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Director Oshii Mamoru's Recognition and Representation of Modern World Shown in (<스카이 크롤러>를 통해 본 오시이 마모루 감독의 '현대세계' 재현과 인식)

  • Moon, Jae-Cheol;Park, Nam-Ki
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.27
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    • pp.1-30
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    • 2012
  • Oshii Mamoru attempts to project the perception of reality about his own modern world as it is through animation. The precedent studies on Oshii Mamoru put their focus on the point that his works have a tendency to represent the devastation of reality as the image of 'a ruin.' In addition, they gave an impression that Oshii Mamoru's animation has gradually developed to expose the 'realistic taste[beauty]' from the design perspective. However, this study is going to put its focus on the point that Mamoru's works were created as an attempt at finding the subversive possibility of the suppressed modern world under the modern capitalism in the aspect of 'everyday life' of the modern world. First, for its analytical purpose, this study intends to do that by dividing the work into the three layers such as space, body and everyday life. In Chapter II, this study, in relation with the issue of 'space' representation, analyzed the space in into the modern, mechanical, compactly capitalized space and also the space just like a closed circuit having the nature of 'repetition.' In Chapter III, this analyzed that suggests the body moving freely between a human named 'Kildren' and the inhuman from the aspect of character's body, through which Mamoru represents the capitalized, reified body of the modern world. In addition, this analyzed the extreme anxiety facing the body into the reflection of the phenomena of 'anxiety' and 'placelessness' consequent on the labor flexibility of the modern world. In Chapter IV, this study, on the basis of the analysis of layers of space & body, analyzed that the 'everyday life' of the modern world was represented in the respects of 'memory' and 'habit', and in the aspects of Mise-en-Sc$\grave{e}$ne, design and direction. In Chapter V, this rooted out the fact that Mamoru suggested the attempt at 'appropriation' based on his perception of reality about such a modern world. Such a finding includes unearthing the fact that Oshii Mamoru's work is raising a question about how to desert and appropriate the modern space. In conclusion of Chapter VI, this drew the conclusion that Oshii Mamoru's work represented the layer of 'everyday life' while dealing with the post-modern themes shown by the existing modern SF genre, provided the 'window' through which people can perceive the 'modern world radically by recommending an attempt at 'appropriation', and blazed a trail in a new realm of creation for animations.

Issue tracking and voting rate prediction for 19th Korean president election candidates (댓글 분석을 통한 19대 한국 대선 후보 이슈 파악 및 득표율 예측)

  • Seo, Dae-Ho;Kim, Ji-Ho;Kim, Chang-Ki
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.3
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    • pp.199-219
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    • 2018
  • With the everyday use of the Internet and the spread of various smart devices, users have been able to communicate in real time and the existing communication style has changed. Due to the change of the information subject by the Internet, data became more massive and caused the very large information called big data. These Big Data are seen as a new opportunity to understand social issues. In particular, text mining explores patterns using unstructured text data to find meaningful information. Since text data exists in various places such as newspaper, book, and web, the amount of data is very diverse and large, so it is suitable for understanding social reality. In recent years, there has been an increasing number of attempts to analyze texts from web such as SNS and blogs where the public can communicate freely. It is recognized as a useful method to grasp public opinion immediately so it can be used for political, social and cultural issue research. Text mining has received much attention in order to investigate the public's reputation for candidates, and to predict the voting rate instead of the polling. This is because many people question the credibility of the survey. Also, People tend to refuse or reveal their real intention when they are asked to respond to the poll. This study collected comments from the largest Internet portal site in Korea and conducted research on the 19th Korean presidential election in 2017. We collected 226,447 comments from April 29, 2017 to May 7, 2017, which includes the prohibition period of public opinion polls just prior to the presidential election day. We analyzed frequencies, associative emotional words, topic emotions, and candidate voting rates. By frequency analysis, we identified the words that are the most important issues per day. Particularly, according to the result of the presidential debate, it was seen that the candidate who became an issue was located at the top of the frequency analysis. By the analysis of associative emotional words, we were able to identify issues most relevant to each candidate. The topic emotion analysis was used to identify each candidate's topic and to express the emotions of the public on the topics. Finally, we estimated the voting rate by combining the volume of comments and sentiment score. By doing above, we explored the issues for each candidate and predicted the voting rate. The analysis showed that news comments is an effective tool for tracking the issue of presidential candidates and for predicting the voting rate. Particularly, this study showed issues per day and quantitative index for sentiment. Also it predicted voting rate for each candidate and precisely matched the ranking of the top five candidates. Each candidate will be able to objectively grasp public opinion and reflect it to the election strategy. Candidates can use positive issues more actively on election strategies, and try to correct negative issues. Particularly, candidates should be aware that they can get severe damage to their reputation if they face a moral problem. Voters can objectively look at issues and public opinion about each candidate and make more informed decisions when voting. If they refer to the results of this study before voting, they will be able to see the opinions of the public from the Big Data, and vote for a candidate with a more objective perspective. If the candidates have a campaign with reference to Big Data Analysis, the public will be more active on the web, recognizing that their wants are being reflected. The way of expressing their political views can be done in various web places. This can contribute to the act of political participation by the people.

