• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.189-219
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• 2020

This study is an analysis of Handol Heung-Gun Lee's Tarae, which is a coinage combining the Korean words for "playing an instrument" and "song", in terms of narrative and aesthetics. The components for analysis are the phenomena and nature of binary oppositions between nature and human beings, between alienation and interest, between division and unification, and between diaspora and people of the national community. Tarae in the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s described the experience of pain and loss from non-resistance and disobedience in protest against social problems that emerged during the era of miliary dictatorship, such as industrialization, urbanization, reckless development, Westernization, university-oriented education, the gap between rich and poor, human alienation, and the conflicts arising from the division of the nation. After Handol overcame the lack of creative motivation with self-reflection and effort, Tarae took the form of a diaspora epic meta-narratives integrating the "sound of nature and his true nature" and "the awareness of diaspora and the spirit of the Korean people". The epics of the homeland, the national soil and the people, which began with "Teo", became more intense in terms of a sense of diaspora as they shifted their focus from an origin to a path with "Hanmoejulghi" as the turning point. Handol seeks inspiration in the source of narrative rather than in music. His Tarae focuses on "adding rhythm for lyrics". For this reason, the semiotic features of Tarae have a limitation in that its extrinsic phonology is simple even if its intrinsic meaning (i.e., emotion of sadness) is profound and subtle. In order to elicit sympathy from the audience and impress them, it is necessary to strike a balance between the implicit (semantic) part and the explicit (phonological) part. To share the emotion of sadness with more people, it is necessary to strengthen phonological elements. Sympathy for sadness and deep impression on the audience are more often induced by the mood of similar sentiments than by the stories of the same experience. The aesthetics of sadness in Tarae began with the narratives of past experience which were expressed in the contexts of loss, loneliness, and poverty that Handol had experienced since childhood. However, the aesthetics of sadness, deepened over the period of a long hiatus in Handol's career as a composer, formed the narratives of ultimate salvation, embodying even the diaspora experience of others (e.g., displaced people, overseas adoptees, ethnic Koreans in Russia, victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, etc.). This gave Tarae the potential to go beyond the limits of the ethnic group of Korea. Tarae, as a "dispersed sound", can benefit from the appeal of deep sadness at the point of contact with other forms of world music. It may form a global diaspora discourse because Tarae is oriented towards interculturalism rather than anti-multiculturalism. The future challenge and goal of Handol's Tarae would be to continue to find areas of sympathy and broaden the horizon of awareness as diaspora music.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.41-62
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• 2023

Given that SME workers are the driving force of national competitiveness and the basis and cornerstone of the industry, it is meaningful to study workers' job satisfaction and the factors that affect job satisfaction. In addition to variables related to corporate competitiveness and organizational justice, this study introduced variables such as environmental(E) activities, social(S) activities, and governance(G) activities, which th national government uses as major management evaluation indicators. Therefore, a literature study and empirical analysis were conducted on how self-efficacy affects job satisfaction when workers are faced with a changed work environment. To conduct this study, 300 copies of data were collected from workers in small and medium-sized enterprises and used for analysis. For data analysis, the SPSS statistical program (Ver. 25.0) was used. The study finds, first, that product or service quality and employee competency among corporate competitiveness had a significant positive(+) effect on job satisfaction. Secondly, among ESG management activities, social(S) activities and governance(G) activities were found to have a significant positive(+) effect on job satisfaction. Third, among organizational justice, distribution justice and procedural justice were found to have a positive(+) effect on job satisfaction. Fourth, self-efficacy was found to mediate the effect of product or service quality, employee competency, social(S) and governance(G) activities among ESG management activities, and procedural justice among organizational justice on job satisfaction. The academic value of this study is that it empirically analyzed the factors that ESG management activities affect workers' jobs,. As a result, it was confirmed that workers were satisfied with their jobs by actively showing interest in social(S) activities and governance(G) activities among ESG management activities and participating in corporate management. In addition, workers sensitive to changes in the external environment can become satisfied with their jobs through self-efficacy when SMEs actively enhance corporate competitiveness, execute ESG management activities, and provide a fair organizational culture. Finally, this study suggests that there's a possibility of improving the competitiveness of SMEs through a virtuous cycle created by a change in perception of job conversion and a decrease in turnover.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.691-702
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• 2000

