• Title/Summary/Keyword: 가격 예측

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Steel Plate Faults Diagnosis with S-MTS (S-MTS를 이용한 강판의 표면 결함 진단)

  • Kim, Joon-Young;Cha, Jae-Min;Shin, Junguk;Yeom, Choongsub
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.47-67
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    • 2017
  • Steel plate faults is one of important factors to affect the quality and price of the steel plates. So far many steelmakers generally have used visual inspection method that could be based on an inspector's intuition or experience. Specifically, the inspector checks the steel plate faults by looking the surface of the steel plates. However, the accuracy of this method is critically low that it can cause errors above 30% in judgment. Therefore, accurate steel plate faults diagnosis system has been continuously required in the industry. In order to meet the needs, this study proposed a new steel plate faults diagnosis system using Simultaneous MTS (S-MTS), which is an advanced Mahalanobis Taguchi System (MTS) algorithm, to classify various surface defects of the steel plates. MTS has generally been used to solve binary classification problems in various fields, but MTS was not used for multiclass classification due to its low accuracy. The reason is that only one mahalanobis space is established in the MTS. In contrast, S-MTS is suitable for multi-class classification. That is, S-MTS establishes individual mahalanobis space for each class. 'Simultaneous' implies comparing mahalanobis distances at the same time. The proposed steel plate faults diagnosis system was developed in four main stages. In the first stage, after various reference groups and related variables are defined, data of the steel plate faults is collected and used to establish the individual mahalanobis space per the reference groups and construct the full measurement scale. In the second stage, the mahalanobis distances of test groups is calculated based on the established mahalanobis spaces of the reference groups. Then, appropriateness of the spaces is verified by examining the separability of the mahalanobis diatances. In the third stage, orthogonal arrays and Signal-to-Noise (SN) ratio of dynamic type are applied for variable optimization. Also, Overall SN ratio gain is derived from the SN ratio and SN ratio gain. If the derived overall SN ratio gain is negative, it means that the variable should be removed. However, the variable with the positive gain may be considered as worth keeping. Finally, in the fourth stage, the measurement scale that is composed of selected useful variables is reconstructed. Next, an experimental test should be implemented to verify the ability of multi-class classification and thus the accuracy of the classification is acquired. If the accuracy is acceptable, this diagnosis system can be used for future applications. Also, this study compared the accuracy of the proposed steel plate faults diagnosis system with that of other popular classification algorithms including Decision Tree, Multi Perception Neural Network (MLPNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Tree Bagger Random Forest, Grid Search (GS), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The steel plates faults dataset used in the study is taken from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) machine learning repository. As a result, the proposed steel plate faults diagnosis system based on S-MTS shows 90.79% of classification accuracy. The accuracy of the proposed diagnosis system is 6-27% higher than MLPNN, LR, GS, GA and PSO. Based on the fact that the accuracy of commercial systems is only about 75-80%, it means that the proposed system has enough classification performance to be applied in the industry. In addition, the proposed system can reduce the number of measurement sensors that are installed in the fields because of variable optimization process. These results show that the proposed system not only can have a good ability on the steel plate faults diagnosis but also reduce operation and maintenance cost. For our future work, it will be applied in the fields to validate actual effectiveness of the proposed system and plan to improve the accuracy based on the results.

Construction of Consumer Confidence index based on Sentiment analysis using News articles (뉴스기사를 이용한 소비자의 경기심리지수 생성)

