• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-12
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• 2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the western countries with advanced medical technology failed to contain coronavirus. This fact triggered our research question of what factors influence the clinical outcomes like infection rates and case mortality rates. This study aims to identify the determinants of COVID-19 related infection rates and case mortality rates. We considered three sets of independent variables: 1) socio-demographic characteristics; 2) cultural characteristics; 3) healthcare system characteristics. For the analysis, we created an international dataset from diverse sources like World Bank, Worldometers, Hofstede Insight, GHS index etc. The COVID-19 related statistics were retrieved from Aug. 1. Total cases are from 95 countries. We used hierarchical regression method to examine the linear relationship among variables. We found that obesity, uncertainty avoidance, hospital beds per 1,000 made a significant influence on the standardized COVID-19 infection rates. The countries with higher BMI score or higher uncertainty avoidance showed higher infection rates. The standardized COVID-19 infection rates were inversely related to hospital beds per 1,000. In the analysis on the standardized COVID-19 case mortality rates, we found that two cultural characteristics(e.g., individualism, uncertainty avoidance) showed statistically significant influence on the case mortality rates. The healthcare system characteristics did not show any statistically significant relationship with the case mortality rates. The cultural characteristics turn out to be significant factors influencing the clinical outcomes during COVID-19 pandemic. The results imply that the persuasive communication is important to trigger the public commitment to follow preventive measures. The strategy to keep the hospital surge capacity needs to be developed.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.92-99
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• 2021

In this research, it was investigated the competence of Korean salesmen in the insurance business(B2C, consumer goods marketing) and information communication industry(B2B, industrial goods marketing) at the individual level rather than the organizational level. The salesperson's Guanxi ability means the salesperson's ability to create, maintain, develop the Guanxi ability. Namely, it was investigated whether the Korean salesman's Guanxi ability is the effective and persuasive concept in explaining the sales performance(company performance, business performance). The purpose of this paper was to verify which variables, among Guanxi ability and customer orientation, better explain the sales performance of salespeople. The Western concept of marketing that is closest to Guanxi is the concept of the customer-orientation that is based on the theory of relationship exchange. Confucian culture in the East is the construct concept, Guanxi is the measurement. The relational exchange theory in the West is the construct concept, customer orientation is the measurement. As the result of the analysis, we found that the Guanxi proved a greater correlation with sales performance than customer orientation. In the information technology industry, there was a big difference compared to insurance industry, whereas Guanxi and customer orientation had a similar level of correlation with sales performance. In the case of the insurance industry, we found that the Guanxi and sales performance were significant but the customer orientation and sales performance were not. This means that sales performance can be accurately and sufficiently explained only by adding the Guanxi ability in addition to customer orientation. The result of analyzing the mediating effect of the Guanxi ability between customer orientation and company performance, customer orientation was significant with Guanxi, and customer orientation and company performance were also significant. But, when the Guanxi was used as the parameter, the Guanxi was significant with company performance, but the customer orientation was not. Even when the dependent variable was business performance, when the Guanxi was used as the parameter, we found that the Guanxi was significant with the business performance, but the customer orientation was not. Namely, it proved Guanxi ability and customer orientation are completely independent concepts. In addition, we found that the information technology industry, unlike the insurance industry, mediated the Guanxi ability between customer orientation and sales performance. We confirmed that in the future, salespeople should not only rely on rational methods to maintain and reinforce customer relationships, but must consider the emotional factors through empathy with customers.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.129-175
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• 2018

This paper examines asbestos activism in South Korea by focusing on the politics of knowledge between the asbestos activist group and regulatory agency on the risk of asbestos exposure. Asbestos activism has contributed to establishing asbestos pollution an important safety and public health agenda in South Korea. Asbestos pollution investigation is key to core argument of the activism that asbestos pollution is pervasive especially in urban environment and a serious environmental health problem with its worst consequences has not yet seen. A distinctive characteristic of such asbestos investigation is the use of "settled dust analysis," non-standard, non-legislated analysis method. In this paper, literary technologies used in asbestos investigation report written by activists and controversies over asbestos pollution measurement in Samsung's head office building. Asbestos activists successfully concentrated media's attention on their argument and mobilize resources needed to make policy decisions, by using settled dust analysis data. Regulatory agency and expert group, however, neither saw settled dust analysis nor activists argument persuasive enough to make policy changes, base on their evaluation on the use of standards and evidentiary context for analyzing measured data. While its explanatory power is partially acquired, through the dispute between asbestos activists and regulatory agencies unspoken assumptions of regulatory science was revealed and became the matter of social debate. Settled dust analysis captures the characteristic of asbestos analysis which combined social movement and science to challenge the regulatory agency and expert group.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.461-468
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• 2021

