• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.23-48
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• 2021

The Korean economy has achieved continuous economic growth for the past several decades thanks to the government's export strategy policy. This increase in exports is playing a leading role in driving Korea's economic growth by improving economic efficiency, creating jobs, and promoting technology development. Traditionally, the main factors affecting Korea's exports can be found from two perspectives: economic factors and industrial structural factors. First, economic factors are related to exchange rates and global economic fluctuations. The impact of the exchange rate on Korea's exports depends on the exchange rate level and exchange rate volatility. Global economic fluctuations affect global import demand, which is an absolute factor influencing Korea's exports. Second, industrial structural factors are unique characteristics that occur depending on industries or products, such as slow international division of labor, increased domestic substitution of certain imported goods by China, and changes in overseas production patterns of major export industries. Looking at the most recent studies related to global exchanges, several literatures show the importance of cultural aspects as well as economic and industrial structural factors. Therefore, this study attempted to develop a forecasting model by considering cultural factors along with economic and industrial structural factors in calculating the import volume of each country from Korea. In particular, this study approaches the influence of cultural factors on imports of Korean products from the perspective of PUSH-PULL framework. The PUSH dimension is a perspective that Korea develops and actively promotes its own brand and can be defined as the degree of interest in each country for Korean brands represented by K-POP, K-FOOD, and K-CULTURE. In addition, the PULL dimension is a perspective centered on the cultural and psychological characteristics of the people of each country. This can be defined as how much they are inclined to accept Korean Flow as each country's cultural code represented by the country's governance system, masculinity, risk avoidance, and short-term/long-term orientation. The unique feature of this study is that the proposed final prediction model can be selected based on Design Principles. The design principles we presented are as follows. 1) A model was developed to reflect interest in Korea and cultural characteristics through newly added data sources. 2) It was designed in a practical and convenient way so that the forecast value can be immediately recalled by inputting changes in economic factors, item code and country code. 3) In order to derive theoretically meaningful results, an algorithm was selected that can interpret the relationship between the input and the target variable. This study can suggest meaningful implications from the technical, economic and policy aspects, and is expected to make a meaningful contribution to the export support strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises by using the import forecasting model.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.111 no.2
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• pp.201-223
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• 2022

Currently, species extinctions are increasing due to climate change and continued anthropogenic impact. We selected 300 species for conservation with emphasis on plants co-occurring in the Baekdudaegan area, which is a large ecological axis of Korea. We aimed to investigate the vegetation community and environmental characteristics of Zabelia tyaihyonii in the limestone habitat among the target plant species in the Baekdudaegan region to derive effective conservation strategies. In Danyang-gun, Yeongwol-gun, and Jecheon-si, we selected 36 investigation sites where Z. tyaihyonii was present. We investigated the vegetation, flora, soil and physical environment. We also found notable plants such as Thalictrum petaloideum, Sillaphyton podagraria, and Neillia uekii at the investigation sites. We classified forest vegetation community types into 4 vegetation units and 7 species group types. With canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) of the vegetation community and habitat factors, we determined the overall explanatory power to be 75.2%, and we classified the environmental characteristics of the habitat of Z. tyaihyonii into a grouping of three. Among these, we detected a relationship between the environmental factors elevation, slope, organic matter, rock ratio, pH, potassium, and sodium. We identified numerous rare and endemic plants, including Thalictrum petaloideum, in the investigation site, and determined that these groups needed to be preserved at the habitat level. In the classification of the vegetation units analyzed based on the emerging plants and the CCA, we reaffirmed the uniqueness and specificity of the vegetation community in the habitat of Z. tyaihyonii. We anticipate that our results will be used as scientific evidence for the empirical conservation of the native habitats of Z. tyaihyonii.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.132-144
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• 2022

The fish community in the Seomjin River-Seomjin River Estuary-Gwangyang Bay coast continuum was investigated three times from March 2019 to October 2019. The collected species at the eight sites during the survey period were 49 species belonging to 31 families, including two endangered species. According to Bray-Curtis similarities, observations were divided into four groups based on the fish community composition; two groups (group 1, 2) and two uncategorized groups (group 3, 4). ANOSIM based on spatial and temporal groupings indicated that the spatial differences in fish communities (R=0.398, P=0.001) were relatively more important than the temporal differences (analysis of similarities, R=0.273, P=0.002). In particular, there were significant differences between groups 1 and 2 (analysis of similarities, R=0.556, P=0.001), and similarity percentage analysis revealed that Argyrosomus argentatus (9.4%), Favonigobius gymnauchen (6.9%) and Konosirus punctatus (5.9%) contributed to these differences of fish assemblages for each group. The fish fauna distributed in the Seomjin River-Gwangyang Bay ecosystem were spatially divided and the number of species and number of individuals showed seasonal differences. This study could be a basis for understanding changes in the fish community and implementing conservation and management strategies on major species within a continuous environment of the river-estuary-ocean continuum.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.306-314
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• 2023

