifted to consumers, because farm prices are fixed worldwide and because the income demand elasticity for farm products is very low. The demand for nontraded goods decreases in rural and increases in urban areas because population density and income in urban areas increase sharply, while those in rural areas decrease sharply, due to rapid rural to urban migration. Given that the market structure for nontraded goods-namely, service sectors including educational and health facilities-is mostly in monopolistically competitive, and that the demand for nontraded goods comes only from local sources, the urban service sector enjoys economies of scale, and can thus offer services at cheaper prices and in greater variety, whereas the rural service sector cannot enjoy the advantages offered by scale economies. Our view concerning the economic impact of rural to urban migration on rural areas of origin agrees with Lipton's pessimistic view that rural out-migration is detrimental to the income and welfare of rural areas. However, our reasons for the reduction of rural income are different from those in Lipton's model. Lipton argued that rural income and welfare deteriorate mainly because of a shortage of human capital, younger workers and talent resulting from selective rural out-migration. Instead, we believe that rural income declines, first, because a rapid rural-urban migration creates a further shortage of farm labor supplies and increases rural wages, and thus reduces further the profitability of farming and, second, because a rapid rural-urban migration causes a further decline of the rural service sectors. Empirical tests of our major hypotheses using Korean census data from 1966, 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1985 support our own model much more than the neoclassical or Lipton's models. A kun (county) with a large out-migration had a smaller proportion of younger working aged people in the population, and a smaller proportion of highly educated workers. But the productivity of farm workers, measured in terms of fall crops (rice) purchased by the government per farmer or per hectare of irrigated land, did not decline despite the loss of these youths and of human capital. The kun having had a large out-migration had a larger proportion of the population in the farm sector and a smaller proportion in the service sector. The kun having had a large out-migration also had a lower income measured in terms of the proportion of households receiving welfare payments or the amount of provincial taxes paid per household. The lower incomes of these kuns might explain why the kuns that experienced a large out-migration had difficulty in mechanizing farming. Our policy suggestions based on the tests of the currently prevailing hypotheses are as follows: 1) The main cause of farming difficulties is not a lack of human capital, but the in­crease in production costs due to rural wage increases combined with depressed farm output prices. Therefore, a more effective way of helping farm economies is by increasing farm output prices. However, we are not sure whether an increase in farm output prices is desirable in terms of efficiency. 2) It might be worthwhile to attempt to increase the size of farmland holdings per farm household so that the mechanization of farming can be achieved more easily. 3) A kun with large out-migration suffers a deterioration in income and welfare. Therefore, the government should provide a form of subsidization similar to the adjustment assistance provided for international trade. This assistance should not be related to the level of farm output. Otherwise, there is a possibility that we might encourage farm production which would not be profitable in the absence of subsidies. 4) Government intervention in agricultural research and its dissemination, and large-scale social overhead projects in rural areas, carried out by the Korean government, might be desirable from both efficiency and equity points of view. Government interventions in research are justified because of the problems associated with the appropriation of knowledge, and government actions on large-scale projects are justified because they required collective action.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.71-102
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• 2007

There were many comprehensive analyses conducted within the existing research activities wherein factors affecting technology progress including investment in R&D vis-${\Box}$-vis their influences act as the determinants of TFP. Note, however, that there were few comprehensive analysis in the industrial research performed regarding the impact of the economy of scale as it affects TFP; most of these research studies dealt with the analysis of the non -parametric Malmquist productivity index or used the stochastic frontier production function models. No comprehensive analysis on the impacts of individual independent variables affecting TFP was performed. Therefore, this study obtained the TFP increase rate of each industry by analyzing the factors of the existing growth accounting equation and comprehensively analyzed the TFP determinants by constructing a comprehensive analysis model considering the investment in R&D and economy of scale (smallness by industry) as the influencers of TFP by industry. First, for the TFP increase rate of the 15 industries as a whole, the annual average increase rate for 1993${\sim}$ 1997 was approximately 3.8% only; during 1999${\sim}$ 2000 following the foreign exchange crisis, however, the annual increase rate rose to approximately 7.8%. By industry, the annual average increase rate of TFP between 1993 and 2000 stood at 11.6%, the highest in the electrical and electronic equipment manufacturing business and IT manufacturing sector. In contrast, a -0.4% increase rate was recorded in the furniture and other product manufacturing sectors. In the case of the service industry, the TFP increase rate was 7.3% in the transportation, warehousing, and communication sectors. This is much higher than the 2.9% posted in the electricity, water, and gas sectors and -3.7% recorded in the wholesale, food, and hotel businesses. The results of the comprehensive analysis conducted on the determinants of TFP showed that the correlations between R&D and TFP in general were positive (+) correlations whose significance has yet to be validated; in the model where the self-employed and unpaid family workers were used as proxy variables indicating the smallness of industry out of the total number of workers, however, significant negative (-) correlations were noted. On the other hand, the estimation factors of variables surrogating the smallness of scale in each industry showed that a consistently high "smallness of scale" in an industry means a decrease in the increase rate of TFP in the same industry.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.30 no.9
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• pp.961-972
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• 2008