Background : Acute lung injury (ALI) is a commonly encountered respiratory disease and its prognosis is poor when the treatment is not provided promptly and properly. However no specific pharmacologic treatment is currently available for ALI, although recently several supportive drugs have been under scrutiny. We studied anti-inflammatory effects of pentoxifylline (PF), a methylated xanthine, and ONO-5046, a synthetic neutrophil elastase inhibitor on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ALI in vitro. Methods : To establish an in vitro model of LPS-induced ALI, primary rat alveolar macrophages and peripheral neutrophils in various ratios (1:0, 5:1, 1:1, 1:5, 0:1) were co-cultured with transformed rat alveolar epithelial cells (L2 cell line) or vascular endothelial cells (IP2-E4 cell line) under LPS stimulation. Each experiment was divided into five groups-control, LPS, LPS+PF, LPS+ONO, and LPS+PF+ONO. We compared LPS-induced superoxide anion productions from primary rat alveolar macrophages and peripheral neutrophils in various ratios, and the resultant cytotoxicity on L2 cells or IP2-E4 cells between groups. In addition we also compared the productions of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-$\alpha$ interleukin (IL)-$1{\beta}$, monocyte chemotactic protein(MCP)-1, IL-6, and IL-10 as well as mRNA expressions of TNF-$\alpha$ inducible nitric oxide synthetase(iNOS), and MCP-1 from LPS-stimulated primary rat alveolar macrophages between groups. Results : (1) PF and ONO-5046 in each or both showed a trend to suppress LPS-induced superoxide anion productions from primary rat alveolar macrophages and peripheral neutrophils regardless of their ratio, except for the LPS+PF+ONO group with the 1:5 ratio, although statistical significance was limited to a few selected experimental conditions. (2) PF and ONO-5046 in each or both showed a trend to prevent IP2-E4 cells from LPS-induced cytotoxicity by primary rat alveolar macrophages and peripheral neutrophils regardless their ratio, although statistical significance was limited to a few selected experimental conditions. the effects of PF and/or ONO-5046 on LPS-induced L2 cell cytotoxicity varied according to experimental conditions. (3) PF showed a trend to inhibit LPS-induced productions of INF-$\alpha$ MCP-1, and IL-10 from primary rat alveolar macrophages. ONO-5046 alone didnot affect the LPS-induced productions of proinflammatory cytokines from primary rat alveolar macrophages but the combination of PF and ONO-5046 showed a trend to suppress LPS-induced productions of INF-$\alpha$ and IL-10 PF and ONO-5046 in each or both showed a trend to increase LPS-induced IL-$\beta$ and IL-6 productions from primary rat alveolar macrophages. (4) PF and ONO-5046 in each or both showed a trend to attenuate LPS-induced mRNA expressions of TNF-$\alpha$ and MCP-1 from primary rat alveolar macrophages but at the same time showed a trend increase iNOS mRNA expression. Conclusion : These results suggest that PF and ONO-5046 may play a role in attenuating inflammation in LPS-induced ALI and that further study is needed to use these drugs as a new supportive therapeutic strategy for ALI.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.12 no.5_spc
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• pp.81-98
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• 2006

