• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.85-102
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• 2009

With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.1
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• pp.147-162
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• 1989

The current status of the application and interpretation of the Warsaw Convention and its subsequent Protocols in Asian countries is in its fredgling stages compared to the developed countries of Europe and North America, and there is thus little published information about the various Asian governments' treatment and courts' views of the Warsaw System. Due to that limitation, the accent of this paper will be on Korea and Japan. As one will be aware, the so-called 'Warsaw System' is made up of the Warsaw Convention of 1929, the Hague Protocol of 1955, the Guadalajara Convention of 1961, the Guatemala City Protocol of 1971 and the Montreal Additional Protocols Nos. 1,2,3 and 4 of 1975. Among these instruments, most of the countries in Asia are parties to both the Warsaw Convention and the Hague Protocol. However, the Republic of Korea and Mongolia are parties only to the Hague Protocol, while Burma, Indonesia and Sri Lanka are parties only to the Warsaw Convention. Thailand and Taiwan are not parties only to the convention or protocol. Among Asian states, Indonesia, the Phillipines and Pakistan are also parties to the Guadalajara Convention, but no country in Asia has signed the Guatemala City Protocol of 1971 or the Montreal Additional Protocols, which Protocols have not yet been put into force. The People's Republic of China has declared that the Warsaw Convention shall apply to the entire Chinese territory, including Taiwan. 'The application of the Warsaw Convention to one-way air carriage between a state which is a party only to the Warsaw Convention and a state which is a party only to the Hague Protocol' is of particular importance in Korea as it is a signatory only to the Hague Protocol, but it is involved in a great deal of air transportation to and from the united states, which in turn is a party only to the Warsaw Convention. The opinion of the Supreme Court of Korea appears to be, that parties to the Warsaw Convention were intended to be parties to the Hague Protocol, whether they actually signed it or not. The effect of this decision is that in Korea the United States and Korea will be considered by the courts to be in a treaty relationship, though neither State is a signatory to the same instrument as the other State. The first wrongful death claim in Korea related to international carriage by air under the Convention was made in Hyun-Mo Bang, et al v. Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd. case. In this case, the plaintiffs claimed for damages based upon breach of contract as well as upon tort under the Korean Civil Code. The issue in the case was whether the time limitation provisions of the Convention should be applicable to a claim based in tort as well as to a claim based in contract. The Appellate Court ruled on 29 August 1983 that 'however founded' in Article 24(1) of the Convention should be construed to mean that the Convention should be applicable to the claim regardless of whether the cause of action was based in tort or breach of contract, and that the plaintiffs' rights to damages had therefore extinguished because of the time limitation as set forth in Article 29(1) of the Convention. The difficult and often debated question of what exactly is meant by the words 'such default equivalent to wilful misconduct' in Article 25(1) of the Warsaw Convention, has also been litigated. The Supreme Court of Japan dealt with this issue in the Suzuki Shinjuten Co. v. Northwest Airlines Inc. case. The Supreme Court upheld the Appellate Court's ruling, and decided that 'such default equivalent to wilful misconduct' under Article 25(1) of the Convention was within the meaning of 'gross negligence' under the Japanese Commercial Code. The issue of the convention of the 'franc' into national currencies as provided in Article 22 of the Warsaw Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol has been raised in a court case in Korea, which is now before the District Court of Seoul. In this case, the plaintiff argues that the gold franc equivalent must be converted in Korean Won in accordance with the free market price of gold in Korea, as Korea has not enacted any law, order or regulation prescribing the proper method of calculating the equivalent in its national currency. while it is unclear if the court will accept this position, the last official price of gold of the United States as in the famous Franklin Mint case, Special Drawing Right(SDR) or the current French franc, Korean Air Lines has argued in favor of the last official price of gold of the United States by which the air lines converted such francs into us Dollars in their General Conditions of Carriage. It is my understanding that in India, an appellate court adopted the free market price valuation. There is a report as well saying that if a lawsuit concerning this issue were brought in Pakistan, the free market cost of gold would be applied there too. Speaking specifically about the future of the Warsaw System in Asia though I have been informed that Thailand is actively considering acceding to the Warsaw Convention, the attitudes of most Asian countries' governments towards the Warsaw System are still wnot ell known. There is little evidence that Asian countries are moving to deal concretely with the conversion of the franc into their own local currencies. So too it cannot be said that they are on the move to adhere to the Montreal Additional Protocols Nos. 3 & 4 which attempt to basically solve many of the current problems with the Warsaw System, by adopting the SDR as the unit of currency, by establishing the carrier's absolute liability and an unbreakable limit and by increasing the carrier's passenger limit of liability to SDR 100,000, as well as permiting the domestic introduction of supplemental compensation. To summarize my own sentiments regarding the future, I would say that given the fact that Asian air lines are now world leaders both in overall size and rate of growth, and the fact that both Asian individuals and governments are becoming more and more reliant on the global civil aviation networks as their economies become ever stronger, I am hopeful that Asian nations will henceforth play a bigger role in ensuring the orderly and hasty development of a workable unified system of rules governing international commercial air carriage.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.268-276
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• 2010

