• 한국사회복지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.3-19
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• 2002

The problems and needs of families in Hong Kong are becoming more complex. Traditional family structures and functions are rapidly eroding. Moreover, family problems are further exacerbated by a growing number of socio-economic issues including rising divorce rates and extra-marital affairs. continuous family reunion migration from Mainland China, emotional and financial cost of caring for the older people and the changing economy which has pushed more families into hardship. In effect, more and more families are becoming vulnerable to risk. Traditional family services in Hong Kong are varied in mode, operation and provision, often overlapping in service boundaries with other family-oriented programs. In many instances, family service centers are stretched far beyond their capacity. As a consequence, they become too reactive, remedial and casework dominated. The University of Hong Kong Consultant Team recommended that family service programs have to protect vulnerable families and strengthen family capacities to promote maximum independence. The direction of family services is summarized as: strengthening families; child-centered, family-focused and community-based. New integrative family service centers aim at attaining the principles of promoting accessibility to users with minimum physical, psychological and administrative barriers; early identification of needs and intervention before the further deterioration of problems; integration of services cutting across program boundaries, and partnership between service providers to achieve efficient and effective use of scarce resources. Under the new model, multi-skilled teams can respond more proactively to a wide range of social needs, rather than addressing needs in isolation. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the new model, the consultant team has been commissioned by the government to evaluate the performance of these two-year pilot projects. More importantly, a coherent and family-friendly social policy should be formulated to strengthen family capacity against family-related problems.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.121-135
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• 2004

'Long-life' which has been the perennial interest to human beings also carries the risk of multiple losses such as the death of the family members and friends, the loss of physical and cognitive functions. In that regards, living a long life to be the 'oldest-old' could mean not only a 'symbol of successful aging' but also a hardship and low quality of life at the same time. Therefore, the issue of the quality of life of the oldest old has been the subject of the much of the public and research concern in recent days. While there has been increased awareness about the importance of the subjective aspects of the quality of life and meanings attached to the extended life, most researches on the quality of life of the oldest-old have focused only on the objective conditions of the quality of life such as health, economic status and housing conditions. To overcome these limitations this study aims to explore the subject meaning of 'living a long life' in Korean society by investigating centenarians and their caregivers' interpretations of aging experiences. Qualitative data were gathered from the forty-nine Korean centenarians and their caregivers through in-depth interview. Each interview was tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Researchers read each transcript a number of times to get some emerging themes. Most striking result was the fact that most of the centenarians express the 'guilty feelings' and try to offer the 'excuses' about their long life. This results were quite contrary to the results of the studies, done in Japan and western countries like Sweden, United States and Germany, where most of the oldest-old express quite positive interpretations about their long-life and take pride in their longevity. Lack of social support, cohort characteristics of the Korean oldest-old and the cultural interpretations linking the death of children to the long life of older generation are given as possible factors to these unique findings of Korean study. The policy implications of the results are discussed.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-20
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• 2004

This study is to examine relationships of several socioeconomic position indicators with mortality risk in a nationwide longitudinal study of South Korea. The Korea Labor & Income Panel Study, conducted on a probability sample of urban South Korean households by Korea Labor Institute, contains date of death information for the decedents which were used to estimate relative risks of mortality and their $95\%$ confidence intervals (CI) with Cox regression analysis. A total of 125 men and women among 8,415 subjects died between 1998 and 2002. Socioeconomic differentials in mortality were observed after adjustment for sex and age. Those with less than 12-year education had 1.90 times $(95\%\;CI=1.25-2.91)$ greater mortality risk than those with 12-year education or more. Greater mortality risks were also found among those with low occupational class and manual occupation. The magnitude of differentials in mortality risks between occupational class were similar in two different approaches to measuring women's occupational class: (1) approach 1 where women, married or not, retain their own occupational class, and (2) approach 2 where married women are assigned their husbands' occupational class. Relative risks of dying among those with low household Income were 1.62 $(95\%\; CI=1.08-2.42)$ compared with the counterparts. Those who reported economic hardship at the time of survey in 1998 had greater risk of mortality $(RR=1.83,\;95\%\;CI=1.21-2.78)$ than those who did not. In conclusion, increased social discourse and policy discussions about these health inequalities are needed in Korean society. Future studies should explore the causes and mechanisms of socioeconomic mortality inequalities.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.454-462
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to explore the lonely-death phenomenon and to understand the circumstances surrounding the lonely-death cases among elderly people by examining the articles on such phenomenon and the media reports of such cases. The cases of lonely death reported from 2007 to 2017 were used. Case analysis was conducted, and the news articles that described the lonely death cases were identified using an internet search engine. Forty seven cases were analyzed. Several risk factors emerged from the data obtained, such as economic hardship, chronic illness, mental health problems like alcohol addiction, social isolation, disconnection from family members or the neighborhood, unemployment, single household, unmarried or divorced status, and living in an urban area. Based on the findings, prevention strategies were addressed.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.21-39
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• 1999

