• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.155-187
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• 1999

The East Asian Region has experienced remarkable economic growth and transformation of interurban networking over the past three decades, and urban competiti veness for a networking hub in this region has become a critical issue confronting cities. Competitiveness of the Seoul capital region for a networking hub in Northeast Asia is outstripped by other competing cities in East Asia, notwithstanding its geo-politically and geo-economically advantageous location in this region. In this paper, we aim to appraise the Seoul capital region's competitiveness in terms of logistics distribution, financial function and logistics distribution, financial function and agglomeration of transnational corporations (especially of RHOs and other managerial functions), and to advance the networking strategies of the region for a Northeast Asia hyb. As a result of analysis, we suggest that the Seoul capital region be developed as a Northeast Asian center for regional headquarters or leading global corporations and financial services for being a strategic nodal point in Northeast Asia in the 21st century. A recent survey shows that where to locate an RHQ is influenced by various factors, such as potential market and manufacturing site in the city's hinterland, quality of life, such things as culture, health, safety, education, a well-educated, English-speaking population, reliable air transport, state-of-the-art communications, and an active policy to offer foreign companies generous incentives. The Seoul capital region, which is located at a strategic nodal point advantageous as a springboard for its Northeast Asian hinterland, cannot meet the other conditions mentioned above. To overcome these drawbacks in attracting transnational capital and to create competitiveness as a strategic hub of RHQs in Northeast Asia, it is urgent to initiate a structural reform of the Korean economy, politics, and overall society, to minimize the regulation of FDI, and to provide various incentives for foreign investment. Moreover, we propose the construction of an 'International Business Town' in the Seoul capital region, as a medium to intermediate these strategies and to shape them in a spatial scale. The projected 'International Business Town(IBT)' will be a 'free city' open to international business in which liberal economic activities are guaranteed by special legislation and administration, infrastructures needed for international and improved accessibility to the airport are furnished, and the preference of foreign high-income investors for cultural and living environment are satisfactorily met. IBT is conspicuously differentiated from a raft of other cities' incentives in that it combines deregulation and incentive programs to attract the investment of transnational capital, with a spatial program of offering an urban environment preferred by the high-income investors for cultural and living environment are satisfactorily met. IBT is conspicuously differentiated from a raft of other cities' incentives in that it combines deregulation and incentive programs to attract the investment of transnational capita, with a spatial program of offering an urban environment preferred by the high-income and managerial class. Furthermore, it can be an excellent way of overcoming the xenophobia that has spread among the Korean population by concentrating foreign businesses and their lifestyles in a specific foreign businesses and their lifestyles in a specific zone. In conclusion, 'International Business Town', in line with other legislative and administrative incentive programs, will function as a driving force to make the Seoul capital regional more competitive as a regional business hub in Northeast Asia.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-29
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• 2013

The main goal of the research is to develop instructional consulting manual to help math teachers improve classroom teaching. Improving the quality of teaching in schools is stressed as a central focus of meaningful classroom instruction and high quality education. In this research, teaching consulting was defined as an activity that covers reflection process oriented towards formative assessment and continuing professional development. Within this context, subject-specific teaching consulting and teaching professionalism with focus on PCK was reviewed. Further, the questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate the current situation of teaching consulting and teachers' needs for consulting. And also, specific examples of subject-specific consulting based on our previous consulting experiences in math classes were shown. Alternative ways to improve subject teaching were derived through the conferences where consultants and consultees analyze video-taped lessons conducted by the consultees. By those results, a manual for invigorating teaching consulting was developed. The contents of the manual consists of setting conditions of teaching consulting and its implementation in the classroom teaching. The first part of the manual contains steps to establish teaching consulting system, the qualification and role of the consultant, system evaluation, etc. The second part of the manual presents the pre-preparation, prescription and implementation and follow-up management steps. Each part of the manual provides consultants with specific guidelines for each step. Finally, recommendations for making policy related to ways to invigorate teaching consulting was suggested. It is expected that specific examples and cases of subject-specific teaching consulting presented in this research will be used to narrow the gap between theory and practice of teaching consulting, and to help math, science and English teachers develop teaching professionalism.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.158-175
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to understand and improve the clothing habits and the apparel industry of North Korea in preparation for the reunification of South and North Korea. For this study, literary data, reports, periodicals, interviews and internet data of the two Koreas were reviewed. North Korean clothing habits used to be monotonous and uniform but nowadays people's clothes have become somewhat brighter in color and more diverse in design than before. In particular, liberal and individual dressing habits appeared among the privileged classes. When taking part in national events, women have to wear the traditional Korean costume, Hanbok, while men wear business suits for formal wear. In general, men don't wear Hanbok. Students have to be in uniforms but blue jeans, T-shirts with English logos were popular among them reflecting their sensitivity and openness towards western cultures. The brides usually wear pink Hanboks and the bridegrooms wear black business suits for their wedding. North Koreans also wear Hanbok on national holidays like South Koreans. Clothing is the most important item in the trade of process commission between North and South Korea. Trading items are mid to low end men's clothing for the most part due to less emphasis on fashion in the North. The processing is indirect trade and composed of sample making and contracting, sending out materials and production, carrying in goods and setting accounts. To activate South-North trade, establishment of infrastructure, stabilization of shipping, reducing high costs of distribution, building direct communication system by setting up office in a neutral zone and simplifying procedures in applying for the South and North Korea Economic Cooperation Fund. On the other hand, clothing and textiles education is carried on at art colleges, light industries colleges and commercial colleges in Pyongyang. Clothing institutes which study Hanbok and Western clothes, are installed in each city and province. Graduates who majored in clothing and textiles are posted in institutes or apparel factories. Their job is designing, patternmaking and sewing for their customers. Most of them are women and in good state of economic conditions. The North Korean clothing industry has been the core national industry that has developed based on overseas demand form the mid 1980s. The standard is that of South Korea in the early 1980s. In 1999, trade of North Korean textile products with trade counterparts such as Japan and China was $1.3 million in exports and $1.27 in imports. Of this amount the export takes up 25.4% of the total exports in North Korea. However, fundamentally even in sectors that are irrelevant to politics such as the fashion clothing industry, trust between the South and North should be a prerequisite. Only through this can exchange between North and South and economic cooperation contribute towards the reunification.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.203-227
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• 2012