의료인의 호스피스가정간호에 대한 지식과 태도 조사연구

  • Kim, Ok-Gyeom
    • Korean Journal of Hospice Care
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.28-48
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    • 2002
  • The advances of medical technologies have not only prolonged human life span, but also extended suffering period for the patients with incurable medical diseases. Hospice movement was developed to help these patients keep dignity and lives peaceful at the end of their life. Since many patients prefer to spend the last moment of life at home with their family, hospice home care has become very popular worldwide. The purpose of this study for a promotion and development of hospice home care in Korea, and features basic research on medical profession's knowledge and attitudes to hospice home care. This study which was used for the research questionnaires developed by the researcher that were answered by 100 physicians and 127 nurses in a general hospital. Data were collected from April 22, 2002 to May 10, 2002. The SPSS was used to make a comparative analysis of the frequency, percentile, ANOVA, and x2-test. The results of the study were as follows; 1.The medical profession showed high level of knowledge of the definition and philosophy of hospice. However, the physician group of the examinees showed insufficient knowledge of the fact that hospice care includes bereavement care, while the nurse group's response to the same question showed a significant difference(x2=10.752, p=.001). 2.For whom the hospice home care is provided, 95.6% of the respondents showed very high level of knowledge as answering that the incurable terminal illness patients and their families are the beneficiaries of hospice care. The respondents counted nurses, volunteers, pastors, physicians and social workers, consecutively, as hospice care providers. More nurse were positive toward pastors than physicians in regarding as a hospice care provider by a significant difference(x2=11.634, p=.001). 3.For when to referral hospice home care to the patients, only 34.2% answered that patients with less than 6 months of survival time are advised to receive hospice care, reflecting very low level of knowledge. 23.0% of the physicians and 48.0% of the nurses answered that hospice care should be provided when death is imminent, making a significant difference between the two groups(x2=6.413, p=.000). 4.To promote hospice activities, 87.2% pointed out that it is crucial to make general people, including those engaging in the medical field, more aware of hospice. 79.7% answered that a national hospice management should be developed, marking a significant difference between the physician group and nurse group(x2=10.485, p=.001). 5.Advantages of hospice home care are 87.2% responded that patients can have better rest at home receiving hospice home care. Economical merit was brought forward as one of the advantages also, where there was a significant difference between the physicians group and nurse group(x2=7.009, p=.008). 6.The medical professions' attitude to hospice home care are 92.8% of the physicians answered that they would advise incurable terminally ill patients to be discharged from hospital, with 44.3% of them advising the patients to receive hospice home care after leaving the hospital. From the nurses' point of view, 20.9% of the terminally ill patients are being referred to hospice home care after discharge, which makes a significant difference from the physicians' response(x2=19.121, p=.001). 7. 30.6% of physicians have referred terminally ill patients to hospice home care, 75.9% of whom were satisfied with their decision. Those physicians who have never referred their patients to hospice home care either did not know how to do it(66.7%) or were afraid of losing trust by giving the patients an impression of giving up(27.3%). 94.9% of the physicians responded that they would refer their last stage patients to a doctor who is involving palliative care. 8.Only 36.2% of nurses have suggested to physicians that refer the terminally ill patients discharged from the hospital to hospice home care. Once suggested, 95.8% of the physicians have accepted the suggestion. Nurses were reluctant to suggest hospice home care to the physicians, as 48.8% of the nurses said they did not want to. From the result of this study the following conclusion can be drawn, the medical profession's awareness of general hospice care has been increased greatly compared to the results of the previously performed studies. However, this study result also shows that their knowledge of hospice home care is not good enough yet. There is a need for high recommended that medical education institute and develop regular courses on various types of hospice care. Medical field training courses for physicians and nurses will be very helpful as well. It is also important to train hospice experts such as palliative physicians and develop a national hospice management urgently in order to improve the hospice care in Korea.