Stream sediments are an important component of water quality management because they are receptors of various pollutants such as heavy metals and organic matters emitted from upland sources and can be secondary pollution sources, adversely affecting water environment. To effectively manage the stream sediments, identification of primary sources of sediment contamination and source-associated control strategies will be required. We evaluated the performance of machine learning models in identifying primary sources of sediment contamination based on the physico-chemical properties of stream sediments. A total of 356 stream sediment data sets of 18 quality parameters including 10 heavy metal species(Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, As, Zn, Cr, Hg, Li, and Al), 3 soil parameters(clay, silt, and sand fractions), and 5 water quality parameters(water content, loss on ignition, total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorous) were collected near abandoned metal mines and industrial complexes across the four major river basins in Korea. Two machine learning algorithms, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers were used to classify the sediments into four cases of different combinations of the sampling period and locations (i.e., mine in dry season, mine in wet season, industrial complex in dry season, and　industrial complex in wet season). Both models showed good performance in the classification, with SVM outperformed LDA; the accuracy values of LDA and SVM were 79.5% and 88.1%, respectively. An SVM ensemble model was used for multi-label classification of the multiple contamination sources inlcuding landuses in the upland areas within 1 km radius from the sampling sites. The results showed that the multi-label classifier was comparable performance with sinlgle-label SVM in classifying mines and industrial complexes, but was less accurate in classifying dominant land uses (50~60%). The poor performance of the multi-label SVM is likely due to the overfitting caused by small data sets compared to the complexity of the model. A larger data set might increase the performance of the machine learning models in identifying contamination sources.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.273-284
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• 2024

This study investigates the impact of international oil price fluctuations on overseas construction orders secured by domestic and foreign companies. The analysis employs statistical data spanning the past 20 years, encompassing international oil prices, overseas construction orders from domestic firms, and new overseas construction orders from the top 250 global construction companies. The correlation between these variables is assessed using correlation coefficients(R), determination coefficients(R²), and p-values. The results indicate a strong positive correlation between international oil prices and overseas construction orders. The correlation coefficient between domestic overseas construction orders and oil prices is found to be 0.8 or higher, signifying a significant influence. Similarly, a high correlation coefficient of 0.76 is observed between oil prices and new orders from leading global construction companies. Further analysis reveals a particularly strong correlation between oil prices and overseas construction orders in Asia and the Middle East, potentially due to the prevalence of oil-related projects in these regions. Additionally, a high correlation is observed between oil prices and orders for industrial facilities compared to architectural projects. This suggests an increase in plant construction volumes driven by fluctuations in oil prices. Based on these findings, the study proposes an entry strategy for navigating oil price volatility and maintaining competitiveness in the overseas construction market. Key recommendations include diversifying project locations and supplier bases; utilizing hedging techniques for exchange rate risk management, adapting to local infrastructure and market conditions, establishing local partnerships and securing skilled local labor, implementing technological innovations and digitization at construction sites to enhance productivity and cost reduction The insights gained from this study, coupled with the proposed overseas expansion strategies, offer valuable guidance for mitigating risks in the global construction market and fostering resilience in response to international oil price fluctuations. This approach is expected to strengthen the competitiveness of domestic and foreign construction firms seeking success in the international arena.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.91-107
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• 2024

