• 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.

• The Journal of Korean Medical History
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 2011

Recently, the oriental medicine industry in Korea has faced much hardship, due to the decreasing number of patients. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the reasons why patients are avoiding oriental medicine, because the percentage of people consuming medical service is an important marker that assesses the value of medical service. The researcher(s), based on theories on factors that affect health, health behaviors, and diseases, sought to find reasons why oriental medicine clinics saw a decline in the number of patients. Also, by proposing the problems inside the oriental medicine, I came to the following conclusion. -Because Koreans have low expectations for oriental medicine, they do not consider it as full medical service. Also, when they get sick, they are reluctant to seek oriental medicine because of reasons such as the limits of oriental medicine and check-ups, expensive medical cost, negative perception of oriental medicine, not enough support from the media, the old image of the oriental medicine and the little power the industry has on the society. -Among the inner problems of the oriental medicine community was the limitations that the science face on incurable and chronic diseases in terms of treatment and management, little professionalism, lack of scientific evidence, the attitude of the oriental medicine society, lack of sophistication in research methodology, and limitations in responding to changes in public health and the surroundings. The purpose of medicine is to eliminate the possibility of shortened life and dangers by treatment of diseases and health maintenance. For this to happen, structural and developed medical theories and means of treatment are necessary. The researcher hypothesizes that the problems that the oriental medicine society is facing mainly come from the lack of efforts and ability to provide such necessities.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.88-96
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• 2014

This study attempts, based on the premise that gender roles and identity is a social construct, to show how TV portrayal of the male has changed through the years with changes in time and society, from the traditional depiction of hegemonic masculinity and ideal manhood as supported by the patriarchal system. A narrative analysis was conducted on popular variety shows "Dad, Where Are We Going?" and "Superman Returns". The results showed that both TV shows created a new type of masculinity by centering the narrative on the traditionally female roles of child rearing and housekeeping, and recreating the traditional strict and authoritative father figure into a non-authoritative and emotionally expressive father. However, as 'child rearing' and 'housekeeping' is expressed as 'play', there are limitations in that the actual daily lives and hardship of women is excluded from the narrative.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.74-82
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• 2000

This study was designed to determine the attitude and degree of satisfaction of recipients toward the meal service program for elderly people. Nine hundred and eight elderly people(male: 301, female: 607) were interviewed by trained personnel. The results were as follows. Forty two percent of them had no income and 43.8% of the respondents were supported economically by the government. Their main reasons for attending the free congregated meal program was economic hardship(37.9%) The channels of becoming aware of the free meal program were through their friends(33.4%) and the meal service centers were located in the respondents residence area(36.0%) Thus any other advertisement from local government of official channels about the free meal program were not effective for the elderly 26.9% of the respondents felt inconvenience in visiting the meal service centers because they had some difficulty in walking, 53.5% of them however answered that they didn t have any complains and were quite satisfied with the meal service. The average satisfaction score for the free meal service was 63.4(maximum score 75) As for each evaluation item respondents were highly satisfied with volunteers attitude in meal serving(4.58$\pm$0.65: maximum 5 point) The evaluation score of females was generally lower than that of males(p<0.05) Oncemore, respondents who were in lowere socio-economic classes were marked by having significantly lower satisfaction scores for the meal service compared with higher scocio-economic classes. For the welfare of elderly people, meal service programs should be extended to more elderly persons and developed considering the elderlys ecological factors.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.966-973
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• 2013

It has been frequently asked the question not only by academicians but also by practitioners whether employment flexibility can be compatible with employment stability. This study tries to find the answer by investigating the German model of employment flexibility practices and job stability policies. The German model of employment flexibility is mainly based on working-time accounts and short-time work programs. It is found that social partnership and government support have played a crucial role to stabilize German labour market. Workers, employers, and government have harmoniously interplayed in order for overcoming the economic hardship. Adapting the German experience of overcoming economic turbulence by introducing employment flexibilization can help Korean firms. However, it is important to recognize that there are some differences in practices of labour relations, cultural and social background while applying the German practices.

• 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 Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.39-53
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• 2020

Purpose: With a rapid advance of communication technology, distributional systems of sport contents continue to show improvements. In particular, a traditional framework in creating sport cartoon has been influenced by the environment of the communication industry. Despite the development of distributional systems, the current sport cartoon industry still lacks in advancement. To this day, various research about sport contents have been conducted; yet, not many studies of the interaction between sport cartoons and communication technology have been done. In this respect, this study is to review the distributional environment of the sport cartoon industry and provide distributional strategies for developing sport cartoon industry. Research design, data, and methodology: In addition to in-depth interviews with five practitioners in sport cartoon industry, the study employed case study methodology. Interview data were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Results: With new environments allowing anyone allowing to create and share webtoons, various genres including sports webtoons appear, and this became amotive to the growth of sports webtoons. Today, sports comics acted as a sports advertisement platform which not only created additional profit but also became an opportunity as a marketing method. On the contrary, the formal attributes of webtoons cause hardship in consistently creating sports webtoons. Hence, it is needed that supporting policies need to be established to nurture sport webtoon expertise. For example, Korea Creative Content Agency allows future webtoon authors to have an opportunity to be educated and equipped in producing creative sport webtoon contents. Moreover, revenue systems should be developed for motivating webtoon authors to involve in sport contents in their works. Conclusions: In order to promote the sports cartoon industry based on the findings, it is first necessary to create sports comics that reflect the formal characteristics of webtoons and the changing consumer environment. Second, it is important to acknowledge the industrial value of sports comics and it is necessary to promote policies regarding sports webtoon production and distribution from a national level. Third, by diversifying profits through OSMU and sports advertisements, it is possible to enhance the work environment and the treatment of authors. Implications and future directions were discussed.

• 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.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.6 no.1_2
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• pp.150-160
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• 1999

Background : Because hospitals had to faced with financial hardship, we have to have more effective hospital management. In this study, we tried to improve job performance and to reduce cost maintaining safety in fields of patients care. Methods : Central Supply Room(CSR) staffs taught strategy of material cost reduction to middle level managers and staffs 14 times. All staffs and voluntary service workers, working in 33 nursing units, participated in this activity. We developed questionnaire to check the degree of participate in cost reduction activity and job performance in CSR, and quality improvement in the wards. Two hundred questionnaires were distributed and 197 returned. Results : Because CSR staffs developed new items and every item was managed at each department, stocks of each department were reduced. Overall, by comparing before and after cost reduction activity, almost 1.2 billion won reduced for one year. Staffs' loyalty and spirits of cost reduction were improved by changing clothes and duty environment. Furthermore, these activity improved patients' satisfaction. Conclusion : We suggest that CSR activity in a university hospital contributes to improve job performance and to reduce cost without any problem in patient care.