• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.56-68
• /
• 2003

The objects of this study are to find out (1) real situation of the food supply in prison under Imperial Government of Japan more cleary (historical meaning) and (2) which might help in understanding wrong present food consumption patterns in Korea which causes environmental as well as health problems. It is generally known that the length of the Japanese occupation for Korea is 36 years. However, it is concluded in this study that it was longer (70 years ; from 1875 to 1945 from when Japanese Army attacked and occupied Yungjongdo and Kanghwado island to e time when they were defeated on World War II.) Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 then the Imperial Government of Japan dismissed the Korea Army, controlled the Office of Justice and the management of prison by force. Since then about 50% of all land was fell into Japanese Government ownership and 80% of Korean farmers became as tenant. After this change, Korea farmers were forced to pay extremely high rent (up to 80% of its harvest). Forced immigration, low price procurement of grain by Japanese government up to more than 30%of their production, was practiced. Accordingly, the food situation of Korean farmers became miserable, which may caused more violations of Imperial Japanese Law. Malnutrition, epidemic diseases, mortality rate of infants soared and average life expectancy shortened to 20-30 years old. This was the period of World Economic Crises and Food Crises in Japan. It was said then that if one Japanese comes to Korea then 200 Koreans will starved to death. Meanwhile, Proconsul Bureau of Chosun requested to the Department of Medicine, the Imperial University of Kyungsung to survey food supply situation of Koreans in prison throughout Korea. Objectives of the survey then was not only to find out scientifically whether it is agreeable in maintaining prisoner's health and also find out the possibility to save food during food crisis. Survey was started from 1923 and ended in 1945, and it focussed on prisoners in the Seodaemoon Prison. This report is the outcome of the first survey. They concluded that the food supplied was nutritionally (had) no problem, in compare with those of workers in the factory, students in the dormitory in Japan and with those of prisoners in Taiwan, France and Germany. Amount of grain supplied were different according to their work lord and was divided into 9 different levels. Total grain was consisted of 50% millet, 30% soybean and 20% indica rice(variety). However, there were no difference in the amount of supply of side dishes between work groups. For the highest working group, 3280g of boiled grain per day was supplied to make stomach full but as a side dishes, salty fermented bean paste, fermented fish and salty soups, etc. was supplied. Deficiency of animal protein were observed, however, high intake of soybean may possibly caused animal protein deficiency problem. On the contrary, the intake of water soluble vitamins were insufficient but the level of calcium and iron intake seems to be sufficient, however, imbalance of intake of nutrition may caused low absorbtion rate which might caused malnutrition. High intake of dietary fiber and low intake of cholesterol may possibly prohibited them from so called modem disease but may caused the defect in disease resistancy againist epidemics and other traditional disease. Over intake of salt(20-30g per day) was observed. Surveyors who attended in this survey, mentioned that the amount of food intake may nutritionally be sufficient enough but the quality of food(and possibly, the taste of food) were like that of animal feed. For the officials who received this report might consider that considering the war situation and food crisis, the supply situation of food in the prison may considered to be good enough(because they are not starving). But as a Korean who studied this report, one feel extremely pity about those situation because (situation of) those period were very harsh under the Imperial Law and keeping the Law by Koreans were almost impossible, therefore, about one third adult violated the Law and were put into jail. And they were treated like animals.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.34 no.2
• /
• pp.55-93
• /
• 2012