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Effects of Transaction Characteristics on Distributive Justice and Purchase Intention in the Social Commerce (소셜커머스에서 거래의 특성이 분배적 정의와 거래 의도에 미치는 영향)

  • Bang, Youngsok;Lee, Dong-Joo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.23 no.2
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    • pp.1-20
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    • 2013
  • Social commerce has been gaining explosive popularity, with typical examples of the model such as Groupon and Level Up. Both local business owners and consumers can benefit from this new e-commerce model. Local business owners have a chance to access potential customers and promote their products in a way that could not have otherwise been easily possible, and consumers can enjoy discounted offerings. However, questions have been increasingly raised about the value and future of the social commerce model. A recent survey shows that about a third of 324 business owners who ran a daily-deal promotion in Groupon went behind. Furthermore, more than half of the surveyed merchants did not express enthusiasm about running the promotion again. The same goes for the case in Korea, where more than half of the surveyed clients reported no significant change or even decrease in profits compared to before the use of social commerce model. Why do local business owners fail to exploit the benefits from the promotions and advertisements through the social commerce model and to make profits? Without answering this question, the model would fall under suspicion and even its sustainability might be challenged. This study aims to look into problems in the current social commerce transactions and provide implications for the social commerce model, so that the model would get a foothold for next growth. Drawing on justice theory, this study develops theoretical arguments for the effects of transaction characteristics on consumers' distributive justice and purchase intention in the social commerce. Specifically, this study focuses on two characteristics of social commerce transactions-the discount rate and the purchase rate of products-and investigates their effects on consumers' perception of distributive justice for discounted transactions in the social commerce and their perception of distributive justice for regular-priced transactions. This study also examines the relationship between distributive justice and purchase intention. We conducted an online experiment and gathered data from 115 participants to test the hypotheses. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of nine manipulated scenarios of social commerce transactions, which were generated based on the combination of three levels of purchase rate (high, medium, and low) and three levels of discount rate (high, medium, and low). We conducted MANOVA and post-hoc ANOVA to test hypotheses about the relationships between the transaction characteristics (purchase rate and discount rate) and distributive justice for each of the discounted transaction and the regular-priced transaction. We also employed a PLS analysis to test relations between distributive justice and purchase intentions. Analysis results show that a higher discount rate increases distributive justice for the discounted transaction but decreases distributive justice for the regular-priced transaction. This, coupled with the result that distributive justice for each type of transaction has a positive effect on the corresponding purchase intention, implies that a large discount in the social commerce may be helpful for attracting consumers, but harmful to the business after the promotion. However, further examination reveals curvilinear effects of the discount rate on both types of distributive justice. Specifically, we find distributive justice for the discounted transaction increases concavely as the discount rate increases while distributive justice for the regular-priced transaction decreases concavely with the dscount rate. This implies that there exists an appropriate discount rate which could promote the discounted transaction while not hurting future business of regular-priced transactions. Next, the purchase rate is found to be a critical factor that facilitates the regular-priced transaction. It has a convexly positive influence on distributive justice for the transaction. Therefore, an increase of the rate beyond some threshold would lead to a substantial level of distributive justice for the regular-priced transaction, threrby boosting future transactions. This implies that social commerce firms and sellers should employ various non-price stimuli to promote the purchase rate. Finally, we find no significant relationship between the purchase rate and distributive justice for the discounted transaction. Based on the above results, we provide several implications with future research directions.