  • Song, Minchae;Shin, Kyung-shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.23 no.3
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    • pp.1-27
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    • 2017
  • It is known that the economic sentiment index and macroeconomic indicators are closely related because economic agent's judgment and forecast of the business conditions affect economic fluctuations. For this reason, consumer sentiment or confidence provides steady fodder for business and is treated as an important piece of economic information. In Korea, private consumption accounts and consumer sentiment index highly relevant for both, which is a very important economic indicator for evaluating and forecasting the domestic economic situation. However, despite offering relevant insights into private consumption and GDP, the traditional approach to measuring the consumer confidence based on the survey has several limits. One possible weakness is that it takes considerable time to research, collect, and aggregate the data. If certain urgent issues arise, timely information will not be announced until the end of each month. In addition, the survey only contains information derived from questionnaire items, which means it can be difficult to catch up to the direct effects of newly arising issues. The survey also faces potential declines in response rates and erroneous responses. Therefore, it is necessary to find a way to complement it. For this purpose, we construct and assess an index designed to measure consumer economic sentiment index using sentiment analysis. Unlike the survey-based measures, our index relies on textual analysis to extract sentiment from economic and financial news articles. In particular, text data such as news articles and SNS are timely and cover a wide range of issues; because such sources can quickly capture the economic impact of specific economic issues, they have great potential as economic indicators. There exist two main approaches to the automatic extraction of sentiment from a text, we apply the lexicon-based approach, using sentiment lexicon dictionaries of words annotated with the semantic orientations. In creating the sentiment lexicon dictionaries, we enter the semantic orientation of individual words manually, though we do not attempt a full linguistic analysis (one that involves analysis of word senses or argument structure); this is the limitation of our research and further work in that direction remains possible. In this study, we generate a time series index of economic sentiment in the news. The construction of the index consists of three broad steps: (1) Collecting a large corpus of economic news articles on the web, (2) Applying lexicon-based methods for sentiment analysis of each article to score the article in terms of sentiment orientation (positive, negative and neutral), and (3) Constructing an economic sentiment index of consumers by aggregating monthly time series for each sentiment word. In line with existing scholarly assessments of the relationship between the consumer confidence index and macroeconomic indicators, any new index should be assessed for its usefulness. We examine the new index's usefulness by comparing other economic indicators to the CSI. To check the usefulness of the newly index based on sentiment analysis, trend and cross - correlation analysis are carried out to analyze the relations and lagged structure. Finally, we analyze the forecasting power using the one step ahead of out of sample prediction. As a result, the news sentiment index correlates strongly with related contemporaneous key indicators in almost all experiments. We also find that news sentiment shocks predict future economic activity in most cases. In almost all experiments, the news sentiment index strongly correlates with related contemporaneous key indicators. Furthermore, in most cases, news sentiment shocks predict future economic activity; in head-to-head comparisons, the news sentiment measures outperform survey-based sentiment index as CSI. Policy makers want to understand consumer or public opinions about existing or proposed policies. Such opinions enable relevant government decision-makers to respond quickly to monitor various web media, SNS, or news articles. Textual data, such as news articles and social networks (Twitter, Facebook and blogs) are generated at high-speeds and cover a wide range of issues; because such sources can quickly capture the economic impact of specific economic issues, they have great potential as economic indicators. Although research using unstructured data in economic analysis is in its early stages, but the utilization of data is expected to greatly increase once its usefulness is confirmed.

Costume Consumption Culture for Costumeplay (코스튬플레이 의상 소비문화)

  • Jang, Nam-Kyung;Park, Soo-Kyung;Lee, Joo-Young
    • Archives of design research
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    • v.19 no.5 s.67
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    • pp.203-212
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    • 2006
  • With interests and participation in the costumeplay that mimics characters appeared on carton or animation in recent days, the costumeplay becomes one of cultural phenomena. Using a qualitative research method, this study identified costumeplayers' costume consumption pattern and explored its meanings from the perspective of consumption culture. Indeed, this study intended to help for understanding costumeplayer group as a consumer, and to provide basic knowledge about new market analysis related to fashion design and marketing. The results from the analyzing participant observation and in-depth interviews data are as follows: first, costumeplayers usually begin costumeplay by friends' invitations or by themselves and then continue on participating. Through the costumeplay, participants have benefits such as fun, departure from the daily life, and social interaction. Second, participants acquire costumes through purchase, rent, producing or combination of daily wear, but both purchase and rent account high. Third, the meanings of consumption culture in costumeplay include consumption behavior repeating possession and disposal. Also, costumeplayers concerns efficiency when purchasing or renting the costumes, and internet is a place where information search, comparison, and actual purchasing are occurred. Based on the results, fashion design and marketing implication, limitation of this study and further research ideas were suggested.

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Why Central Banks Intervene? (왜 중앙은행은 개입하는가?)