In Korea, energy policies are actualized through various energy-related plans. Recently, however, as high-ranking plans, which are very vision-oriented, continually set higher sector-by-sector goals, subordinate action plans, which require consistency, encounter distortions in their establishment process. Also, each subordinate action plan reveals limitations in terms of securing flexibility of the plan in responding to uncertainties of the future. These problems pose potential risks such as causing huge social costs. In this regard, with an aim to provide empirical evidence for discussions on improving the procedure for developing and executing Korea's energy plans, this study mainly analyzes the Basic Plan on Electricity Demand and Supply-one of the most important subordinate action plans-in order to explain the problems of the Basic Plan in a logical manner, and potential problems that could occur in the process of sustaining consistency between the Basic Plan and its higher-ranking plans. Further, this paper estimates the scale of social costs caused by those problems assuming realistic conditions. According to the result, in the case of where maximum electric power is estimated to be 7% (15%) less than the actual amount in the Basic Plan on Electricity Demand and Supply, the annual generation cost will rise by 286 billion won and (1.2 trillion won) in 2020. Such social costs are found to occur even when establishing and executing the Basic plan according to the target goal set by its higher-ranking plan, the National Energy Master Plan. In addition, when another higher-ranking GHG reduction master plan requires the electricity sector to reduce emissions by additional 5% in the GHG emissions from the right mix in electricity generation with 'zero' cost of carbon emission, the annual generation cost will rise by approximately 915 billion won in 2020. On the other hand, the analysis finds that since economic feasibility of electric powers in Korea varies significantly depending on their type, Korea is expected to face very small potential social costs caused by uncertainties over the future price of carbon dioxide in the process of establishing the Basic Plan.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.31-62
• /
• 1989

By using deterministic dynamic models, we observe the behavior of the foreign exchange rate of a small open economy with rational expectation formation and different restrictions on the international economic integrations. First, an economy connected to the world by purchasing power parity and uncovered interest parity is studied in the next section. In both sections, financial assets available in the economy are domestic money and bonds. Stocks are added as a financial instrument in the next section, and real capital accumulation is also taken into account. Furthermore, the economy concerned there is fairly autonomous, and not directly governed by either purchasing power parity or uncovered interest parity. The expectation formation used throughout the whole paper is complete perfect foresight, which is the certainty version of rational expectation and free from any forecast errors. It is found that upon monetary expansion the short run depreciation of the foreign exchange rate is a fairly robust result regardless of the degree of the international economic integration, while it is not true for fiscal expansion. The expectation on the long run state significantly affects the short run response of the exchange rate. All of our models postulate that the current account should be balanced eventually. As the result, the short run behavior of the exchange rate is affected by the expectation on the long run balance and may well be a blend of the traditional flow view and modem asset view. The initial overshooting of the exchange rate is easily observed even in the fairly autonomous economy Furthermore, the initial overshooting is not reduced over time, but augmented for some time before it is eventually eliminated. As long as we maintain rational expectaion, introducing time delay in the adjustment of the foreign goods price to the foreign exchange rate does not make much difference.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.95-120
• /
• 1990

The underpricing of new shares of a firm that are offered to the public for the first time (initial offerings) is well known and has puzzled financial economists for a long time since it seems at odds with the optimal behavior of the owners of issuing firms. Past attempts by financial economists to explain this phenomenon have not been successful in the sense that the explanations given by them are either inconsistent with the equilibrium theory or implausible. Approaches by such authors as Welch or Allen and Faulhaber are no exceptions. In this paper, we develop a signalling model of capital investment to explain the underpricing phenomenon and also analyze the efficiency of investment. The model focuses on the information asymmetry between the owners of issuing firms and general investors. We consider a firm that has been owned and operated by a single owner and that has a profitable project but has no capital to develop it. The profit from the project depends on the capital invested in the project as well as a profitability parameter. The model also assumes that the financial market is represented by a single investor who maximizes the expected wealth. The owner has superior information as to the value of the firm to investors in the sense that it knows the true value of the parameter while investors have only a probability distribution about the parameter. The owner offers the representative investor a fraction of the ownership of the firm in return for a certain amount of investment in the firm. This offer condition is equivalent to the usual offer condition consisting of the number of issues to sell and the unit price of a share. Thus, the model is a signalling game. Using Kreps' criterion as the solution concept, we obtained an essentially unique separating equilibrium offer condition. Analysis of this separating equilibrium shows that the owner of the firm with high profitability chooses an offer condition that raises an amount of capital that is short of the amount that maximizes the potential profit from the project. It also reveals that the fraction of the ownership of the firm that the representative investor receives from the owner of the highly profitable firm in return for its investment has a value that exceeds the investment. In other words, the initial offering in the model is underpriced when the profitability of the firm is high. The source of underpricing and underinvestment is the signalling activity by the owner of the highly profitable firm who attempts to convince investors that his firm has a highly profitable project by choosing an offer condition that cannot be imitated by the owner of a firm with low profitability. Thus, we obtained two main results. First, underpricing is a result of a signalling activity by the owner of a firm with high profitability when there exists information asymmetry between the owner of the issuing firm and investors. Second, such information asymmetry also leads to underinvestment in a highly profitable project. Those results clearly show the underpricing entails underinvestment and that information asymmetry leads to a social cost as well as a private cost. The above results are quite general in the sense that they are based upon a neoclassical profit function and full rationality of economic agents. We believe that the results of this paper can be used as a basis for further research on the capital investment process. For instance, one can view the results of this paper as a subgame equilibrium in a larger game in which a firm chooses among diverse ways to raise capital. In addition, the method used in this paper can be used in analyzing a wide range of problems arising from information asymmetry that the Korean financial market faces.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.167-178
• /
• 2021

