• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.411-428
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• 1995

Intercountry adoption, one type of forced migration, has increased significantly in recent decades. The adoption of Korea-born children by Americans has been the strongest intercountry adoption linkage in the world. The intercountry adoption stream was strongly influenced by intercountry adoption policies, and socio-cultural settings in both South Korea and the United States. Socio-cultural factors in South Korea made local adoption undesirable and helped for abandoned children to be adopted by Americans, while socio-cultural factors in the United States had reduced the number of locally available infants for adoption, and increased the demand for infants from abroad. Distribution of Korea-born adoptees shows concentration in the Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest and Northeast areas which have not attracted Korean immigrants so generally. The trend of concentration shows some increased importances in the outlying states in the northern United States. The location and activity of agencies shaped the spatial distribution of Korea-born adoptees in the United States.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.34-52
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• 2004

This paper aims to examine the construction of the new administrational capital planned by the current government in terms of uneven regional development, and consider important tasks and prospects of the development of the Capital Region. The over-concentration to the Capital region and thereby ever-increasing socio-spatial problems since the 1960s seems to be a crucial aspect of uneven regional development inherent in the process of capitalist development. The construction of the new administrational capital hence can be seen as a version of what Harvey calls 'spatio-temporal fix'. On the other hand, some tasks and prospects of the development of the Capital region can be suggested to become a world city-region. Therefore, it fan be argued that the construction of the new administrational capital would produce its maximum effects, when it will conducted with policies of regional decentralization to overcome or reduce the ongoing uneven geographical development and those of economic and spatial restructuring of the Capital region to resolve or mitigate its socio-spatial problems and lead to a further development as a world city-region as well as a systematic planning of the new administrational capital itself.

• Journal of Korea Planning Association
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.129-138
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• 2019

This study aims to empirically examine the relationship between building energy consumption and building and local factors in Seoul. Building energy issue is an important topic for low carbon and eco-friendly city development. Building physical, socio-economic and environmental factors effect to increasing or decreasing energy consumption. However, there are different characteristic in each area, and this kind of variable has a hierarchical structure. The multi-level model was used to consider the hierarchical structure of the variables. In this study, a multi-level model was applied to confirm the difference between areas. Spatial area is Seoul, Korea and the temporal scope is August, summer season. As the result, in Model 1 (Null Model), ICC is 0.817. This shows that the energy consumption differs by 8.174% due to factors at the Dong level. Model 2 (Random Intercept Model) suggests that building's physical factors and Average age, Household size and Land price in Dong level have significant effects on Building energy consumption. In Model 3 (Random Coefficient Model), random effect variables have intercepts and slopes to vary across groups. This study provides a perspective for policy makers that the building energy reduction policies to be applied for buildings should be differently applied on area. Furthermore, not only physical factors but also socio-economic and environmental factors are important when making energy reduction policy.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.155-164
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• 2017

PURPOSES : Owing to the growth of income and socio-economic levels, demands from road users have diversified. Accordingly, new road policies are being actively sought. The metropolitan city government of Busan has been focused on constructing and expanding roads to accommodate the increasing traffic demand. Given the increase in functional characteristics, we need to re-evaluate the hierarchy and function of roads, and specifically remodel the road planning and operations that fit into their functions. METHODS : First, this study focuses on introducing the minimum condition required to redefine the hierarchy of the roads. Second, the authors propose a new model that identifies the impact level of road hierarchy adopting discriminated analysis technique. RESULTS : Authors suggest that we redefine the hierarchy of roads in the central business distinct in Busan, and specifically the arterial roads in Busan, namely, Joonang-daero and Gaya-ro. These roads need to be reequipped with cross walks, a lower speed limit, and exclusive bus lanes to improve their accessibility. CONCLUSIONS : The authors found that the sub-arterial and collector roads have been subjected to excessive loads, owing to inappropriate functions being assigned to the main arterial road. Moreover, given that through traffic is concentrated on the sub-arterial and collector roads, over-speeding and other safety issues are consequently created.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.285-294
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• 2015

Background: Suicide is one of important health problems in Korea. Previous studies showed factors associated with suicide in individual levels. However, suicide was influenced by society that individuals belong to, so it was required to analyze suicide in local levels. The purpose of this study was to analyze the regional disparities of suicide mortality by gender and the association between local characteristics and suicide mortality. Methods: This study included 229 city county district administrative districts in Korea. Age- and sex-standardized suicide mortality and age-standardized suicide mortality (male/female) were used as dependent variables. City county district types, socio-demographics (number of divorces per 1,000 population, number of marriages per 1,000 population, and single households), financial variable (financial independence), welfare variable (welfare budget), and health behavior/status (perceived health status scores and EuroQol-5 dimension [EQ-5D]) were used to represent the local characteristics. We used hot-spot analysis to identify the spatial patterns of suicide mortality and negative binomial regression analysis to examine factors affecting suicide mortality. Results: There were differences in distribution of suicide mortality and hot-spot regions of suicide mortality by gender. Negative binomial regression analysis provided that city county district types (city), number of divorces per 1,000 population, financial independence, and EQ-5D had significant influences on the age- and sex-standardized suicide mortality per 100,000. Factor influencing suicide mortality was the number of divorces per 1,000 population in both male and female. Conclusion: Study results provided evidences that suicide mortality among regions was differed by gender. Health policy makers will need to consider gender and local characteristics when making policies for suicides.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.367-385
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• 2021