An increasing number of hospitals are seeking for new or mixed compensation strategies to improve the productivity of their medical staff in the struggle to provide high quality medical services at low costs amid the economic hardship. To motivate physicians toward the right direction, it is necessary to effectively evaluate their performance that provides a basis for compensation. However, productivity has been historically difficult to measure, particularly for physicians in academic medical centers who are expected to engage in research, education, and patient care simultaneously. The objectives of this study were to define performance measures of physicians and clinical departments in academic medical centers. to examine correlations between the measures. and to investigate factors affecting the measures. The performance data of 212 faculty physicians in 17 clinical departments in two university teaching hospitals affiliated to one medical school during the fiscal year 1994 was used for analyses. Patient care revenue, net profit. and adjusted number of patients were defined to measure the performance in patient care. and number of articles published in academic journals and research grant were defined for research activities. Both individual physicians' performance measures and per physician measures of clinical departments were analyzed. All measures defined to evaluate individual physicians' performance were positively related to each other. Clinical department and rank of faculty position were statistically significant predictors of revenue. and hospital. clinical department. and rank were significant predictors of net profit. journal publication. and research grant. Patient care measures defined to evaluate clinical departments were related to each other. so were research measures. and no significant correlations were found between patient care measures and research measures. Also found were large differences in department. ranks when clinical departments were evaluated by absolute per physician performance measures and evaluated by annual rate of changes in performance measures. These findings suggest that departmental performance measures opposed to individual performance measures are relatively free from problems of factors affecting the performance measures that are not in control of clinical departments or individual physicians. Results from the correlation analysis of departmental performance measures indicates that measures of research performance should be included in the evaluation to promote research activities in academic medical centers.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-25
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• 2002

This study investigated the background of the intellectual ability that consists of family environment, intellectual priority, career aims, intellectual extracurricular activities of the students who were selected for the Science Gifted Education Center. We performed a survey and analysis of the students at the Science Gifted Education Center in order to explore their learning attitudes and intellectual ability, as well as the elements that represent their attitudes. As a result of the study, I found that the students in the Science Gifted Education Center generally had good economic and family backgrounds that showed no significant hardship in supporting the students. The families were also highly educated intellectually. In case the talented students in Science desired to be pure scientists, they liked the Science subjects and enjoyed reading science books. It was mostly the male students that took part. As for the attitude toward intellectual ability, they expected to improve their abilities as they gained knowledge and increased their intelligence through learning, although they didn't confide with us on their intelligence quotients. There were four factors for these attitudes. They include the high expectation of them by others; confidence and ease of mind regarding the assignment; the expectation for improvement in intelligence and ability through learning; and, confidence in intelligence and positive attitude in the participation situatio

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.137-146
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• 2007

Korea's seas have the potentials of dispute against China or Japan due to the overlap of the territorial waters and EEZ. In case of marine accidents, the nature of the sea tends to eliminate much of the track, making it another hardship in evidence adoption in case of an international dispute along with the false entries of fishing vessels' journals. Marine Digital Forensics Protects the functions of computers and IT appliance on vessels and extracts evidence of voyage and accidents to resolve international dispute. The digital evidence, if tampered with its integrity, my lead to the rejection to a critical claim or may even fail to make a case. As a solution, this thesis suggests Marine Digital Forensics as a way to extract evidence and prove a claim. This may be utilized as means of scientific investigation on sea as overseas exchange increases and the vessels digitalize, leading to a solution in international disputes that may occur in the future.