This was to investigate how the slow learners who specially belonged to low-SES, or North Korean defectors showed their errors in mathematical learning. To conduct the study, two groups for each minority group participated in the study volunteerly during the Winter vacation, in 2011. Based on the preliminary interviews, a total of 15 units were given, focusing on building mathematical basic concepts. As results, they had some errors in common. They both were in lack of understanding of the terminologies and not able to apply the meanings of definitions and theorems to a problem. Because of uncertainty of basic knowledge of mathematics, they easily lost their focus and were apt to make a mistake. Also, they showed clear differences. North Korean defectors were not accustomed to using or understanding the meanings of Chines or English in Korean words in expressing, writing mathematical terminologies and reading data on the context. Technical errors, and misinterpreted errors were found. However, students from the low SES showed that they were familiar with mathematical words and terminologies, but their errors mostly belonged to carelessness because of the lack of mastering mathematical concepts.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.699-719
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• 2016

Alternate pictures that are proven to be equivalent are in high demand to assess creative thinking and language skills. This study aimed to investigate the equivalence of three pictures ('Dog owners,' 'Lost Dog,' and 'Overslept') recently developed for use in a creative writing task. Middle school students (N=183) wrote a story in English based on one of the three prompts distributed randomly. Four writing features (fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and temporality) were analyzed with Coh-Metrix and MANCOVA. The three prompts were largely equivalent in their capacity to detect differences among writers in all the features of writing. The difficulty levels of the three prompts, however, were not necessarily the same. Two prompts, Dog Owners and Lost Dog, were verified as equivalent prompts, and therefore, they are recommended as alternate forms to assess creative language skills in repeated measurements. The Overslept prompt had greater facility in eliciting diverse words and more temporal connectives in composing stories. The differential difficulty shown among the prompts suggests that the validity of using different picture versions in repeated assessment remains questionable unless those versions undergo equivalence verification.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.918-927
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• 2008

The purpose of this research was to identify the dimensions of modesty and immodesty in dress and to examine the differences in female college students' perceptions, in various cultures, of modest and immodest clothes. The researchers selected South Korea and the United States for the cross-cultural comparison study because these two countries show distinctive cultural characteristics. This study was conducted through both qualitative and quantitative methods. According to the result of the preliminary study, 47 questions were developed. The 4 Likert type scales used in the questionnaire were written in both English and Korean. Pretests were performed simultaneously in both countries. 174 American and 208 Korean students completed the questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS. According to the results of factor analysis, there were 4 factors identified for the modesty-immodesty concept, including 'Conservativeness', 'Body exposure', 'Social appropriateness', and 'Attracting attention from others'. Students answered that they liked to wear conservative and socially appropriate dress in both cultures and that they did not like to wear clothing which draws a great deal of attention to them. Cultural differences were also identified. Based on the results, American students dressed more conservatively than Korean students, while Korean students preferred to wear revealing dress. American students were more conservative and preferred modest clothing. Also Korean students were more open about their body exposure and had immodest clothing attitudes.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.172-182
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• 2020