The objective of this research is to do a cultural comparison on the daily lives of the children of Korea, Japan and China. To achieve this objective, the questionnares were distributed to the 2940 mothers of children from the ages of 3 to 6 in the countries of Korea, Japan and China. The target audience consisted of 941 mothers living in Seoul and Kyunggi area for Korea, 1007 mothers living in Tokyo for Japan, and 992 mothers living in Beijing for China. As a result of the research, we found out that firstly, although children in general got up anytime between 7:00am to 9:00am and went to bed between 8:00pm and 11:00pm, 61.5% of the Korean children went to bed after 10pm and 16.8% after 11pm. Besides that, we found that compared to 3.51% of Korean children who got up before 6am, 13.41% of Japanese children and 17.24% of Chinese children got up before 6:00am. So we could see that the Korean children got up later and went to bed later than their Japanese and Chinese counterpart. This pattern could also be seen in the average rising time and bed time. Korean children went to bed at 10:00pm and woke up at 7:75am whereas the Japanese children went to bed at 9:28pm and woke up at 7:39am, and the Chinese children went to bed at 9:05pm and woke up at 7:05am. The average sleeping hours for Japanese children was 10.12 hours, 9.50 hours for the Chinese and 9.75 hours for the Korean. As a result, we could see that the Korean children went to bed later, got up later and slept fewer hours than their Japanese and Chinese counterparts. Also, since the rising time and bedtime of the Korean children was later than those of the Chinese and Japanese counterparts, the former s' breakfast and dinner time was also much later. Secondly, we looked at the time children went off to and came back from institutes such as kindergarten and child care centers. The Chinese were earliest at going with average attendance at 7:83am, the Japanese came next at 8:59am and the Korean children were last at 8:90am, whereas the Japanese came first in coming back home at 3:36pm, Korean next at 3:91pm and the Chinese last at 5:46pm. Next when we looked at the hours spent at the kindergartens and child care centers, Japan spent 6.76 hours, Korea 7.01 hours and China spent the longest hours with 9.63 hours. Excluding China where all preschool institutes are centralized into kindergartens, we nest looked at time children went to and came back from the institutes as well as the time spent there. In the case of kindergarten, there was not much difference but in the case of child care centers, the Japanese children went to the child care centers mach earlier and came home later than the Korean children. Also, the time spent at the child care center was much longer for the Japanese than the Korean children. This fact coincides with the Korean mothers' number one wish to the kindergartens and child care centers i.e. for the institutes to prolong their school hours. Thus, the time spent at child care centers for Korea was 7.75 hours, 9.39 hours for Japan and 9.63 hours for China. The time for Korea was comparatively much shorter than that of Japan and China but if we consider the fact that 50% of the target audience was working mothers, we could easily presume that the working parents who usually use the child care centers would want the child care centers to prolong the hours looked after their children. Besides this, the next most wanted wish mothers have towards the child care centers and kindergartens was for those institutes to "look after their children when sick". This item showed high marks in all three countries, and the marks in Korea was especially higher when compared to Japan and China. Thirdly, we looked at the private extracurricular activities of the children. We found that 72.6% of the Korean children, 61.7% of the Japanese children, and 64.6% of the Chinese children were doing private extracurricular activities after attending kindergarten or day care centers. Amongst the private extracurricular activities done by Korean children, the most popular one was worksheet with 51.9% of the children doing it. Drawing (15.20%) and English (11.6%) came next. Swimming (21.95%) was the most popular activity for Japan, with English (17.48%), music (15,79%) and sports (14.70%) coming next. For China, art (30.95%) was first with English (22.08%) and music (19.96%) following next. All three countries had English as the most popular activity related to art and physical activities after school hours, but the rate for worksheet studies was much higher for Korea compared to Japan China. The reason Koreans universally use worksheet in because the parents who buy the worksheet are mothers who have easy access to advertisement or salespeople selling those products. The price is also relatively cheap, the worksheet helps the children to grow the basic learning ability in preparation for elementary school, and it is thought to help the children to build the habit of studying everyday. Not only that but it is estimated that the worksheet education is being conducted because parents can share the responsibility of the children's learning with the worksheet-teacher who make home visits. Looking at the expenses spent on private extracurricular activities as compared to income, we found that China spent 5% of income for activities outside of regular education, Korea 3% and Japan 2%. Fourthly, we looked at the amount of time children spent on using multimedia. The majority of the children in Korea, Japan and China watch television almost every day. In terms of video games, the Japanese children played the games the most, with Korea and China following next. The Korean children used the computer the most, with Japan and China next. The Korean children used about 21.17% of their daily time on computers which is much more than the Japanese who used 20.62% of their time 3 or 4 times a week, or the Chinese. The Chinese children were found to use considerably less time on multimedia compared to the Korean of Japanese.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.142-171
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• 2019