Earthquake Hazard Mitigation Law was activated into force on March 2009. By the law, the obligation to monitor the effect of earthquake on the facilities was extended to many organizations such as gas company and local governments. Based on the estimation of National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the number of free-surface acceleration stations would be expanded to more than 400. The advent of internet protocol and the more simplified operation have allowed the quick and easy installation of seismic stations. In addition, the dynamic range of seismic instruments has been continuously improved enough to evaluate damage intensity and to alert alarm directly for earthquake hazard mitigation. For direct visualization of damage intensity and area, Real Time Intensity COlor Mapping (RTICOM) is explained in detail. RTICOM would be used to retrieve the essential information for damage evaluation, Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA). Destructive earthquake damage is usually due to surface waves which just follow S wave. The peak amplitude of surface wave would be pre-estimated from the amplitude and frequency content of first arrival P wave. Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system is conventionally defined to estimate local magnitude from P wave. The status of EEW is reviewed and the application of EEW to Odesan earthquake is exampled with ShakeMap in order to make clear its appearance. In the sense of rapidity, the earthquake announcement of Korea Meteorological Agency (KMA) might be dramatically improved by the adaption of EEW. In order to realize hazard mitigation, EEW should be applied to the local crucial facilities such as nuclear power plants and fragile semi-conduct plant. The distributed EEW is introduced with the application example of Uljin earthquake. Not only Nation-wide but also locally distributed EEW applications, all relevant information is needed to be shared in real time. The plan of extension of Korea Integrated Seismic System (KISS) is briefly explained in order to future cooperation of data sharing and utilization.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.33-47
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• 2011

One of the most fundamental jobs of contemporary government is to look into various ways of providing its citizens with the best service work. This study aims to establish a procedure through which to consign the management of city parks to private companies, thus inviting participation and satisfaction on the part of citizens. In particular, this procedure includes creating a system of selecting private managing companies, for instance, specifying standards of selection and assembling selection committees. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, city parks can be managed better by private companies than by local governments in terms of cost cuts, personnel training, business efficiency, and know-how accumulation. The legal background for this is found in central and local legal articles. Second, it is recommended that the selection committee be composed of 6 to 9 members, both insiders and outsiders. In addition to selecting private managing companies for contracting-out, the committee should under take the role of consulting on how to perform and revise selecting standards, so that they can continue to improve these procedures. Third, the decision on private management should be noticed in advance and be made based on standards considering each local government's condition. These standards should consider the aspects of the public good, cost saving, quality of service, managing supervision, and citizen participation. The committee's assessment takes into account both the quality and the quantity of the standards. Fourth, the contracting-out for city park management should follow the order of: announcing consignment and receiving applicants, organizing selection committees and assessing applications, selecting and contracting, midterm evaluation, and re-announcement and re-consignment. To run city parks through the contracting-out is expected to increase the number of park visitors. Additionally, private consignment will involve a participation of diverse citizenship, thus playing an important role in city parks' building of a green-culture community.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.369-378
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• 2012