The Chinese classic 'The Great Learning' presents a guideline in which direction we should go for the character education and the realization of a just society. It conveys the message, 'Everyone must remain at the level of goodness for our community based on training our own mind and body.' Goodness is a generic concept that means universal truth in the right direction. This study aims to present the direction of communication education for how everyone should stay in goodness. Communication education about goodness could be conducted as follows. Based on the theory of interpersonal communication and persuasive communication, first the abstract concept of goodness is understood, brainstorming and schema activity for the good are performed for true communication, and then the teaching and learning method combining debate, flipped learning, and writing could be utilized. It is difficult to provide communication education with the message of goodness with students who have grown up on the basis of comparatively cramming education. However, through communication using discussion, a paradigm shift in education will take place, and it will not only help form human relationships, but also recognize the importance of the meaning of the community in the society in which we live, and ultimately it will help foster character.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.25-34
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• 2012

Understanding customer' lifestyles important for banks because it will guide in determining marketing policies, such as services, pricing, service delivery and promotion decisions. From the customer' lifestyle, banks will know what kind of customers' attitudes, interests and opinions, so they also will understand what the costumer' needs and what services needed by them. For Islamic banks, customers understanding are important because, nowadays, the competition of the banks is not only with other Islamic banks but also with the well-established conventional banks offering Islamic products or services The aims of this research paper are to describe what factors underline the customer's lifestyle of both Islamic and conventional bank, to segment the bank customers based on their lifestyles and investigate the profile of each segments, to compare the characteristics of the segments, and to identify marketing policies based on the characteristics. The population of the study is banking customers in Indonesia, in which the researchers have used judgment sampling as sample selection. There were 186 customers of Islamic banks and 244 customers of conventional bank as respondents in this study. Statistical methods employed were exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis. The finding of the study shows that there are twelve factor underlining the customers' lifestyle, namely: factor of fashion conscious, internet usage, sports spectator, financial and technology optimism, price sensitivity, independent, compulsive housekeeper, new brand tryer community activities, opinion leader, credit usage, and homebody. In addition, for Islamic banking, there are two market segments, namely fashionable-independent and innovative-social segment. Based on the lifestyle characteristics, the first segment has higher level in factor of fashion conscious, homebody, independent, optimism and price conscious, which is therefore called fashionable-independent segment. On the other hand, the second cluster has higher level in factor of new brand tryer, community minded, sport spectator, credit user, internet usage, opinion leader, and compulsive housekeeper, which is therefore called the innovative-social segment. Furthermore, for conventional banking, there are also two segments, namely persuasive-optimistic and sensitive-independent segment. The first segment has higher level on some factors, namely: opinion leader, optimism, internet usage rate, credit usage level, sport spectator, and new brand tryer. On the other hand, the second cluster is characterized by higher level in factor of price conscious, confidence, community minded, homebody, fashion conscious, and compulsive housekeeper. Managerial implications for the management of Islamic banks could be identified in this study as follows. Firstly, the twelve lifestyle factors of this study could be an alternative view in observe Islamic banking customers. The domination of both the fashionable conscious and the internet usage factor show that the aspects are quite instrumental in perceiving the customer' lifestyles, in which reflects the importance of these two aspects to customers. Secondly, in serving their customers, Islamic banks need to understand the customer lifestyle, in which the lifestyle segments found in this study provide a guide of how their needs were reflected. Finally, by understanding the segments and the characteristics each segment of the conventional banks, Islamic banks could adjust their marketing strategies differently from the conventional banks.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.32
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• pp.49-73
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• 2006