The dragon is an imaginary animal that appears in the legends and myths of the Orient and the West. While dragons have mostly been portrayed as aggressive and as bad omens in the West, in the Orient, as they symbolize the emperor or have an auspicious meaning, dragons signify a positive meaning. In addition, as the dragon symbolizes the emperor and its type has been diversified considering it as a divine object that controls water, people have tried to express it as a figure. The records related to dragons in the Goryeo dynasty appeared with diverse topics in 'History of Goryeo' and are generally contents related to founding myths, rituals for rain, and Shinii (神異), etc. The founding myth emphasizes the legality of the Goryeo dynasty through the dragon, and this influenced the formation of the dragon's descendants. In addition, the ability to control water, which is a characteristic of the dragon, was symbolized as an earth dragon related to the rainmaking ritual, i.e., wishing for rain during times of drought. Since the dragon was the symbol of the royal family, the use of the dragon by common people was strictly restricted. Furthermore, the association of a bronze dragon mirror with the royal family is hard to be excluded. The type and quantity of bronze double dragon mirrors discovered to have existed during the Goryeo dynasty is great, and the production and the distribution of bronze mirrors with double dragons seem to have been more active compared to other bronze mirrors, as bronze mirrors with double dragons produced during Goryeo and bronze mirrors originating in China were mixed. Therefore, in this article, the characteristics of diverse bronze mirrors from the 10th century to the 14th century in China were examined. It seems that the master craftsmen who produced bronze mirrors with double dragons during the Goryeo dynasty were influenced by Chinese composition patterns when making the mirrors. Because there were many cases where a bronze mirror's country of origin could not easily be determined, in order to identify the differences between bronze double dragon mirrors produced during the Goryeo dynasty and bronze mirrors produced in China, meticulous analysis was required. Thus, to ascertain that Goryeo mirrors were not imitations of bronze mirrors with double dragons originating in China but produced independently, the mirrors were examined using the bronze double dragon mirror type classification system existing in our country. Bronze mirrors with double dragons are classified into three types: Type I, which has the style of the Yao dynasty, includes the greatest proportion; however, despite there being only a small quantity for comparison, Types II and III were selected for the analysis of the bronze mirrors with double dragons made in Goryeo because they have unique composition patterns. As mentioned above, distinguishing bronze mirrors made during Goryeo from bronze mirrors made in China is challenging because Goryeo bronze mirrors were made under the influence of China. Among them, since the manufacturing place of the bronze mirrors with double dragons found at the nine-story stone pagoda in Woljeongsa Temple in Pyeongchang is questionable and the composition pattern of the bronze mirror is hard to find on bronze mirrors with double dragons made in China, the manufacturing place of those bronze mirrors were examined. These bronze mirrors with double dragons were considered as bronze mirrors with double dragons made during the Goryeo dynasty adopting the Yao dynasty style composition pattern as aspects of the composition pattern belonged to Type I, and the detailed combination of patterns is hard to find in mirrors produced in China.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.38
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• pp.5-42
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• 2005

Based on a field investigation of intangible cultural asset # 2, author Sir Shin Seok-bong of Daejeon Metropolitan Cityinvestigated the music of Antaek-gut, which is the base and core of Anjoon-gut, and found the following musical features: A Jang-gu(drum) and Kkoaengkwari(gong) were used to recitethe Sutra(kyungmoon) of Anjoon-gut. The Jang-gu, located on the right side, played an accompaniment role with regular beats when the Sutra was recited. The Kkoaengkwari, located on the left side, played the role of covering the caesura of the Sutra passages, so it is played with various rhythmic variations in accordance with Kojang(鼓杖). This is one way of playing Korean national classical music that has temporary caesuras, depending on the rector's bre! ath or the contents of a Sutra during the Sutra chanting, with the Jang-gu covering the pause with its variation. In other words, when being played in concert, the instruments that play the main melody are at rest while another instrument takes its turn to play the main melody as a form of prolonged sound. The rhythmic cycles of the sutras of Antaek-gut recited with this instrumental accompaniment consist of five types; a) Woemarch-jangdan (a single beat) of 4 meter by 3 bit, b) Dumarch-jangdan (two beats) of 8 meter by 3 bit, c) Saemarch-jangdan (three beats) of 4 meter by 3 bit with a fast tempo, d) Mak-gojang, uniform beats with a standardized rhythm, and e) incomplete beats deviated from the regular beats. Sir Shin Seok-bong chanted Chang (唱), a traditional native song which he called 'Cheong (淸)' with a cycle of 'Dumarch-jangdan' throughout the places of Antaek-gut. Only 'Toesonggyung' a chant for the gate that was the last location of the Antaek, was chanted with a cycle of 'Woemarch-jan! gdan'. In addition, 'Saemarch-jangdan' and 'Mak-gojang' that had comparatively faster tempos than the former two jangdans, were played without a chant when a female shaman was dancing and catching her spirit-invoking wand. The 'Saemarch-jangdan', particularly, was played while dancing began at a relatively slow tempo, then proceeded at a violent tempo and then back again to the slow tempo. This shows one of the representative tempos of our music with a slow-fast-slow tempo. The organizational tones were 'mi-la-do'-re'', and its key tones of 'mi-la-do'' were performed with perfect fourth and minor third, which was the same as those of Menari-tori. However, it did not show a typical Sigimse, an ornamental tone, of Menari-tory, whose first tone, 'mi', is vibrated and its Sigimse is gliding down from the tone 're' to 'do'. That is because the regional tone-tori of Chungcheong-do have a relatively weaker musical expression than that of Gyeongsang-do. In addition, the rhythmic types in accordance with the words of a song for the Antaek-gut music had a comparatively faster tempo than the other sutras. Also, it was only with 'Toesonggyeong' that the tone 'la' continuously appeared throughout the melody and showed 'a syllabic rhythm', while other places consisted of either a 'syncopation' or 'melismatic' rhythm. Finally, according to a brief investigation of the tone organization in accordance with each sutra, the tone 'la' was given more weight. The tone procedure showed a mainly ascending 'la-do'' and the descending 'la-mi' with minor third and perfect fourth. Also, the overall tempo proceeded with M.M.♩.=116-184, while the tempo for the Gut proceeded with M.M.♩.=120-140, which was suitable for reciting a Sutra.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2018