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A Study on the Caligraphy as a modern concept of art (근대적 예술 개념으로서의 서예에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Hee Jeong
    • (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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    • no.50
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    • pp.295-318
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    • 2013
  • The purpose of this study was to define the 'caligraphy as a modern concept of art. For this purpose, it was necessary to exclude the elements betraying 'the caligraphy as a pure art' in reference to 'autonomy' as an indicator of modernity in order to reflect on the current topology of the caligraphy in our age. Checking the current conditions facing the caligraphy from the pre-modern, modern and post-modern perspectives will clarify the current topology of the caligraphy and further exploring 'the caligraphy as a post-modern art concept. To this end, this study defines the caligraphy 'as a pure formative art' and thereby discusses it in terms of nature and form. In terms of nature, the caligraphy should be subsumed into a spacial art, but it has a nature of a temporal art created and appreciated over time. Hence, among the spacial arts, the painting is most similar to the caligraphy, while among the temporal arts, the caligraphy is most similar to such rhythmic (of high mobility) or performing arts as music and dance. Merely, the painting does not reveal the flow of time on the canvas, while music and dance leave no residual in terms of audibility and visuality. All in all, the caligraphy is sort of 'temporal-spacial art' like dance in that the visible letters express the artist's sense of life on the plane over time like music. In terms of form, this study compares the caligraphy with engraving, wood print and character design to define the caligraphy as a pure art concept. The caligraphy as a modern art concept, namely, the autonomy of the caligraphy is associated with legibility and meaning in addition to the question whether it is an applied or a pure art. The legibility and meaning of the characters are not only the essential elements of the caligraphy but also are the factors limiting its autonomy, which must be a paradox. All in all, the legibility and meaning of the characters must be the key criteria for determining the caligraphy as a practical art or literary art or as a pure figurative art. In this context, this study discusses the caligraphy as a pure art by comparing it with the spatial art 'painting' and the temporal art 'music.' It might be impossible to define the caligraphy or a genre of art as an autonomous art of self-perfection and categorical identity. Moreover, any attempt to define the caligraphy would fail to interpret the caligraphy appropriately. Merely, we are obliged to position the caligraphy in the process of localizing 'their modernity' and thereby, discuss how to respond to their scheme.

Landscape Gardening Culture in Late Joseon Dynasty Depicted in 'Ahoi-do' Paintings (아회도(雅會圖)에 나타난 조선후기 원림문화)

  • Lim, Eui-Je;So, Hyun-Su
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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    • v.32 no.3
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    • pp.46-57
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    • 2014
  • This study contemplated the gardening culture from the pictures, which the scholars of late Joseon Dynasty, the aspects of garden landscapes and garden use behaviors are drawn as follows. 1. The yard by the detached house for men and guest in front of the premises(Sarang Madang) and backyard were the major places for Ahoi(social gatherings of the scholars). The mansions had interests in the management of the outer garden beyond the house wall with building structures like the pavilions on the high walls and side gates. This management and the selection of location anticipating in advance of the management are noteworthy. 2. Only house gardens had plant pots with flowers and the small flower bed(Hwa-O) at Sarang Madang occasionally had plant pots without flowers and oddly shaped stone pots and equipped pine branch eaves and traditional awnings made of plant material like a trellis. 3. The oddly shaped stones were significant landscape elements in the gardens of houses and villas. Some of them were depicted as the Taihu stone and this draws attention to the question of whether the Taihu stone was actually used in the garden of late Joseon Dynasty. 4. The gardens in villas accommodated the borrowed scenery with various materials like wooden fences, bamboo or reed fences, mud walls. They also had the artificial gardens with some odd shaped stones, old pines, bamboos, Japanese apricots, willows, paulownia trees, lotuses and plantains in the secured Madangs. 5. Gyeong Hwa Sa Jog(The scholars of the ruling class adapted to the 18th century's new historical aspect) of late Joseon Dynasty built the villas at the beautiful scenery closed to the their houses. 6. The Gardens around pavilions were located high closed to the mountain streams with nature like beautiful forests, oddly formed rocks, precipitous cliffs and viewing stones. The back side of the pavilion was enclosed by bamboo forests and the front had pines, ginkgoes and willows as shade trees. 7. The beautiful scenery which was preferred as the place for Ahoi was basically with fantastic peaks and precipitous cliffs which forms the distant view harmonized with a waterfall. Broad and flat rocks at the summit of a mountain which commands a bird's-eye view or on a mountain streamside with pine forest, willows and plum trees were chosen as the optimal places for Ahoi. 8. Pine trees were presumed to be more preferable than other species in the garden, especially an single planted old pine tree accented symbolism. 9. Portable tea braziers for boiling tea were adopted in all four types of the gardens. 10. The gardens mixed with auspicious landscape elements were the places of the arts for an unworldliness Ahoi through GeumGiSeoHwa(enjoying strings, go, writing and painting) and boiling tea.