During the past decades, public opinion polls have become an ubiquitous tool for probing the complexity of people's beliefs and attitudes on a wide variety of issues. Especially since the late 1970s, the use of polls by news organizations has increased dramatically. Along with the proliferation of traditional polls, in the past few years pollsters and news organizations have come to recognize the advantages of online polls. Increasingly there has been more effort to take the pulse of the public through the Internet. With the Internet's rapid growth during the past years, advocates of online polling often emphasize the relative advantages over traditional polls. Researchers from Harris Black International Ltd., for example, argue that "Internet polling is less expensive and faster and offers higher response rates than telephone surveys." Moreover, since many of the newer online polls draw respondents from large databases of registered Internet users, results of online polls have become more balanced. A series of Harris Black online polls conducted during the 1998 gubernatorial and senatorial elections, for example, has accurately projected the winners in 21 of the 22 races it tracked. Many researchers, however, severely criticize online polls for not being representative of the larger population. Despite the often enormous number of participants, Internet users who participate in online polls tend to be younger, better educated and more affluent than the general population. As Traugott pointed out, the people polled in Internet surveys are a "self selected" group, and thus "have volunteered to be part of the test sample, which could mean they are more comfortable with technology, more informed about news and events ... than Americans who aren't online." The fact that users of online polls are self selected and demographically very different from Americans who have no access to the Internet is likely to influence the estimates of what the majority of people think about social or political issues. One of the goals of this study is therefore to analyze whether people perceive traditional and online public opinion polls differently. While most people might not differentiate sufficiently between traditional random sample polls and non representative online polls, some audiences might perceive online polls as more useful and representative. Since most online polls allow some form of direct participation, mostly in the form of an instant vote by mouse click, and often present their findings based on huge numbers of respondents, consumers of these polls might perceive them as more accurate, representative or reliable than traditional random sample polls. If that is true, perceptions of public opinion in society could be significantly distorted for those who rely on or participate in online polls. In addition to investigating how people perceive random sample and online polls, this study focuses on the perceived impact of public opinion polls. Similar to these past studies, which focused on how public opinion polls can influence the perception of mass opinion, this study will analyze how people perceive the effects of polls on themselves and other people. This interest springs from prior studies of the "third person effect," which have found that people often tend to perceive that persuasive communications exert a stronger influence on others than on themselves. While most studies concerned with the political effects of public opinion polls show that exit polls and early reporting of election returns have only weak or no effects on the outcome of election campaigns, some empirical findings suggest that exposure to polls can move people's opinions both toward and away from perceived majority opinion. Thus, if people indeed believe that polls influence others more than themselves, perceptions of majority opinion could be significantly altered because people might anticipate that others will react more strongly to poll results.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.20-55
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• 2016

Koguryo's tomb mural paintings in North Korea are our precious cultural heritage which have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage property receiving high praise in the following criterion, i) exceptional creativeness of human being, ii) representative value showing the stage of development in construction history of East-Asia, iii) aesthetic superiority iv) uniqueness of building construction including tombs' ceiling. Mural paintings have been found from almost 100 tombs of the Koguryo dynasty out of 130 which are scattered across Huanren County, Lianoning Province, Ji'an, Jilin Province in China and Pyongyang in North Korea. Especially, most of them are gathered in Pyongyang from 4th and 5th century. Peculiarly, some of them have been constructed before King Jangsu's transfer of the capital to Pyongyang(AD 427). It can be regarded that Pyongyang territory had been under control of Koguryo and to become a new capital in the near future. And dense emergence of such tombs since the capital transfer from Gungnae City to Pyongyang during the reign of Jangsu is linked closely to the construction of tombs for rulers under strengthen royal authority of Jangsu and centralized system of authoritarian rule. Tomb mural paintings describe the owner's figure pictorially based on the truth just as in his living years. General lifestyles of ruling powers and sovereigns can be seen from the wall paintings portraying several buildings with various styles, figures, manners of living, which are considered that the tomb owner had led politically and sociologically in his life. In spite of not enough proofs to approve figure of architectures or "Gong-Po" in wall paintings on the tombs as those of Koguryo, it is persuasive with consideration for painting and decoration inside the tomb like wooden building in real life for the purpose of reenacting and continuing the tomb owner's luxurious life after death. "Du-Gong-Po-Zak" had appeared in company with Koguryo tomb murals and it can be found in most of the murals. And the emergence of substantial "Gong-Po-Do" can be counted more than a century ahead of the figure in murals. It could be a reasonable assumption as regards Koguryo tomb murals time of appearance match up with production period of Gahyungmyunggi(家形明器) and Hwasangseok(畵像石) Hwasangjeon(畵像塼) Design in the Mural Painting of the East-Han(東漢) Ancient Tombs in China. On this study, architectural "Gong-Po"s described in Koguryo tomb murals are categorized largely in "Bi(non)-Po-Zak-kye", "Jun(semi)-Po-Zak-kye", and "Po-Zak-kye" based on presence of "Ju-Du", "Cheom-Cha", and "Cheom-Cha-Sal-Mi" with developmental aspect, and, "Po-zak" is subdivided as "Bi(non)-Cheul-Mok" and "Cheul-Mok" types.