Objectives : In this study, we conducted a focus group interview among expatriates living in Korea, to investigate their experiences and perceptions of acupuncture and Korean Medicine in order to improve the usage of Korean Medicine in the medical tourism market. Methods : The inclusion criteria for the focus group interview was: (1) participants between the age of 20 to 75 years old; (2) those who had lived in Korea for more than 90 days, and (3) those who were able to express their thoughts freely in English. The participants were informed that the interviews will be recorded and transcribed. We ended recruitment once saturation of materials was met. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and the data was analyzed after each interview. Results : The interviews were held between June to December 2016. Twenty-four participants were recruited but four dropped out and a total of twenty participants successfully finished the interviews. Six focus group interviews were conducted. Analysis revealed that Korean Medicine was relatively less known compared to Traditional Chinese Medicine or Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Participants automatically associated acupuncture with the management of pain or stress and replied that these were the areas that they thought acupuncture would be most effective. Positive experiences with acupuncture and with the acupuncture practitioners were factors that promoted the use of acupuncture whereas lack of awareness, accessibility and accreditation were factors that hindered its use. Other factors that hindered the use of acupuncture was needle phobia and the perception that acupuncture lacks scientific evidence. Conclusions : Awareness on Korean Medicine and acupuncture is low. Participants lack awareness on what diseases acupuncture can treat, the scientific evidence behind the mechanism of action, and the rigorous education system that Korean Medicine doctors must go through to get their license. Rigorous marketing should be encouraged, which includes greater exposure in the media, more honest reviews from patients, and promotion of the scientific evidence base.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.351-364
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• 2021

Purpose: Fire load analysis was conducted to secure basic data for evaluating fire risk of educational facilities. In order to calculate the fire load through a preliminary survey, basic data related to the fire load of school facilities were collected. Method: The basic data were the definition and types of fire loads, combustion heat data for the calculation of fire loads. The fire load was evaluated by multiplying the combustion heat by the weight of the combustibles in the compartment when calculating the fire load. Result: As for the fixed combustible materials of A-elementary school, the floor was mainly made of wood, in consideration of emotion and safety in the classroom, music room, and school office, and the rest of the compartments were made of stone. The ceiling and walls were made of gypsum board and concrete, so they were not combustible. The typical inflammable items in each room were desks, chairs, and lockers in the classroom, and the laboratory equipment box and experimental tool box were the main components in the science room, and books, bookshelves, and reading equipment occupied a large proportion in the library room. Conclusion: 'The fire loads of A-elementary' schools according to the combustibles loaded were in the order of library, computer room, English learning room, teacher's office, general classroom, science hall, and music room.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.469-486
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• 2021

Vietnam is a country where the largest number of Korean companies have branched out, and calibers who can speak Vietnamese are on great demands. In the multicultural classroom, students of Vietnamese background occupy the first or second largest composition among students with multicultural backgrounds; therefore, if teachers can teach in Vietnamese, the positive effects can be promising. This study presents and evaluates a Vietnamese language class developed and operated for the first time in Korea by a university to raise prospective teachers' global-multicultural competences. Two series of the classes were conducted during two vacations of 2018, and 20 students participated. As a results, the groups showed a significant increase in the global-multicultural competences; About 95 percent of the participants demonstrated improvement in the competences. The participants stated opinions: the classes should expand to offer opportunities for many other students who may want to acquire Vietnamese; the participants had better understandings of the Vietnamese cultures, envisioned their role as a Vietnamese speaker and suggested extended opportunities for contacts with Vietnamese cultures. The study hopes that other universities apply the educational model and the case study and that, as a result, teachers can contribute to building harmonious Korean-Vietnamese relations using Vietnamese.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.645-657
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• 2021

Project-based learning (PBL) encourages self-autonomy and connects learning and real-life skills in the learning process. The purpose of the current study is to investigate students' life skills and self-regulated learning strategies in a PBL curriculum in order to examine how the proposed benefits of PBL are manifested in students' self-awareness of their learning process. Twenty-three students in a university in Korea participated in a 3-credit, 4-week, intensive PBL course for English majors. During the PBL course, students were asked to self-assess their life skills related to time management, cooperation, standard of work, and participation three times. In addition to the self-assessment, students kept reflection journals to keep track of their use of self-regulated learning strategies and progress which were also submitted three times. Based on the analysis of self-assessment and self-reflection, the results showed that students' perception of cooperation improved significantly during PBL. Furthermore, it was found that students also progressed through the three phases of self-regulated learning. Implications on suggesting on the use of PBL to encourage the development of life skills and self-regulated learning strategies are provided.