In 2004, total emissions of Greenhouse Gases(GHGs) in Korea was estimated to be about 590 million metric tons, which is the world's 10th largest emissions. Considering the much amount of nation's GHG emissions and growing nation's position in the world, GHG emissions in Korea should be reduced in near future. The CO$_2$ emissions from two sub-sections of energy sector in Korea, such as thermal power plant and industry section(including manufacturing and construction industries), was about 300 million metric tons in 2004 and this is 53.3% of total GHG emissions in Korea. So, the mitigation of CO$_2$ emissions in these two section is more important and more effective to reduce the nation's total GHGs than any other fields. In addition, these two section have high potential to qualitatively and effectively apply the CCS(Carbon Capture and Storage) technologies due to the nature of their process. There are several CCS technologies applied to these two section. In short term, the chemical absorption technology using amine as a absorbent could be the most effectively used. In middle or long term, pre-combustion technology equipped with ATR(Autothermal reforming), or MSR-$H_2$(Methane steam reformer with hydrogen separation membrane reactor) unit and oxyfuel combustion such as SOFC+GT(Solid oxide fuel cell-Gas turbine) process would be the promising technologies to reduce the CO$_2$ emissions in two areas. It is expected that these advanced CCS technologies can reduce the CO$_2$ avoidance cost to $US 8.5-43.5/tCO$_2$. Using the CCS technologies, if the CO$_2$ emissions from two sub-sections of energy sector could be reduced to even 10% of total emissions, the amount of 30 million metric tons of CO$_2$ could be mitigated.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.191-197
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• 2017

The safety nature of construction industry differs from that of manufacturing sector. For instance, accident risk level dramatically varies at each phase of construction process. Korean Occupational and Health Safety Act has been regulated OHS expense and it contributed reducing accident risk and enhancing safety culture for many years. However, although current regulation guides to use OHS expense proportionate to construction progress, it still allows late use of the expense. This study was conducted for the purpose of presenting methods of estimating a step-by-step OHS expense rate required at each construction phase. In order to do provide proper OHS expense schedule, it analysed accident risk of each construction phase by sorting out 1439 cases of construction site fatality reports, and proposed a method of generating appropriate OHS expense scheme according to its construction work progress characteristics. Both linear and sigmoidal S-curve model were used for the analysis, and the latter generally requires earlier use of OHS expense. By comparing the estimated OHS expense use schedule with current criteria, more than 27%p early use of OHS expense is required for the prevention of accident.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.50-63
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• 2007

The development of domestic plant specific emission factors is very important to estimate reliable national emissions management. This study, for the reason, was carried out to obtain advances emission factor for Carbon Dioxide ($CO_2$) by source-specific emission tests from the iron and steel industry sector which is well known as one of the major sources of greenhouse gases ($CO_2$). Emission factors estimated in this study were compared with those of IPCC for evaluation and they were found to be of similar level in the case of $CO_2$. There was no good information available on $CO_2$ plant specific emission factors from the iron and steel industry in Korea so far. The major emission sources of $CO_2$ examined from the iron and steel manufacturing precesses were a hot blast stove, coke oven, sintering furnace, electric arc furnace, heating furnace, and so on. In this study, the concentration of $CO_2$ from the hot blast stove process was the highest among all processes. The $CO_2$ emission factors for a ton of Steel and Iron products (using B-C oil) were estimated to be 0.315 $CO_2$ tonne (by Tier 3 method) and 4.89 $CO_2$ tonne. In addition, emission factor of $CO_2$ for heating furnace process was the highest among all process. Emission factors estimated in this study were compared with those of IPCC for evaluation and they were found to be of similar level in the case of $CO_2$.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.22-46
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• 2007

