• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.22
• /
• pp.137-165
• /
• 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
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.65-113
• /
• 1991

Korea's rapid economic growth of the past thirty years was led by extremely fast export growth under extensive government intervention. Until very recently, the political regimes were authoritarian and oppressed human rights and labor movements. Because of these characteristics, many inside and outside Korea are under the impression that the rapid economic growth was made possible by the government's relentless push for export growth through industrial targetjng. Whether or not the government intervention was pivotal in Korean economic growth is an important issue because of its normative implications on the role of government and the degree of economic policy intervention in a market economy. A good example of industrial targeting policy in Korea is the "Heavy and Chemical Industry (HCI)" policy, which began in the early 1970s and lasted for one decade. Under the HCI policy the government intervened in resource allocation through preferential tax, trade, and credit and interest rate policies for "key industries" which included iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, shipbuilding, general machinery, chemicals, and electronics. This paper investigates the effects of. the HCI policy on the efficiency of capital and the export competitiveness of manufacturing industries. For individual three-digit KSIC (Korea Standard Industrial Classification) industries and for two industry groups, one favored by HCI Policy and the other not, this paper: (1) computes capital intensities and discusses the impact of the HCI policy on the changes in the intensities over time, (2) estimates the capital efficiencies and examines them on the basis of optimal condition of resource allocation, and (3) compares the Korean and Taiwanese shares of total imports by the OECD countries as a way of weighing the effects of the policy on the industries' export competitiveness. Taiwan is a good reference, as it did not adopt the kind of industrial targeting policy that Korea did, while the Taiwanese and Korean economies share similar characteristics. In the 1973-78 period, the capital intensity rose rapidly for the "HC Group" the group of industries favored by the policy, while it first declined and later showed an anemic rise for the "Light Group," the remaining manufacturing industries. Capital efficiency was much lower in the HC Group than in the Light Group, at least until the late 1970s. This paper acribes these results to excess investments in the favored industries and concludes that growth could have been faster in the absence of the HCI policy. The Korean Light Group's share in total imports by the OECD was larger than that of its Taiwanese counterpart but has become much smaller since 1978. For the HC Group Korea's market share was smaller than Taiwan's and has declined even more since the mid-1970s. This weakening in the export competitiveness of Korea's industries relative to Taiwan's lasted until the mid-1980s. This paper concludes that the HCI policy had either no positive effect on the competitiveness of the Korean manufacturing industries or negative effects.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
• /
• v.27 no.3
• /
• pp.155-173
• /
• 2024

Using Regional Employment Survey, this article analyzes the widening employment gap between Capital and Non-Capital regions since the 2008 global financial crisis through describing the spatial distribution of employment by industry and occupation, calculating the regional downward employment rate of university graduates, and estimating the regional distribution of employment growth in terms of wage distribution, and then statistically analyzes the effect of the declining manufacturing employment in the Non-Capital region since the mid-2010s on total employment change. The results from these analyses are as follows. First, since the mid-2000s, the share of producer services and white-collar jobs has increased in the Capital region. Second, the Non-Capital region has a higher share of non-regular workers relative to wage workers than the Capital region. Third, while the downward employment rate has increased in the Non-Capital region since the mid-2010s, it has risen very modestly or stagnated in the Capital region. Fourth, in terms of wage distribution, the pattern of employment growth since the mid-2010s has been U-shaped, a typical polarized pattern of simultaneous growth in low- and high-wage jobs and decline in middle-wage jobs in the Non-Capital region, while in the Capital region it has been L-shaped with the sides reversed, driven by growth in high-wage jobs. Fifth, this employment polarization in the Non-Capital region since the mid-2010s is associated with employment changes in manufacturing, which accounts for a large share of middle wage jobs. Finally, according to the analysis of the effect of regional manufacturing employment changes on total employment changes since the mid-2010s, declines in manufacturing employment reduce the region's regular employment rate and have a larger negative employment effect in the Non-Capital region. Based on these findings, some policy issues are discussed including the branch plant economy regime based on spatial separation of conception and execution, the mix of geographic and skill mobility, the need to improve employability and jobs through human capital accumulation, and short- and long-term responses to employment fluctuations.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.31-66
• /
• 2006

The country with a relative abundance of human capital conducts relatively more R&D in the steady state than its partner. This country acquires the know-how to produce a relatively wider range of innovative goods. High technology comprises a large share of the national economy in the human-capital rich country and real output growth is faster. This prediction would seem to accord weakly with empirical observation of Korean economy.

• Informatization Policy
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.43-67
• /
• 2017

In 2015, Korea won the first place among 30 countries in Open, Useful, and Reusable (OUR) Data Index, which is an OECD's open government data indicator. On the other hand, Korea was ranked the 17th among 86 countries in Open Data Barometer (ODB) of World Wide Web Foundation. In this study, the research subject comes from two reasonable academic doubts on why the gap is wide between the two indicators of Korea and whether the OUR Data Index made proper evaluation on Korea's open government data. Based on the assumption that there may be some critical points in the measuring method of OUR Data Index, the study conducted a comparison of the two indicators. The result found that first, the two indicators almost had no correlation to each other; second, OUR Data Index had a more vague evaluation framework as well as less amount of government data for evaluation than ODB; third, while the government support takes a significant share in the OUR Data Index, it is considered as a mere input element; and fourth, the OUR Data Index does not evaluate the impact of open government data, whereas ODB includes the impact of open data on the government, economy, and society.