Mobile devices have become an important channel for news content usage in our daily life. However, online news content readers' resistance to online news monetization is more serious than other digital content businesses, such as webtoons, music sources, videos, and games. Since major portal sites distribute online news content free of charge to increase their traffics, customers have been accustomed to free news content; hence this makes online news providers more difficult to switch their policies on business models (i.e., monetization policy). As a result, most online news providers are highly dependent on the advertising business model, which can lead to increasing number of false, exaggerated, or sensational advertisements inside the news website to maximize their advertising revenue. To reduce this advertising dependencies, many online news providers had attempted to switch their 'free' readers to 'paid' users, but most of them failed. However, recently, some online news media have been successfully applying the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) payment model, which allows readers to voluntarily pay fees for their favorite news content. These successful cases shed some lights to the managers of online news content provider regarding that the PWYW model can serve as an alternative business model. In this study, therefore, we collected 379 online news articles from Ohmynews.com that has been successfully employing the PWYW model, and analyzed the comparative importance of systematic attributes of online news content on readers' voluntary payment. More specifically, we derived the six systematic attributes (i.e., Type of Article Title, Image Stimulation, Article Readability, Article Type, Dominant Emotion, and Article-Image Similarity) and three or four levels within each attribute based on previous studies. Then, we conducted content analysis to measure five attributes except Article Readability attribute, measured by Flesch readability score. Before conducting main content analysis, the face reliabilities of chosen attributes were measured by three doctoral level researchers with 37 sample articles, and inter-coder reliabilities of the three coders were verified. Then, the main content analysis was conducted for two months from March 2017 with 379 online news articles. All 379 articles were reviewed by the same three coders, and 65 articles that showed inconsistency among coders were excluded before employing conjoint analysis. Finally, we examined the comparative importance of those six systematic attributes (Study 1), and levels within each of the six attributes (Study 2) through conjoint analysis with 314 online news articles. From the results of conjoint analysis, we found that Article Readability, Article-Image Similarity, and Type of Article Title are the most significant factors affecting online news readers' voluntary payment. First, it can be interpreted that if the level of readability of an online news article is in line with the readers' level of readership, the readers will voluntarily pay more. Second, the similarity between the content of the article and the image within it enables the readers to increase the information acceptance and to transmit the message of the article more effectively. Third, readers expect that the article title would reveal the content of the article, and the expectation influences the understanding and satisfaction of the article. Therefore, it is necessary to write an article with an appropriate readability level, and use images and title well matched with the content to make readers voluntarily pay more. We also examined the comparative importance of levels within each attribute in more details. Based on findings of two studies, two major and nine minor propositions are suggested for future empirical research. This study has academic implications in that it is one of the first studies applying both content analysis and conjoint analysis together to examine readers' voluntary payment behavior, rather than their intention to pay. In addition, online news content creators, providers, and managers could find some practical insights from this research in terms of how they should produce news content to make readers voluntarily pay more for their online news content.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.75 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 1986