Literary Text and the Cultural Interpretation - A Study of the Model of 「History of Spanish Literature」 (문학텍스트와 문학적 해석 -「스페인 문학사」를 통한 모델 연구)

  • Na, Songjoo
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.26
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    • pp.465-485
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    • 2012
  • Instructing "History of Spanish Literature" class faces various types of limits and obstacles, just as other foreign language literature history classes do. Majority of students enter the university without having any previous spanish learning experience, which means, for them, even the interpretation of the text itself can be difficult. Moreover, the fact that "History of Spanish Literature" is traced all the way back to the Middle Age, students encounter even more difficulties and find factors that make them feel the class is not interesting. To list several, such factors include the embarrassment felt by the students, antiquated expressions, literature texts filled with deliberately broken grammars, explanations written in pretentious vocabularies, disorderly introduction of many different literary works that ignores the big picture, in which in return, reduces academic interest in students, and finally general lack of interest in literate itself due to the fact that the following generation is used to visual media. Although recognizing such problem that causes the distortion of the value of our lives and literature is a very imminent problem, there has not even been a primary discussion on such matter. Thus, the problem of what to teach in "History of Spanish Literature" class remains unsolved so far. Such problem includes wether to teach the history of authors and literature works, or the chronology of the text, the correlations, and what style of writing to teach first among many, and how to teach to read with criticism, and how to effectively utilize the limited class time to teach. However, unfortunately, there has not been any sorts of discussion among the insructors. I, as well, am not so proud of myself either when I question myself of how little and insufficiently did I contemplate about such problems. Living in the era so called the visual media era or the crisis of humanity studies, now there is a strong need to bring some change in the education of literature history. To suggest a solution to make such necessary change, I recommended to incorporate the visual media, the culture or custom that students are accustomed to, to the class. This solution is not only an attempt to introduce various fields to students, superseding the mere literature reserch area, but also the result that reflects the voice of students who come from a different cultural background and generation. Thus, what not to forget is that the bottom line of adopting a new teaching method is to increase the class participation of students and broaden the horizon of the Spanish literature. However, the ultimate goal of "History of Spanish Literature" class is the contemplation about humanity, not the progress in linguistic ability. Similarly, the ultimate goal of university education is to train students to become a successful member of the society. To achieve such goal, cultural approach to the literature text helps not only Spanish learning but also pragmatic education. Moreover, it helps to go beyond of what a mere functional person does. However, despite such optimistic expectations, foreign literature class has to face limits of eclecticism. As for the solution, as mentioned above, the method of teaching that mainly incorporates cultural text is a approach that fulfills the students with sensibility who live in the visual era. Second, it is a three-dimensional and sensible approach for the visual era, not an annotation that searches for any ambiguous vocabularies or metaphors. Third, it is the method that reduces the burdensome amount of reading. Fourth, it triggers interest in students including philosophical, sociocultural, and political ones. Such experience is expected to stimulate the intellectual curiosity in students and moreover motivates them to continues their study in graduate school, because it itself can be an interesting area of study.

