• Journal of the Korean Society of School Health
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.297-307
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• 1998

The purpose of this paper is to understand the prescription and management of medicines by school-nurses. A survey was mailed to 199 school-nurses in elementary and secondary schools in Pusan from February 10 to March 31, 1997. It was shown that 97.0% of the schools have visiting school-doctors and only 29.6% have visiting school-pharmacists. 36.7% of the respondents don't know the amount of this annual health-related budget. Concerning the annual budget of purchasing medicines, 50.4% of the elementary schools spend 210,000 won to 400,000 won and 45.0% of the secondary schools spend more than 610,000 won. 56.3% of the respondents said the budget was enough, but 5% said it was not. 70.9% of the schools purchase medicines twice a year. The average number of students visiting the nurse in a year are 1,892 in elementary schools, 1.6 times per student and 2,471 in secondary schools, 1.7 times per student, respectively. The annual average number of students who were prescribed medicine a year are 1,804 in elementary schools, 1.5 times per student, 2,372 in secondary schools, 1.7 times per student. The percentage of students who are prescribed internal medicines was 45.5% in elementary, schools and 61.3% in secondary schools, respectively. To the preralence sicknesses, the wound was the most common, accounting for 42.7% in elementary and 22.6% in secondary schools. Next was abdominal pain, indigestion, and headaches in elementary schools; and colds, indigestion, and abdominal pain in secondary schools, respectively. To the dirersity of medicines prescribed: internal medicines 29 for abdominal pain, 25 for indigestion, 8 for physiological pain, 13 for headaches, 30 for colds, and 10 for eye disease; external medicines 2 for skin disease, 10 for toothaches and 31 for other sicknesses. 42.7% of the respondents said the schools have enough medicines, but 7.6% said that schools need more. 50.8% of the respondents said they get information on medicines from TV advertisements or medicine-related books, 16.6% get information from visiting pharmacists. More experienced nurse-teachers are likely to get information from visiting pharmacists, but 37.5% of the respondents who have less then four year experience in school get information through other nurse-teachers before deciding to buy medicines. To the choice of medicines: 83.9% of the respondents said that they choose safe medicines with less side-effects. 40.7% responded that they write down the prescription history daily, but 6.1% said they do this only once in two or three months. To the confidence in prescriptions, 37.7% of the respondents said they are sure of the effectiveness of the medicines they prescribe. To what extent the nurse-teachers prescribe, 50.3% said they prescribe to the level of anagelics, and 21.1% prescribe to anti-histamines and antibiotics. 80.4% said that the details of illnesses and medicines to be prescribed in school should be regulated by a school health-care law. To the problems in prescription, 79.9% of the respondents worry about abuse by students who want prescriptions but have no serious illnesses, 57.8% worrg about the lack of information on medicines and dosage. And 55.8% said they can't tell the difference between medicines whose brands are different, but bare the same ingredients. The conclusion of this study is that a health education program is necessary to prevent the misuse or abuse by students and a continuing education program for school-nurses is needed to solve the problems related to the purchasing and prescription of medicines. The criteria of the prescription of medicines also should be regulated by a school health-care law or management acts.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.250-258
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• 2019

Due to the problems associated with the aging of industrial complexes, research on the decline of industrial complexes is being conducted. In the case of decline, it is necessary to not respond immediately, but with a crisis, it is necessary to minimize the impact on the industrial complex through preemptive responses to the external environment and internal changes. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a crisis index that can systematically predict and evaluate changes in the industrial complex. In this research, a method for extracting the crisis index of an industrial complex is developed. We derive performance measures for developing the crisis index, deriving the relative importance of performance measures based on the analytical hierarchy process. Because units of performance measurement are different, a normalization method is developed to sensitively reflect change. Based on the relative importance and normalized values of the performance measures, the crisis index of the industrial complex is developed and applied to a national industrial complex in order to verify its applicability.

• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.31
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• pp.27-56
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• 2006

Today's financial institutions usually take environmental issues seriously into consideration as they could not evade lender liability in an increasing number of cases. On the international scene, a brand-new concept of the "Equator Principles" in the New Millenium has driven more and more international banks to adopt these Principles in project financing. Sustainable development has been a key word in understanding new trends of the governments, financial institutions, corporations and civic groups in the 21st century. The Equator Principles are a set of voluntary environmental and social guidelines for sustainable finance. These Principles commit bank officers to avoid financial support to projects that fail to meet these guidelines. The Principles were conceived in 2002 on an initiative of the International Finance Corporation(IFC), and launched in June 2003. Since then, dozens of major banks, accounting for up to 80 percent of project loan market, have adopted the Principles. Accordingly, the Principles have become the de facto standard for all banks and investors on how to deal with potential social and environmental issues of projects to be financed. Compliance with the Equator Principles facilitates for endorsing banks to participate in the syndicated loan and help them to manage the risks associated with large-scale projects. The Equator Principles call for financial institutions to provide loans to projects under the following circumstances: - The risk of the project is categorized in accordance with internal guidelines based upon the environmental and social screening criteria of the IFC. - For Category A and B projects, borrowers or sponsors are required to conduct a Social and Environmental Assessment, the preparation of which must meet certain requirements and satisfactorily address key social and environmental issues. - The Social and Environmental Assessment report should address baseline social and environmental conditions, requirements under host country laws and regulations, sustainable development, and, as appropriate, IFC's Environmental, Health and Safety Guidelines, etc. - Based on the Social and Environmental Assessment, Equator banks then make agreements with borrowers on how they mitigate, monitor and manage the risks through a Social and Environmental Management System. Compliance with the plan is included in the covenant clause of loan agreements. If the borrower doesn't comply with the agreed terms, the bank will take corrective actions. The Equator Principles are not a mere declaration of cautious banks but a full commitment of lenders. A violation of the Principles in the process of project financing, which led to an unexpected damage to the affected community, would not give rise to any specific legal remedies other than ordinary lawsuits. So it is more effective for banks to ensure consistent implementation of the Principles and to have them take responsible measures to solve social and environmental issues. Public interests have recently mounted up with respect to environmental issues on the occasion of the Supreme Court's decision (2006Du330) on the fiercely debated reclamation project at Saemangeum. The majority Justices said that the expected environmental damages like probable pollution of water and soil were not believed so serious and that the Administration should continue to implement the project seeking ways to make it more environment friendly. In this case, though the Category A Saemangeum Project was carried out by a government agency, the Supreme Court behaved itself as a signal giver to approve or stop the environment-related project like an Equator bank in project financing. At present, there is no Equator bank in Korea in contrast to three big banks in Japan. Also Korean contractors, which are aggressively bidding for Category A-type projects in South East Asia and Mideast, might find themselves in a disadvantageous position because they are generally ignorant of the environmental assessment associated with project financing. In this regard, Korean banks and overseas project contractors should care for the revised Equator Principles and the latest developments in project financing more seriously. It's because its scope has expanded to the capital cost of US$10 million or more across all industry sectors regardless of developing countries or not. It should be noted that, for a Korean bank, being an Equator bank is more or less burdensome in a short-term period, but it must be conducive to minimizing risks and building up good reputation in the long run.

• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.85-102
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• 2009