In order to contribute to the Korean tea-plant culture and tea industry by means of increasing the production of tea-plants, I have performed the tissue culture of the organs of the anther, leaf and stem. As for the culture-material, I have used the anther of tea (Thea sinensis) at the tetrad uninucleate microspore stage and used medium of modified Murashige and Skoog as the basal medium supplemented with the growth regulators of NAA and 2, 4-D, yeast, kinetin and others at various concentrations. As for the handling of material, I have followed the common methods of sterilization and microtoming and paraffine imbedding method and observed systematically periodic changes of the microspores in culture. I have divided the leaf, stem and root into segments and sterilized them and used the modified Murashige and Skoog as the basal medium and observed the differentiation of roots and callus and the results are as follows. 1. In case of anther, I have found 2n callus was found in 30 out of 100 segments in M2 medium. 2. The differentiation of roots appeared in 24.5% of total leaf segments cultured and in 50.5% of stem and in 43.9% of root. 3. When the differentiation of stem in different parts was observed, the most frequent differentiation was found in the second part of all the 4 parts. 4. The most frequent formation of callus was noticed from the anther-walls in case of anther culture and from the veins in case of leaf culture. It is concluded that the seedlings of tea-plant could be multiplied most by means of tissue culture of the second part of the tea-plant stem and reduction in the expenditures of tea-plant propagation was possible through tissue culture.

• Journal of the Korean Academic Society of Industrial Cluster
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.67-86
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• 2007

Wonju Medical Equipment Industry, despite of its short history, poor sales and weak manpower and so on, have shown remarkable outcomes in a relatively short period. At the end of 2007, totally 79 enterprises (only 4.6% of whole enterprises in Korea) made 10% of the nationwide production and 15% of the nationwide exports with an annual average growth rate of 66.7%, contributing domestic medical equipment industry tremendously. In addition, many leading medical equipment enterprises in various fields already moved or plan to move to Wonju, accelerating Wonju Medical Equipment Cluster. Wonju Medical Equipment Industry Cluster now enters into the growth stage, getting out of the initial business setup stage. Especially, the nomination of Wonju cluster project from the government accelerates networking (e.g. the development of the universal parts, the establishment of the mutual collaboration model among enterprises, and the mutual marketing), making a rapid growth in Wonju Medical Equipment Industry. Wonju Medical Equipment Industry Cluster revealed positive outcomes despite of the weakness in investment size and infra-structure comparing with the other medical industry cluster in the advanced country, while many domestic enterprises pursued their own growth models and thus failed to promote the international competitive power. Wonju Medical Equipment Industry has been developed rapidly. However, there are many challenging problems to support enterprises: small R&D investment and thus weak technology power, difficulties in recruiting R&D engineers, and poor marketing capabilities, financial infrastructure & policies, and network architecture. In order to develop a world-competitive medical equipment industry cluster at Wonju, the complement of infrastructures, the technology innovation, the mutual marketing, and the network expansion to support enterprises are further required. Wonju' s experiences in developing medical equipment industry so far suggest that our own flexible cluster model considering the industry structure and maturity for different regions should be developed, and specific action plans from the local and central governments based on their systematic strategies for industry development should be implemented in order to build world-competitive industry clusters in Korea.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2001

Background : The eosinophil chemotactic and activating effects of eotaxin and the known association of eosinophils with asthma suggest that eotaxin expression is increased during an asthma attack. This study was aimed to determine whether the plasma eotaxin levels are higher in patients during an asthma attack and to correlate the eotaxin levels with the disease activity, severity and response to therapy. Method : A case-control study of the plasma eotaxin levels was performed in 100 patients with exacerbated asthma and 48 age- and sex-matched subjects with stable asthma. Results : The plasma eotaxin levels were significantly higher in the 100 patients with exacerbated asthma($233{\pm}175\;pg/mL$) than in the 48 subjects with stable asthma($169{\pm}74\;pg/mL$). A trend toward higher eotaxin levels was observed in asthmatic subjects who were taking oral steroids ($332{\pm}225\;pg/mL$) than in those who were not ($214{\pm}159\;pg/mL$) and higher levels were found in those admitted to the hospital ($275{\pm}212\;pg/mL$) than in those discharged after receiving only emergency treatment ($190{\pm}115\;pg/mL$). The eotaxin levels inversely correlated with the $FEV_$ (r=-0.25, p<0.01). The eotaxin levels were higher in moderate persistent ($323{\pm}256\;pg/mL$) and severe persistent asthmatics ($276{\pm}170\;pg/mL$) than in mild intermittent asthmatics ($l60{\pm}60\;pg/mL$). Conclusion : Eotaxin expression is directly associated with asthma exacerbation, impaired pulmonary function and the disease severity.