This study attempted to empirically verify the possibility of K-content for Chinese people who have recently slowed down due to restriction of movement and political and diplomatic conflicts, although it is a very meaningful market for Korea's content industry and tourism industry. As a result of the study, each item of K-content experience, national image, tourism attitude, and visit intention was derived as one factor, and only the national image factor was derived as two factors: 'functional image' and 'cultural image'. As a result of examining the influence relationship between them established based on previous studies focusing on the derived factors, all five research hypotheses were adopted. K-content experience was found to have a significant influence on both factors of the national image. It was found that it had a greater influence on cultural image factors than functional image factors, cultural image factors were found to have a greater influence on tourism attitudes, K-content experiences had a significant effect on tourism attitudes, and tourism attitudes had a significant effect on visit intentions. Based on the results of this study, it was once again confirmed that the national image even comtually bees an important factor for linking to practical tourism behavior, and in this respect, "culture" is an important key factor that can lead to practical tourism and visits. Previous national images indicate that if the functional aspect of the country was more emphasized, it is now necessary to focus more on the importance of culture than on the functional aspect. As the K-content experience has a significant effect on tourism attitude, it can have a positive effect on the formation of a positive tourism attitude that can lead to actual tourism behavior, so various efforts will be needed to form an active tourism attitude using K-content in the future. As the content and target scope of K-content are expanded and diversified, specific strategies for each sub-market using cultural contents in various fields should be established and implemented.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.79-111
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• 2011

Digital economy has grown rapidly so that the new business area called 'Internet business' has been dramatically extended as time goes on. However, in the case of Internet business, market shares of individual companies seem to fluctuate very extremely. Thus marketing managers who operate the Internet sites have seriously observed the competition structure of the Internet business market and carefully analyzed the competitors' behavior in order to achieve their own business goals in the market. The newly created Internet business might differ from the offline ones in management styles, because it has totally different business circumstances when compared with the existing offline businesses. Thus, there should be a lot of researches for finding the solutions about what the features of Internet business are and how the management style of those Internet business companies should be changed. Most marketing literatures related to the Internet business have focused on individual business markets. Specifically, many researchers have studied the Internet portal sites and the Internet shopping mall sites, which are the most general forms of Internet business. On the other hand, this study focuses on the entire Internet business industry to understand the competitive circumstance of online market. This approach makes it possible not only to have a broader view to comprehend overall e-business industry, but also to understand the differences in competition structures among Internet business markets. We used time-series data of Internet connection rates by consumers as the basic data to figure out the competition patterns in the Internet business markets. Specifically, the data for this research was obtained from one of Internet ranking sites, 'Fian'. The Internet business ranking data is obtained based on web surfing record of some pre-selected sample group where the possibility of double-count for page-views is controlled by method of same IP check. The ranking site offers several data which are very useful for comparison and analysis of competitive sites. The Fian site divides the Internet business areas into 34 area and offers market shares of big 5 sites which are on high rank in each category daily. We collected the daily market share data about Internet sites on each area from April 22, 2008 to August 5, 2008, where some errors of data was found and 30 business area data were finally used for our research after the data purification. This study performed several empirical analyses in focusing on market shares of each site to understand the competition among sites in Internet business of Korea. We tried to perform more statistically precise analysis for looking into business fields with similar competitive structures by applying the cluster analysis to the data. The research results are as follows. First, the leading sites in each area were classified into three groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The first group includes the sites with the lowest market shares, which give more increased convenience to consumers by offering the Internet sites as complimentary services for existing offline services. The second group includes sites with medium level of market shares, where the site users are limited to specific small group. The third group includes sites with the highest market shares, which usually require online registration in advance and have difficulty in switching to another site. Second, we analyzed the second place sites in each business area because it may help us understand the competitive power of the strongest competitor against the leading site. The second place sites in each business area were classified into four groups based on averages and standard deviations of daily market shares. The four groups are the sites showing consistent inferiority compared to the leading sites, the sites with relatively high volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and medium level of shares, the sites with relatively low volatility and high level of shares whose gaps are not big compared to the leading sites. Except 'web agency' area, these second place sites show relatively stable shares below 0.1 point of standard deviation. Third, we also classified the types of relative strength between leading sites and the second place sites by applying the cluster analysis to the gap values of market shares between two sites. They were also classified into four groups, the sites with the relatively lowest gaps even though the values of standard deviation are various, the sites with under the average level of gaps, the sites with over the average level of gaps, the sites with the relatively higher gaps and lower volatility. Then we also found that while the areas with relatively bigger gap values usually have smaller standard deviation values, the areas with very small differences between the first and the second sites have a wider range of standard deviation values. The practical and theoretical implications of this study are as follows. First, the result of this study might provide the current market participants with the useful information to understand the competitive circumstance of the market and build the effective new business strategy for the market success. Also it might be useful to help new potential companies find a new business area and set up successful competitive strategies. Second, it might help Internet marketing researchers take a macro view of the overall Internet market so that make possible to begin the new studies on overall Internet market beyond individual Internet market studies.