• Korean Journal of Plant Resources
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.67-74
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• 1991

Many people have a growing interest on the health result from economic improvement, various environimental pollution and stress, and unrest on the adult diseases etc.In these result, demand for the herb medicine continues to expand. Farmers of theour country have a hardship in the farm management owing to of opening and liberaliza-tion, and make strenuous efforts on the devclopment of substitute crops to overcomethese differties. Government nowadays recommends the cultivation of the economiccrops like a flowers, medicinal herbs mushroom and clean vegetables. Medicinal herbsare specially profitable among these crops because herbs are possible to culture inwaste land, disused field and slope land, and owing to need less labor and competitionthan those of other crops. The most important problem is the facts that the compli-cation of currency structure of herb medicine inflicts mucll loss to cultivators. Therefore, this study was investigated the state of herb cultivation and the facts to be imploved in currency structure of the harvested herb medicine.1 . The cultivating area and output have been gradually increased and much produc-ted in Kyoungbuk, Kangwon, Choongbuk, Cheonbuk and Cheonnam province in or-der of cultivating area 2. Collection amount of wild herb medicine is decreasig bythe reason of the varous difficulties on the collection. 3. Cultivators of medicinal herbscan make agricultural management more resonable in information exchange on theherb cultivation, purchase of seed, fertilizer, chemicals and other materials, and sell-ing of harvested herb medicine by organization of cultivator fraternity. 4 Cultivatorshave to exclude intermediary margin by the development of direct transaction andcontract cultivation with medicinal herb store, drug manufacturer, chinese meicinehospital and trading firm etc. And also, by the performing exportation with foreign consumer.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.441-450
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• 2017

Childcare related studies have focused on the characteristics of care work, policy aspects, user family satisfaction, and job satisfaction of childcare helpers. But there have been few studies on family system characteristics that support childcare givers. Thus, this study conducted on the topic, "How to characterize the family resilience of long-term childcare givers?" The subjects belong to a healthy family support center in U. City, who belong to a group with an income in the top 20 % of about 20 persons working for more than 3 years. In an interview, qualitative questions were used Walsh's family resilience. The results are as follows. First, they had economic hardship, but their family would stand together and build up a family's power based on the couple's faith. They had a family role model based on their parents' family that included inherited maternity qualities from their mother. Second, the flexibility of the family organization changed to autonomous or co-role type and the connectivity. Especially, they appear as a family's leader. Third, their family communication was active, shared-care, responsible and passionate with family affection and understanding. The conclusions results are as follows. Participants were high school graduates as well as had work experience. They were characterized by positive family energy, a family belief system, family-based resources, flexibility, connectivity, open family communication and expression skills. Therefore, it can be suggested that it is necessary to check the family's resilience during an interview for the reliable, long-term supply of human resources for childcare activities.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.44
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• pp.146-177
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• 2001

One of the difficulties of female-headed families face is economic hardship. Low-income single mothers work long hours, become isolated and feel burdened for dual roles. And many of them don't have relatives to share parenting roles. As a result, children of low-income female-headed families are easy to be neglected and left to form a delinquency-prone group in neighborhood. Traditionally, it has been viewed that children in female-headed families have problems due to the loss of father role. However, study indicates that these children can adjust well if the relationship between mothers and children is consistent and adequate. An Intervention program for low-income female-headed elementary children was developed and delivered in two community social welfare centers. The purpose of the program is to raise self-esteem. Two goals were 1) management of daily living habits and 2) improvement of family relations. Social workers maintained contact with mothers to talk about children's behaviors and to prompt hugging and touching. In addition, workers helped children to form good relationships with peers and school teachers. Children were satisfied with the program. Their family relations were improved statistically significantly after the program(wilcoxon signed rant test z=-2.934 p<.05). However, their self esteem were not improved significantly (wilcoxon signed test z=-1.173 p>.05). Qualitative analysis of each children were also discussed. The implications of the study are the followings: Intervention programs need to be delivered separately for low-grade and high grade elementary children because they have different developmental needs. The program also need to include education on sex and marriage as well as aggression reduction. Society needs to provide more support to single mothers for their personal and parenting needs.