In France, there are many forms of organizations based on the intercommunal solidarity for city development and management. The purpose of the collaboration among Communes is to achieve high quality and well-equipped service-delivery system through co-operation of public services needed grand finances : water supply and sewage system and waste disposal system etc. The cooperation among French Communes and its effects, even though these were owing to the existing French local administration system, continued throughout regional co-management and social co-development process. This study suggested some characteristics and implications of the collaborative-style French new-town development and management organizations focused on the EPA, SAN and CA. First, the role of developmental corporation like EPA and its collaborative structure of decision-making are meaningful, because in these ways many related Communes could share a goal of new town development. Second, the way of new town corporation (SAN) is important in the sense of enabling the Communes to collaborate with each others while maintaining autonomy, so those are not simply state-directed objects, which was very difficult in the former French local administration system. Finally, transforming to CA (Communautes d'agglomeration:city community), EPA as an intercommunal corporation is possible to extend its purpose to the domain of regional planning including new town and periphery areas and change its position to a subject which can practice Commune's sustainable development according to stages of city's development and maturity. The most important implication of this study on urban development in Korea is that administrative consultative council or association among local governments and related authorities need to be established and effectively operate because multi-stakeholders could share a goal of urban development and management through that.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.26-36
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• 2020

This study aimed at investigating present research and knowledge-base on climate change adaptation in ecosystem sector and analyzed the current status of basic information on ecosystem that functions as evidence-base of climate change adaptation to deduce the suggestions for the future development for knowledge and information in biodiversity. In this perspective, a questionary survey titled as "the ecological knowledge-base and information needs for climate change adaptation" with the researchers who were engaged with adaptation studies for biodiversity in the ecosystem related-research institutes including national and 17 regional local governments-affiliated agencies in Korea. The results are as follows; current status of utilizing ecological information which supports climate change adaptation strategy, future needs for adaptation knowledge and ecological information, and activation of utilizing ecological information. The majority of respondents (90.7%) replied that the ecological information has high relevance when conducting research on climate change adaptation. However, only half of all respondents (53.2%) agreed with the real viability of current information to the adaptation research. Particularly, urgent priority for researchers was deduced as intensifying knowledge-base and constructing related information on 'ecosystem change from climate change (productivity, community structure, food chain, phenology, range distribution, and number of individuals) with the overall improvement of information contents and its quality. The respondents emphasized with the necessity of conducting field surveys of local ecosystem and constructing ecosystem inventories, advancing monitoring designs for climate change in ecosystem, and case studies for regional ecosystem changes with the guidance or guidelines for monitoring ecosystem change to enhance the quality of adaptation research and produce related information. In terms of activation for ecological information usage, national and local adaptation network should be working based on the integrated ecological platform necessary to support exchanges of knowledge and information and to expand ecosystem types in time and spatial dimension.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.263-291
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• 2015

In May, 2015, a 68 years old man, who has been Middle East Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, had high fever, muscle aches, cough and shortness of breath. he went two local hospital near his house and the S Medical Center emergency center. He was diagnosed MERS(Middle East respiratory syndrome) and the diseases had put South Korea the fear of epidemics for three months. Especially, this disease has firstly reported in Middle East Asia in September 2012 and spreaded to twenty-six countries. In 21, July, 2015, European Center for disease prevention and control reported 533 people were died and in South Korea, 186 people were infected, 36 people were died and 16,693 people were isolated from MERS. South Korea government were faced into epidemic control and blamed from public. Especially, hospital acquired infection, disease control chain, opening of information, ventilation, lack of isolation bed, the problem of function of local health center, the issue of reparation for hospital and insurance cover rate, the classification of disease, the role of Korea Centers for disease control and prevention, the culture of visiting hospital to see sick people, the issue of hospital multiple room and other related social support policy. it is time to study and discuss to solve these problems. South Korea citizens felt fear and fright from MERS. What is wore, they thought the dieses were out of their government control. It was unusual case for word except Middle East Asia. numerous tourists canceled visiting korea. South korea economic were severly damaged especially, tourism industry. South korea government should admit that they had failed initial action against MERS and take full reasonability from any damages. The government have to open information to public in terms of epidemic diseases and try to prevent any other epidemic diseases and try to work with local governments.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.89-96
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• 2019