With the continued globalization of world markets, transfer pricing has become one of the dominant sources of controversy in international taxation. Transfer pricing is the process by which a multinational corporation calculates a price for goods and services that are transferred to affiliated entities. Consider a Korean electronic enterprise that buys supplies from its own subsidiary located in China. How much the Korean parent company pays its subsidiary will determine how much profit the Chinese unit reports in local taxes. If the parent company pays above normal market prices, it may appear to have a poor profit, even if the group as a whole shows a respectable profit margin. In this way, transfer prices impact the taxable income reported in each country in which the multinational enterprise operates. It's importance lies in that around 60% of international trade involves transactions between two related parts of multinationals, according to the OECD. Multinational enterprises (hereafter MEs) exert much effort into utilizing organizational advantages to make global investments. MEs wish to minimize their tax burden. So MEs spend a fortune on economists and accountants to justify transfer prices that suit their tax needs. On the contrary, local governments are not prepared to cope with MEs' powerful financial instruments. Tax authorities in each country wish to ensure that the tax base of any ME is divided fairly. Thus, both tax authorities and MEs have a vested interest in the way in which a transfer price is determined, and this is why MEs' international transfer prices are at the center of disputes concerned with taxation. Transfer pricing issues and practices are sometimes difficult to control for regulators because the tax administration does not have enough staffs with the knowledge and resources necessary to understand them. The authors examine transfer pricing practices to provide relevant resources useful in designing tax incentives and regulation schemes for policy makers. This study focuses on identifying the relevant business and environmental factors that could influence the international transfer pricing of MEs. In this perspective, we empirically investigate how the management perception of related variables influences their choice of international transfer pricing methods. We believe that this research is particularly useful in the design of tax policy. Because it can concentrate on a few selected factors in consideration of the limited budget of the tax administration with assistance of this research. Data is composed of questionnaire responses from foreign firms in Korea with investment balances exceeding one million dollars in the end of 2004. We mailed questionnaires to 861 managers in charge of the accounting departments of each company, resulting in 121 valid responses. Seventy six percent of the sample firms are classified as small and medium sized enterprises with assets below 100 billion Korean won. Reviewing transfer pricing methods, cost-based transfer pricing is most popular showing that 60 firms have adopted it. The market-based method is used by 31 firms, and 13 firms have reported the resale-pricing method. Regarding the nationalities of foreign investors, the Japanese and the Americans constitute most of the sample. Logistic regressions have been performed for statistical analysis. The dependent variable is binary in that whether the method of international transfer pricing is a market-based method or a cost-based method. This type of binary classification is founded on the belief that the market-based method is evaluated as the relatively objective way of pricing compared with the cost-based methods. Cost-based pricing is assumed to give mangers flexibility in transfer pricing decisions. Therefore, local regulatory agencies are thought to prefer market-based pricing over cost-based pricing. Independent variables are composed of eight factors such as corporate tax rate, tariffs, relations with local tax authorities, tax audit, equity ratios of local investors, volume of internal trade, sales volume, and product life cycle. The first four variables are included in the model because taxation lies in the center of transfer pricing disputes. So identifying the impact of these variables in Korean business environments is much needed. Equity ratio is included to represent the interest of local partners. Volume of internal trade was sometimes employed in previous research to check the pricing behavior of managers, so we have followed these footsteps in this paper. Product life cycle is used as a surrogate of competition in local markets. Control variables are firm size and nationality of foreign investors. Firm size is controlled using dummy variables in that whether or not the specific firm is small and medium sized. This is because some researchers report that big firms show different behaviors compared with small and medium sized firms in transfer pricing. The other control variable is also expressed in dummy variable showing if the entrepreneur is the American or not. That's because some prior studies conclude that the American management style is different in that they limit branch manger's freedom of decision. Reviewing the statistical results, we have found that managers prefer the cost-based method over the market-based method as the importance of corporate taxes and tariffs increase. This result means that managers need flexibility to lessen the tax burden when they feel taxes are important. They also prefer the cost-based method as the product life cycle matures, which means that they support subsidiaries in local market competition using cost-based transfer pricing. On the contrary, as the relationship with local tax authorities becomes more important, managers prefer the market-based method. That is because market-based pricing is a better way to maintain good relations with the tax officials. Other variables like tax audit, volume of internal transactions, sales volume, and local equity ratio have shown only insignificant influence. Additionally, we have replaced two tax variables(corporate taxes and tariffs) with the data showing top marginal tax rate and mean tariff rates of each country, and have performed another regression to find if we could get different results compared with the former one. As a consequence, we have found something different on the part of mean tariffs, that shows only an insignificant influence on the dependent variable. We guess that each company in the sample pays tariffs with a specific rate applied only for one's own company, which could be located far from mean tariff rates. Therefore we have concluded we need a more detailed data that shows the tariffs of each company if we want to check the role of this variable. Considering that the present paper has heavily relied on questionnaires, an effort to build a reliable data base is needed for enhancing the research reliability.