The Significance of Registration Convention and its Future Challenges in Space Law (등록협약의 우주법상 의의와 미래과제에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Han-Taek
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.35 no.2
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    • pp.375-402
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    • 2020
  • The adoption and entering into force of the Registration Convention was another achievement in expanding and strengthening the corpus iuris spatialis. It was the fourth treaty negotiated by the member states of the UNCOPUOS and it elaborates further Articles 5 and 8 of the Outer Space Treaty(OST). The Registration Convention also complements and strengthens the Article 11 of the OST, which stipulates an obligation of state parties to inform the UN Secretary-General of the nature, conduct, locations, and results of their space activities in order to promote international cooperation. The prevailing purposes of the Registration Convention is the clarification of "jurisdiction and control" as a comprehensive concept mentioned in Article 5 8 of the OST. In addition to its overriding objective, the Registration Convention also contributes to the promotion and the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes. Establishing and maintaining a public register reduces the possibility of the existence of unidentified space objects and thereby lowers the risk such as, for example, putting the weapons of mass destruction secretly into orbit. And furthermore it could serve for a better space traffic management. The Registration Convention is a treaty established to implement Article 5 of OST for the rescue and return of astronaut in more detail. In this respect, if OST is a general law, the Registration Convention would be said to be in a special law. If two laws conflict the principle of lex specialis will be applied. Countries that have not joined the Registration Convention will have to follow the rules concerning the registration of paragraph 7 of the Declaration by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 1721 (X V I) in 1961. UN Resolution 1721 (XVI) is essentially non-binding, but appears to have evolved into the norm of customary international law requiring all States launching space objects into orbit or beyond to promptly provide information about their launchings for registration to the United Nations. However, the nature and scope of the information to be supplied is left to the discretion of the notifying State. The Registration Convention is a treaty created for compulsory registration of space objects by nations, but in reality it is a treaty that does not deviate from existing practice because it is based on voluntary registration. With the situation of dealing with new problems due to the commercialization and privatization of the space market, issues related to the definition of a 'space object', including matter of the registry state of new state that purchased space objects and space debris matter caused by the suspension of space objects launched by the registry state should be considered as matters when amendments, additional protocols or new Registration Convention are established. Also the question of registration of a flight vehicle in the commercial space market using a space vehicle traveling in a sub-orbital in a short time should be considered.

Patient's 'Right Not to Know' and Physician's 'Duty to Consideration' (환자의 모를 권리와 의사의 배려의무)

  • Suk, HeeTae
    • The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.145-173
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    • 2016
  • A patient's Right to Self-Determination or his/her Right of Autonomy in the Republic of Korea has traditionally been understood as being composed of two elements. The first, is the patient's Right to Know as it pertains to the physician's Duty to Report [the Medical Situation] to the patient; the second, is the patient's Right to Consent and Right of Refusal as it pertains to the physician's Duty to Inform [for Patient's Consent]. The legal and ethical positions pertaining to the patient's autonomous decision, particularly those in the interest of the patient's not wanting to know about his/her own body or medical condition, were therefore acknowledged as passively expressed entities borne from the patient's forfeiture of the Right to Know and Right to Consent, and exempting the physician from the Duty to Inform. The potential risk of adverse effects rising as a result of applying the Informed Consent Dogma to situations described above were only passively recognized, seen merely as a preclusion of the Informed Consent Dogma or a denial of liability on part of the physician. In short, the legal measures that guarantee a patient's 'Wish for Ignorance' are not currently being understood and acknowledged under the active positions of the patient's 'Right Not to Know' and the physician's 'Duty to Consideration' (such as the duty not to inform). Practical and theoretical issues arise absent the recognition of these active positions of the involved parties. The question of normative evaluation of cases where a sizable amount of harm has come up on the patient as a result of the physician explaining to or informing the patient of his/her medical condition despite the patient previously waiving the Right to Consent or exempting the physician from the Duty to Inform, is one that is yet to be addressed; that of ascertaining direct evidence/legal basis that can cement legality to situations where the physician foregoes the informing process under consideration that doing so may cause harm to the patient, is another. Therefore it is the position of this paper that the Right [Not to Know] and the Duty [to Consideration] play critical roles both in meeting the legal normative requirements pertaining to the enrichment of the patient's Right to Self-Determination and the prevention of adverse effects as it pertains to the provision of [unwanted] medical information.