This article introduces a recent innovation in Korea's human resources development policy in the SW sector. Facing serious problems in cultivating SW engineers such as a mismatch in supply and demand of SW workers, shortage of globally competitive SW professionals, and insufficient education and training of university graduates, the Korean government has decided to adopt a new paradigm in national SW engineering education, based on supply chain management (SCM) in manufacturing. SCM has been a major component of the corporate competitive strategy, enhancing organizational productiveness and responsiveness in a highly competitive environment. It weighs improving competitiveness of the supply chain as a whole via long-term commitment to supply chain relationships and a cooperative, integrated approach to business processes. These characteristics of SCM are believed to provide insight into a more effective IT education and university-industry collaboration. On the basis of the SCM literature, a framework for industry-oriented SW human resources development is designed, and then applied in the case of nurturing computer-software engineers in Korea. This approach is expected to fumish valuable implications not only to Korean policy makers, but also to other countries making similar efforts to enhance the effectiveness and flexibility in human resources development. The construction of SCM-based SW HRD model is first trial to apply SCM into SW HRD field. The model is divided into three kinds of primary activities and two kinds of supportive activities in the field of value chain such as SW HRD Council, SW demand and supply plan establishment and the integration of SW engineering capabilities that contribute the reduction of the skill and job matching through SW HR demand and supply collaboration.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.256-262
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• 2011

Currently among the several methods to estimate an environmental impact of products, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique is mostly used. The Ministry of Environment has been performed the carbon footprint labelling to give the carbon record of product by using this method. But the calculation of carbon footprint in primary agricultural product which is raw material of the processed food cannot be made because there is lack of methodology and LCI DB at agriculture sector. Therefore, LCA carried out to estimate carbon footprint, and established LCI DB for complex fertilizers (21-17-17 1 kg, 17-21-17 1 kg, 15-15-15 1 kg, Unspecified 1 kg) in the production system. The result of LCI DB analysis focussed on the GHG, and it was observed that the values of carbon footprint were $2.42E+00kg\;CO_2-eq.kg^{-1}$ for 21-17-17, $2.10E+00kg\;CO_2-eq.kg^{-1}$ for 17-21-17, $2.23E+00kg\;CO_2-eq.kg^{-1}$ for 15-15-15 and $3.56E+00kg\;CO_2-eq.kg^{-1}$ for Unspecified. For the analysis of LCIA (Life Cycle Impact Assessment) on complex fertilizers in the production system, the carbon footprint from pre-manufacturing phase is contributed to 98.96%, 98.81%, 98.88% and 99.30% on each complex fertilizer with 21-17-17, 17-21-17, 15-15-15, and Unspecified, respectively. These results will be used in basic data for estimation of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.43-58
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• 2021

This study analyzes the entrepreneurship policies of the previous Korean administrations from the perspective of the Policy Paradigm by Hall(1993). A total of 195 newspaper articles and 202 government documents were examined to identify policy paradigm shifts through an analysis of policy objectives, policy instruments, and changing quality of policy instruments by each administration. The first paradigm was built during the 5th and 6th Republic, where 'Support for Small and Medium Enterprise Establishment Act' was enacted in 1986 to promote and support start-ups in the manufacturing sector. Next is the so-called 'people's government' period where 'Act on Special Measures for the Promotion of Venture Businesses' was enacted to tackle the challenges posed during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. A new policy goal was set to promote and nurture venture companies seeking subsequent means to achieve it. The third paradigm shift took place during President Moon's administration in order to effectively respond to the issues stemming from the fourth industrial revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the overall revision of the 'Support for Small and Medium Enterprise Establishment Act', the scope of startups were expanded, new industries and technology startups were supported and promoted, and venture investment-related laws were streamlined. In addition, the Small and Medium Business Administration was promoted as the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, enabling them to take initiative in implementing startup policies. Particularly, this study focuses on examining the low survival rate of startup companies and the revitalization of private investment as rising policy issues for recent startups, and suggests the improvement direction due to startup policy paradigm shift.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.34-46
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• 2020

In order to supply stable natural gas in the future, it is necessary to forecast the demand in advance and secure the quantity of supply. In this paper, we propose a method of estimating the demand function of industrial natural gas, which is the core of the increase of domestic natural gas demand in the future. The cross-sectional data of 304 domestic industries were used to estimate the demand function of the industrial natural gas, and the effect of industry specific characteristics such as capital investment, manufacturing cost. Finally, the least absolute deviation estimation method which is robust to outliers and does not assume the homogeneity of the error term and the normality, And the results were derived. In addition, the economic value of industrial city gas was estimated using the price elasticity of industrial city gas. Therefore, it can be seen that the continuous expansion and supply of city gas to the industrial sector is beneficial at the national level, and the government needs to promote expansion through the industrial city gas support policy.