The purpose of this study is to analyze the direct investment decision factors in the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Vietnam, and to contribute to the creation of domestic jobs and the revitalization of the inter-Korean economy. According to the analysis, most of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Vietnamese investment companies are entering the complex for the purpose of utilizing cheap labor, cheap factory locations, sales/development of local markets, and bypass export production bases in third countries. This can be divided into production-efficient investors using differences in production price such as labor costs and market-oriented investors to sell and expand the local market, which seems to be consistent with global direct investment patterns such as Nike, Apple, and Amazon. However, even if the North Korea-U.S. denuclearization talks ease or lift sanctions, Vietnamese investors' willingness to invest in the North Korea has been most burdened by the possibility of closing special economic zones due to political risks. Last but not least, it is important to note that those willing to invest in North Korea are mostly smaller enterprises in textiles, sewing, footwear and leather industries-those that benefit from low-cost labor. Since their size is small, they need policy support in financing, especially in the early stages of their business. Even after they grow past the early stages, those without collateral would still need state guarantee letters to get financing. Thus, it is worth considering to use the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund to compensate commercial banks for bad loan loss or for low-interest loans for smaller SMEs. The interviews with SMEs found that red-tape is one of the biggest difficulties they face. Thus, it is recommended that a one-stop service agency should be established to cover all processes and issues related to inter-Korean economic cooperation to eliminate redundancy and expediate government support for SMEs.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
• /
• v.36 no.4
• /
• pp.17-30
• /
• 2020

In the shipping industry, it is essential to engage in the preemptive prediction of freight rate volatility through market monitoring. Considering that freight rates have already started to fall, the loss of shipping companies will soon be uncontrollable. Therefore, in this study, factors affecting the freight rates of bulk carriers, which have relatively large freight rate volatility as compared to container freight rates, were quantified and analyzed. In doing so, we intended to contribute to future shipping market monitoring. We performed an analysis using a vector error correction model and estimated the influence of six independent variables on the charter rates of bulk carriers by Handy Size, Supramax, Panamax, and Cape Size. The six independent variables included the bulk carrier fleet volume, iron ore traffic volume, ribo interest rate, bunker oil price, and Euro-Dollar exchange rate. The dependent variables were handy size (32,000 DWT) spot charter rates, Supramax 6 T/C average charter rates, Pana Max (75,000 DWT) spot charter, and Cape Size (170,000 DWT) spot charter. The study examined charter rates by size of bulk carriers, which was different from studies on existing specific types of ships or fares in oil tankers and chemical carriers other than bulk carriers. Findings revealed that influencing factors differed for each ship size. The Libo interest rate had a significant effect on all four ship types, and the iron ore traffic volume had a significant effect on three ship types. The Ribo rate showed a negative (-) relationship with Handy Size, Supramax, Panamax, and Cape Size. Iron ore traffic influenced three types of linearity, except for Panamax. The size of shipping companies differed depending on their characteristics. These findings are expected to contribute to the establishment of a management strategy for shipping companies by analyzing the factors influencing changes in the freight rates of charterers, which have a profound effect on the management performance of shipping companies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
• /
• 2019.09a
• /
• pp.5-5
• /
• 2019