• International Commerce and Information Review
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.3-23
• /
• 2017

With the globalization of the world economy, international trade networks are expanding beyond geographical proximity, and the expansion of such trade networks is playing a role in promoting globalization. Korea has established itself as a strong FTA for the past 13 years, starting with the Korea-Chile FTA. Successful establishment of a short-term FTA network has shown positive economic effects such as increased trade volume with partner countries and market share in overseas markets. Other countries are also turning to the paradigm of economic development through the formation of a regional economic integration and a bilateral trade agreement network, and it is time to investigate new opportunities through understanding the entire RTA and FTA network. In this study, we analyzed the status of RTA and FTA from the 1960s to 2010s, analyzed network structure and centrality through SNA(social network analysis). The results of the study show that the structure of the FTA network is gradually expanding, and the FTA network, which has been expanding to the center of the early European countries, is changing toward the Asian countries such as Korea, China and Japan. As a result of the analysis of the degree of centrality, Korea was ranked as the top in all the degree of centrality(Degree, Betweenness, Closeness and Eigenvector) indicators for a short period of time and it means that Korea's FTA strategy was evaluated as very successful. This study examines the FTA among the global RTAs, assesses the structure of the FTAs and evaluates Korea's FTA strategies and the FTA network from a network perspective.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.33-50
• /
• 2016

Hannam-dong, which lies at the eastern part of Yongsan-gu in metropolitan Seoul has been known as one of the affluent area, but actually it is divided into different sub-areas including poor ones. Although it used to be a quiet residential neighborhood, be they rich or poor, some streets (gil) have become the places of creative economy since the late 2000s. The place-making of Hannam-dong is accompanied by taking-place of different creative classes in different sub-areas, and there have emerged contestation, negotiation and clash among them at the contact zone. While the big companies such as Samsung explores their own version of cultural/creative entrepreneurialism in one sub-area, the actors that can be dubbed as 'creative small producer' and/or 'creative underlass' produce Hangangjin-gil and Usadan-gil as artistic-cum-economic communities by deploying cultural capital. All in all, Hannam-dong is an interesting case that different types of gentrifications are produced by different actors in different sub-areas, which results in producing another kind of 'community of strangers' where different (creative) classes share a physical location, but do not have lasting social interactions and communicative networks.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.39-48
• /
• 2016

According to the order receipt report over the past 10 years the overseas construction business total trades were 54.05% and 68.09% done by the Middle East and other industrial facilities respectively. In the Middle East based on data collected in 2014 the country with most overseas construction business is Saudi Arabia with 34.10%, and the industrial facility occupies the larger share with 56%. Overseas construction business is suffering from a reduction in work orders in the Middle East because of the recent oil price reduction. At this point of view, it is necessary to consider economy fluctuation for the diversification of construction type and work orders. This study analyzed, focusing in Saudi Arabia how the economical fluctuations of nations of progress can affect overseas construction business' trade orders. The analysis results demonstrated that most construction types depends on GDP, investment fund. Also industrial facility can be substituted with Architecture and civil engineering. This work is expected to be used as a basis for trade order amount maintenance and construction type diversification.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.5 no.6
• /
• pp.712-729
• /
• 2002

In this study, we evaluated degree of importance of e-marketplace solution selection factors. Factor analysis was conducted to find out relationships among various variables which come from literature survey. The result shows that 16(sixteen) -selection variables regarding solution characteristics could be grouped into four areas 'flexibility', 'ease of use', 'security', and 'economy'. And 11(eleven) selection variables regarding to vendor characteristics could be grouped into three areas, 'vendor's support', vendor's general situation', and 'vendor's business accomplishment`. Through various analysis, we found important factors for 3 types of operational companies, buyer-biased, seller biased and neutral. 'Security for data item' was showed as the most important factor for all kind of B2B operational companies. For buyer-biased companies, additional supporting manpower, solution education, and educational cost are shown to be more important factors than others. Place of education, education hours and education level are important for 'Neutral' companies. And the factor 'market share of vendor' are important for 'seller biased' companies.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.53-62
• /
• 2014

Human has noticed a beautiful natural scenery and appreciated it as a scenic site by giving meaning to it and evaluating it. How the beautiful natural scenery was appreciated as a scenic site depends on natural features, social and cultural environments, and the current of the times. Mt. Jiri is the highest mountain in inland South Korea and keeps ancestors' history and culture intact. Joseon Dynasty literary men frequently mentioned Mt. Jiri as a tourist attraction where they could pursue and share their studies against its beautiful natural scenery. The countless literary men visited Mt. Jiri and some of them left their journeys as travelling records. This research aimed at apprehending travel routes of Chunwang Peak of Mt. Jiri based on the contents of travelling records and investigating the scenic site value of scenic resources as the literary men in Joseon Dynasty recognized. The scenic resources of Mt. Jiri were related to the change of the reason or motivation of person who climbed and it should be noted that there was a change of reason or motivation in climbing Mt. Jiri from a following of master's paths to discovery of a new trails. Thus, even if there was a difference in reason or purpose of natural scenic beauty, the concept of scenic sites of the past and the present day should be included into the extended meaning of scenic sites. This research aimed the routes of well-known literary men need to be developed as programs utilizing "the concept of ancient sages' footprints" and the development of these contents shall be used for vitalization and self-support of a regional economy.