This study examined changes in the energy landscape, focusing on the photovoltaic module carbon certification system. As the global photovoltaic market has been reorganized around Chinese companies, the South Korean government has pushed to strengthen the competitiveness of the nation's photovoltaic industry. However, a limitation remains in that the government-led effort was not sufficient to bring about dynamic changes in the energy landscape. Against this backdrop, this study explored the stages leading to the multi-level perspectives of "macro-environment, socio-technical regime, and niche" to track the process of the government and domestic photovoltaic companies as part of a socio-technical regime responding to global market changes. In particular, this study raised an issue with the conceptual discussion of multi-level perspective, which placed a particular emphasis on the rate of change at each level and the niche in which innovative experiments take place, and thus attempted to fill this gap by tracking the energy landscape that varies differently from space. These spatial discussions can track different carbon emissions coefficients and industrial characteristics for each country, and have a higher level of explanatory power for the system thus constructed. In addition, through discussions on the problems and implications of the government-led introduction of renewable energy policies, this study suggests the need to create and implement a field-oriented system.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.671-692
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• 2006

In recent years, it seems that a considerable stratum of working poor as a new urban poverty among labor population within large cities has been generated, deepening socio-spatial conflicts. This paper is to bring focus on the working poor which can be seen as a newly emerged special problem intermingling labor and poverty. It first begins with a consideration of definitions on the working poor, then discusses on the internal relationship between labor and poverty problems by analyzing causes of the generation of the working poor and looking into actual conditions of working poor from both static and dynamic perspectives, and finally considers existing policies for supporting the working poor, suggesting some alternative policy tasks for resolving the problem of the working poor.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.155-168
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• 2023

Health geography has gained importance due to healthy smart cities, regions, and the integration of geo-internet and blockchain technologies. This study explores the intersection of geography and health, focusing on specific health challenges faced by individuals and groups. Using observational and descriptive methods, the study takes a regional approach to illuminate the socio-economic factors that are critical to addressing global health challenges. Drawing on academic literature and practical research, a concise case study of health challenges in Uzbekistan is presented, offering valuable insights. The analysis of data from informative articles and UN publications highlights the interdisciplinary nature of health geography and its practical applicability for researchers and policymakers. The findings underscore the important role of geography and health sciences in addressing region-specific diseases while highlighting the importance of spatial analysis in understanding environmental hazards and health impacts, including disease outbreaks.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.91-105
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• 2005

The assessment (or the evaluation) of spatial disparity is the main concern for the study of spatial disparities or spatial inequalities. In order to evaluate the spatial disparity, the regional differences have to be counted quantitatively. Several measurements have been introduced for evaluating the development potentials of each region. Most of them are the composite indices of the socio-economic variables rather than the real potentials of the region. This study attempts to investigate the spatial disparity in Korea. For the purpose, the levels of opportunity potentials of the cities have been calculated by the Potential Model redefined by Lee(1995). The opportunity potentials have been calculated for the educational, cultural, medical service, environmental sectors, income, and consumption sectors, and the spatial patterns of various opportunity potentials have been analyzed. The spatial patterns of opportunity potentials show the severe concentration on the Metropolitan Seoul area through all sectors. The next level concentration appears at the other end of the Keuyng-Bu axis. And the cities relatively high opportunity potential values are distributed along the Keuyng-Bu axis. Remain parts of the country show quietly low opportunity potential values. In particular, the southern-west and the northern-east parts show relatively very low values. This pattern appears for all sectors except for the opportunity potential of the environmental sector. It means that the spatial disparity in Korea have been promoted and enhanced by the national development policies concentrated the investment on the large cities along the Keuyng-Bu axis during the last 40 years.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.113-138
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• 2014

Despite the growing numbers of regional problems (e.g. conflicts between the state and localities, inter-local conflicts, etc.) associated with the state-led developmental projects, the Korean social sciences have been unable to offer satisfying explanations and solutions to the regional problems. This is mainly because the existing works, which have been taken captured by the assumptions of "methodological nationalism", significantly lack the socio-spatial understandings of the state actions and the relations between the state and localities, thereby seeing the issues of regional development mainly in terms of either the economic efficiency defined at the national scale, or the plan rationality of the national bureaucrats. With this problem orientation in mind, this paper aims to explore the ways in which the state and localities are interacting, conflicting and negotiating with one another through the mediation of the state-led developmental projects. Focusing on the developmental processes of Masan Export Processing Zone from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, it examines the multi-scalar processes through which the state-led industrial complex developmental processes have been influenced by the complex and dynamic interactions among social forces and actors acting at diverse geographical scales (e.g. the global, national, local, urban, etc.). This analysis shows that the regional policies of the Korean developmental state were more heavily influenced by the interactions, contestations, and collaborations among social forces and actors, acting in and through the state, at various geographical scales, rather than by the economic and techno-bureaucratic rationality.