This study was conducted to investigate 106 grassland farms in six provinces including Chungcheongbuk-do, Gangwon-do, Gyeonggi-do, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Gyeongsangnam-do, Jeju-do, and Jeollanam-do to present their problems and causes by surveying the actual state of grassland farms during three years(2014~2016). The grassland survey was divided into three categories; used as the perennial grasses and annual forage crops (Complied with Grassland Act), not used as the perennial grasses and annual forage crops (Not complied with Grassland Act) and failed to meet the farmer and some items are missing or inaccurate (Insufficient contents). Among the surveyed grassland farm, 68 farms (64.2 %) were complied with Grassland Act but 30 farms (28.3 %) were not complied with Grassland Act. Especially, the 8 farms (26.7 %) not complied with Grassland Act used the grassland as other purposes such as tree growing, golf club and swine farm etc.. Therefore, strict on-site investigation by local governments is required to prevent the grassland from being used by illegal purposes. And there's a strong likelihood that 5 farms (62.5 %) avoided the survey violate the positive law. Grassland grades used by the local administrative agencies were not influenced by the factors affecting the yield (existence and non-existence of overseeding and fertilization by grassland grade, soil pH and organic matter content). This results suggest that there is a fundamental problem on the current grassland grade system based on the yield and the irregular time of investigation and lack of on-site investigation are another causes for inaccurate grassland grade. Therefore, the new method evaluating grassland grades which is not based on yield and the thorough on-site investigation by local administrative agencies are necessary when the grassland grade is evaluated.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.106-121
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• 2011

The number of World Natural Heritage Sites is smaller than that of World Cultural Heritage Sites. As of 2010, the total number of natural sites was 180, which is less than 1/3 of all cultural sites. The reason why the number of natural sites is smaller can be attributed to the evaluating criteria of OUV(outstanding universal value). Only 9 fossil related sites were designated as World Heritage Sites among 180 Natural Sites. This study compares their OUVs including the academic value and characteristics of the 9 World Heritage Sites to provide data and reference for KCDC(Korean Cretaceous Dinosaur Coast) to apply as a World Natural Heritage Site. This study was carried out to obtain information and data on the Wadi Al-Hitan of Egypt which was designated as a World Natural Heritage Site. The study includes field investigation for whale fossils, interviews of site paleontologists and staff, and inspections of facilities. Three factors can likely be attributed to its successful management and operating system. First, there is a system for comprehensive research and a monitoring plan. Secondly, experts have been recruited and hired and professional training for staff members has been done properly. Finally, the Wadi Al-Hitan has developed local resources with specialized techniques for conservation and construction design, which matched well with whale fossils and the environment at the site. The Wadi Al-Hitan put a master plan into practice and achieved goals for action plans. To designate a future World Natural Heritage Site in Korea, it is important to be recognized by international experts including IUCN specialists as the best in one's field with OUV. Full-time regular-status employees for a research position are necessary from the preparation stage for the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Local government and related organizations must do their best to control monitoring plans and to improve academic value after the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. As we experienced during the designation process of Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes as the first Korean World Natural Heritage Site, participation by various scholars and specialists need to be in harmony with active endeavors from local governments and NGOs.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

Lately, the Korean Government has gradually expanded participation by local residents who are users of the area in the smart city project for the construction of region specialization smart city service (hereinafter called "Smart Service") and the enhancement in the citizen's awareness. However, due to the lack of information on smart service-related technology, there has been a limitation in getting the specific opinion of citizens in the process of designing the Smart Service. In this study, reports made by 4 four local governments which were selected for implementation of 2019 "Smart Town Challenge Projects" were reviewed to diagnose the actualization level of the smart service suggested by citizens through the living lab. The analysis results show that though the smart service plan was established by using diverse design thinking methodology through the living lab, there was a limitation in having citizens design the specific functions of the smart service. So, this study suggests the function issue card technique which can be used by modulating and freely combining four elements such as information collection, processing, supplying method and technique of the smart service and the service contents. This function issue card technique was directly applied to the living lab of the smart city project to verify its effectiveness. It was found that through this technique, citizens can combine the functions and contents of the smart service to materialize smart services at the level of detailed functions. The function issue card technique suggested in this study is expected to contribute to the actualization of opinions for the role of citizens as co-creators in solving local problems in the citizen participation type smart city plan in the future, thus helping the design of the regional specialization smart service.