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Questions and Answers about the Humidifier Disinfectant Disaster as of February 2017 (가습기살균제 참사의 진행과 교훈(Q&A))

  • Choi, Yeyong
    • Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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    • v.43 no.1
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    • pp.1-22
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    • 2017
  • 'The worstest environment disaster', 'World's first biocide massacre', 'Home-based Sewol ferry disaster' are all phrases attached to the recent humidifier disinfectant disaster. In the spring of 2011, four of 8 pregnant women including 1 adult man passed away at a university hospital in Seoul due to breathing failure. Epidemiologic investigation conducted by the Korean CDC soon revealed the inhalation of humidifier disinfectant, which had been widely used in Korea during the winter, to be responsible for the disease. As well as lung fibrosis hardening of the lungs, other diseases including asthma, rhinitis, skin disease, liver disease, fetal disease or cancers have been researched for their relation with exposure to the products. By February 9, 2017, 5,342 cases had registered for health problems and 1,131 of them were already dead (20.8% mortality rate). Based on studies by government agencies and a telephone survey of the general population by Seoul National University and civic groups, around 20% of the general public of Korea has used these products. Since the market release of the first product by SK Chemical in 1994, over 7.1 million items from around 20 brands were sold up to 2011. Most of the products were manufactured by well-known large conglomerates such as SK, Lotte, Samsung, Shinsegye, LG, and GS, as well as some European companies including UK-based Reckitt Benckiser and TESCO, the German firm Henkel, the Danish firm KeTox, and an Irish company. Even though this disaster was unveiled in 2011 by the Korean government, the issue of the victims was neglected for over five years. In 2016, an unexpected but intensive investigation by prosecutors found that Reckitt Benckiser manipulated and concealed animal tests for its own brand and brought several university experts and company employees to court. The matter was an intense social issue in Korea from May to June with a surge in media coverage. The prosecutor's investigation and a nationwide boycott campaign organized by victims and environmental groups against Reckitt Benckiser, whose product had been used by more than 70% of victims, led to the producer's official apology and a compensation scheme. A legislative investigation organized after the April 2016 national election revealed the producers' faults and the government's responsibility, but failed to meet expectations. A special law for the victims passed the National Assembly in January 2017 and a punitive system together with a massive environmental epidemiology investigation are expected to be the only solutions for this tragedy. Sciences of medicine, toxicology and environmental health have provided decisive evidence so far, but for the remaining problems the perspectives of social sciences such as sociology and jurisprudence are highly necessary, similar to with the Minamata disease and Wonjin Rayon events. It may not be easy to follow this issue using unfamiliar terminology from medical and chemical science and the long, complicated history of the event. For these reasons the author has attempted to write this article in a question and answer format to render it easier to follow. The 17 questions are: Q1 What is humidifier disinfectant? Q2 What kind of health problems are caused by humidifier disinfectant? Q3 How many victims are there? Q4 What is the analysis of the 1,112 cases of death? Q5 What is the problem with the government's diagnostic criteria and the solution? Q6 Who made what brands? Q7 Has there been a recall? What is still on sale? Q8 Was safety not checked by any producers? Q9 What are the government's responsibilities? Q10 Is it true that these products were sold only in Korea? Q11 Why and how was it unveiled only in 2011 after 17 years of sales? Q12 What delayed the resolution of the victim issue? Q13 What is the background of the prosecutor's investigation in early 2016? Q14 Is it possible to report new victim cases without evidence of product purchase? Q15 What is happening with the victim issue? Q16 How does it compare with the cases of Minamata disease and Wonjin Rayon? Q17 Are there prevention measures and lessons?