The objectives of this paper are (i) to analyze past trends and future directions of rice production, consumption and trade across the world and (ii) to discuss emerging challenges and future directions in the global rice industry. Rice is a staple food of over half of the world's 7.7 billion people. It is an important economic, social, political, and cultural commodity in most Asian countries. Rice is the $1^{st}$ most widely consumed, $2^{nd}$ largely produced, and $3^{rd}$ most widely grown food crop in the world. It was cultivated by 144 million farms in over 100 countries with harvested area of over 163 million ha producing about 745 million tons paddy in 2018. About 90% of the total rice is produced in Asia. China and India, the biggest rice producers, account for over half of the world's rice production. Between 1960 and 2018, world rice production increased over threefold from 221 to 745 million tons (2.1% per year) due to area expansion from 120 to 163 million ha (0.5% per year) and paddy yield increase from 1.8 to 4.6 t/ha (1.6% per year). The Green Revolution led massive increase in rice production prevented famines, provided food for millions of people, reduced poverty and hunger, and improved livelihoods of millions of Asians. The future increase in rice production must come from yield increase as the scope for area expansion is limited. Rice is the most widely consumed food crop. The world's average per capita milled rice consumption is 64 kilograms providing 19% of daily calories. Asia accounted for 84% of global consumption followed by Africa (7%), South America (3%), and the Middle East (2%). Asia's per capita rice consumption is 100 kilograms per year providing 28% of daily calories. The global and Asian per capita consumption increased from the 1960s to the 1990s but stable afterward. The per capita rice consumption is expected to decline in Asia but increase outside Asia especially in Africa in the future. The total milled rice consumption was about 490 million tons in 2018 and projected to reach 550 million tons by 2030 and 590 million tons by 2040. Rice is thinly traded in international market because it is a highly protected commodity. Only about 9% of the total production is traded in global rice market. However, the volume of global rice trade has increased over six-fold from 7.5 to 46.5 million tons between the 1960s and 2018. A relatively small number of exporting countries interact with a large number of importing countries. The top five rice exporting countries are India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, and China accounting for 74% of the global rice export. The top five rice importing countries are China, Philippines, Nigeria, European Union and Saudi Arabia accounting for 26% of the global rice import. Within rice varieties, Japonica rice accounts for the highest share of the global rice trade (about 12%) followed by Basmati rice (about 10%). The high concentration of exports to a few countries makes international rice market vulnerable to supply disruptions in exporting countries, leading to higher world prices of rice. The export price of Thai 5% broken rice increased from 198 US$/ton in 2000 to 421 US$/ton in 2018. The volumes of trade and rice prices in the global market are expected to increase in the future. The major future challenges of the rice industry are increasing demand due to population growth, rising demand in Africa, economic growth and diet diversification, competition for natural resources (land and water), labor scarcity, climate change and natural hazards, poverty and inequality, hunger and malnutrition, urbanization, low income in rice farming, yield saturation, aging of farmers, feminization of agriculture, health and environmental concerns, improving value chains, and shifting donor priorities away from agriculture. At the same time, new opportunities are available due to access to new technologies, increased investment by the private sector, and increased global partnership. More investment in rice research and development is needed to develop and disseminate innovative technologies and practices to overcome problems and ensure food and nutrition security of the future population.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
• /
• v.37 no.3
• /
• pp.117-128
• /
• 2021

In order for the users (shipping firms and shippers) and suppliers (stevedoring firms) in the container terminal industry to win-win, it is necessary to have some appropriate diverse market conditions for the industry. This study analyses the basic conditions and demand and supply characteristics of the industry and investigates the market performance of Busan container ports. First, this article analyses the basic characteristics of demand and supply. As the demand characteristics, there are five ones such as 1) exogeneity of demand, 2) function as export/import transportation and hub for transshipment, 3) increase of users' bargaining power, 4) high substituting elasticity, 5) reduction of volume growth. As the supply characteristics, there are seven ones such as 1) inelasticity of supply, 2) homogeneity of stevedoring services, 3) over-supply, 4) adoption of cutting-edge stevedoring technology, 5) scale economy and impossibility of storage, 6) labor market rigidity, 7) enhancing port's role in SCM. In addition, this study conducts the so-called structure-conduct-performance analysis. For the structure analysis, 1) lacks of scale economy in stevedoring companies, 2) high entry barrier, 3) strengthening of shipping firms' bargaining power, 4) transitory permission scheme for tariff are analyzed. For the conduct analysis, 1) price discrimination between export/import and transshipment, 2) mid-term length of terminal use contract, 3) continuous investment in equipment, 4) low level of cooperation among terminal operating firms are derived. For the performance analysis, 1) inequality in profitability, 2) reduction of export/import cost, 3) delay in adopting cutting-edge technology, 4) idle equipment are analyzed. Following this logical flow, the hypothesis that the market structure influences the market conduct is tested based on the actual dataset. As a future agenda in the conclusion, this article recommends the so-called port industrial policy.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.15-30
• /
• 2021

This study was conducted to investigate the utilization and satisfaction of meal-kits according to food-related lifestyle among total 357 adults who had experience in using meal-kits. This study can provide basic data for effective menu composition and directions toward improvement. The participants of the study were classified into 5 groups 'health-type group', 'economic-type group', 'safety-type group', 'tasty-type group' and 'convenience-type group'. The 'tastye-type group' were found to spend more on purchasing meal-kits than other groups with the higher proportion(36.66%) of spending '30,000-50,000'won(p<0.05), which is the highest price category. The important factors that contributed to purchasing a meal-kits were 'taste'(50.98%), and 'economic-type group' showed the highest tendency of considering taste (58.46%). About half(49.02%) of the respondents preferred 'Korean-food' for meal-kits as for the type of food. All groups highly preferred 'meat'(42.58%) as the main ingredient, particularly the 'tasty-type group'(53.33%)(p<0.001). The 'tasty-type group' showed the highest satisfaction on 'convenience of cooking'(4.05), and 'convenience-type group' showed the lowest satisfaction on the 'origin of ingredient'(2.98) among groups (p<0.01). The overall response indicated that most respondents are willing to use meal-kits in the future (97.20%); and 93.28% of respondents would recommend the purchase of meal-kits to others, where 'convenience of cooking/purchase' was the factor contributing most for recommending(67.23%). Taken together, 'taste' was the most important factor for all groups. And 'Convenience of cooking' was the factor contributing to satisfaction most while 'origin of ingredient' contributing the least. It is recommended for the growth of meal-kits industry, to improve the quality of the meal-kits products and develop various menus.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.47-75
• /
• 2023

Compared to the EU, which legislates the Carbon Border Adjustment System (CBAM), the United States' carbon border adjustment policy movement is still relatively slow. Recently, however, a related bill has been proposed in the United States, and research institutes have been presenting research results on how to introduce an upstream carbon tax rather than an emission trading system and carry out carbon border adjustment based on it. Therefore, in this study, we looked at the economic and environmental effects of introducing this type of upstream carbon tax and carbon border adjustment in Korea. If an upstream carbon tax of KRW 30,000 per ton of CO₂ is applied to the net supply of domestic fossil energy, the expected carbon tax revenue is approximately KRW 22.9961 trillion, equivalent to about 5.7% of the total revenue of the Korean government of KRW 402 trillion in 2019. In addition, the carbon dioxide content of the steel sector, calculated based on the energy supply and demand status of the steel sector, which emits the most greenhouse gas emissions in Korea and has a considerable amount of overseas exports, was 106.22 million tons of CO₂. On the other hand, assuming that the upstream carbon tax of 30,000 won per ton of CO₂ embodied is directly passed on to the production cost of the steel sector, the carbon tax burden in the steel sector is estimated to reach approximately KRW 3.1865 trillion. Even after deducting KRW 1.1599 trillion in export refunds estimated by using the share of exports of steel products, the net carbon tax burden on steel products for domestic demand amounts to KRW 2.0266 trillion, which is analyzed to act as a factor in increasing the price of steel products.