  • Ko, Jong-Moon
    • The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.273-298
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    • 1995
  • 1960년대, 각국의 환율이 미국의 달러화에 연동(pegging)된 고정환율제도를 근간으로 하는 브레튼우즈(Bretton Woods)체제하에서 각국의 중앙은행은 환율을 일정한 범위 내로 유지하기 위한 정책수단으로 외환시장개입을 적극 활용하였다. 1973년 브레튼우즈체제하의 고정환율제도가 붕괴되고 변동환율제도가 채택된 이후에도 각국의 외환시장개입정책은 계속되었다. 1980년대에 레이건 행정부의 재정팽창정책과 미연방준비은행의 긴축통화정책으로 금리의 지속적인 상승과 미달러화의 큰폭의 절상이 이루어 졌다. 이에 국제무역의 위기를 우려한 미국, 독일, 프랑스, 영국, 일본 등 선진 5개국(Group-5, G5)은 1985년 9월 22일 미 달러화의 절하를 위해 외환시장에 공동으로 개입할 것을 주내용으로 한 플라자합의(Plaza Agreement)를 발표하였다. 그후에도 1987년 2월 23일 열린 루브르협정(Louvre Accord, G-6 Communique)에서 환율을 현수준으로 유지시키기 위한 목표환율대(Target zone)를 설정하고 외환시장개입을 통해 이를 유지하기로 합의한 바 있다. 이후의 구미각국은 환율의 관리를 위하여 국가가 공동으로 외환시장에 개입하곤 했다. 본 논문은 1987년 루브르협정 이후 미국, 독일 및 일본의 중앙은행의 외환시장 개입 정책이 소기의 목적을 달성했는지의 여부를 규명해 보고자 한다. 즉, Federal Reserve, Bundesbank 및 Bank of Japan의 외환시장개입이 현물환율시장(spot market)에서 각각의 변동성을 감소 시켰는지의 여부를 독일의 마르크화 및 일본의 엔화를 중심으로 규명해 보고자 한다. 1981년 루브르협정이후, 미국, 독일 및 일본의 중앙은행은 미국 달러화에 대한 마르크 및 엔화의 환율을 안정시키기 위해 꾸준히 외환시장에 개입해 왔다. 외환시장의 개입유형은 크게 태화외환시장개입(non-sterilized intervention)과 불태화외환시장개입(sterilized intervention)으로 구분할 수 있는데, 전자는 외환당국이 민간부문과 외화채권을 거래함으로써 본원통화의 크기가 변하는 개입형태를 의미하는 반면에 후자는 외환당국의 순외화자산의 크기변화가 본원통화의 변화를 초래하지 않는 경우이다. 즉, 불태화외환시장개입은 순외화자산의 증감이 순국내자산의 증감과 반비례해서 이루어지기 때문에 본원통화의 크기에는 변함이 없다. 외환시장개입이란 외환당국이 은행간 시장에서 민간시잔 참가자들과 행하는 적극적인 외환거래를 의미한다. 반면, 넓은 의미에서의 외환시장개입에는 수동적 외환시장개입이라고 불리는 고객거래가 포함된다. 후자의 거래는 국내통화 및 외화표시 자산의 상대적 공급규모를 변화시킨다는 의미에서 전통적외환시장개입과 동일한 효과를 갖기 때문에 광의의 외환시장 개입으로 분류된다. 외환시장의 개입목적은 크게 세 가지로 분류할 수 있다. 첫째, 환율의 안정적 운영이다. 환율수준이 자유롭게 변화되는 변동환율제도하에서 환율의 지나친 변동으로 인한 실물경제로의 부정적인 영향을 최소화하기 위해서 환율의 지나친 변동으로 인한 실물경제로의 부정적인 영향을 최소화하기 위해서 환율의 안정을 정책 목표로 설정하는 경우와 고정환율제도하에서 환율을 일정수준으로 유지시키기 위해서 외환당국이 외환시장에 개입하는 경우가 여기에 해당된다고 볼 수 있다. 둘째, 환율수준의 균형수준으로의 조정이다. 이때 야기될 수 있는 문제점으로는 환율균형 수준을 어떻게 정의, 추정할 것이냐 하는 점과 목표환율정책이 다른 정책목표와 상충될 수 있다는 점이다. 셋째, 외환당국이 공적외환보유액이나 구성을 변화시킬 목적으로 외환시장에 개입하는 경우이다. 이때의 외환시장개입은 현재의 환율수준이 개입으로 인하여 과도하게 이탈하는 문제가 발생하지 않을 것을 전제로 한다. 본고에서는 현물환율에 영향을 미치는 요소로 미국, 독일 및 일본의 중앙은행의 개입효과, 요일효과, 통화의 공급량(M1), 무역적자의 폭, 산업의 생산량, 생산가격지수(PPI), 소비자물가지수(CPI), 실업률, 옵션의 내재적 변동성 등을 고려한다. 환율의 변동성을 추정하는 식은 GARCH 모델이 사용된다. 본 추정모델은 Dominguez(1993)의 확장이다. Dominguez (1993)의 논문은 GARCH 모델을 써서 미국, 독일 및 일본의 중앙은행의 시장개입효과를 분석했으나, 거시변수를 고려대상에서 제외시켰다. 본 논문은 위의 방법에 거시변수를 삽입하고 모델을 변형시켜서 더 확실한 시장개입효과와 거시변수효과를 밝혔다. 또한 옵션의 내제적 변동성을 구하는 과정에서 American option model을 사용하는 대신, Bourtha & Courtadon (1987)등이 밝힌 바와 같이 American style option이라 할지라도, European Model을 쓰면 더욱더 간편하고, 예측력도 American Model에 뒤지지 않음을 이용하여, European Model을 써서 내재적 변동성을 구한 다음 이것을 독립변수로 이용하였다. 본 모델의 추정 결과는 3국의 시장개입정책이 현물환율과 옵션의 내재적 변동성을 증가시켜서 Louvre 협정이후 각국은 시장개입의 목적을 달성하지 못한 것으로 나타났다.

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Economic and Political Responses to Globalization: Economic Restructuring and Local Government as an Entrepreneur (세계화에 따른 경제${\cdot}$정치적 동향: 경제재구조와 기업가로서의 지방정부)

  • Koh, Tae-Kyung
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.31 no.4
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    • pp.662-671
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    • 1996
  • Since the world's economic and political structures have changed, the term 'globlization' has shown up as a dominant power and as a necessity for regional and national development. Each nation is responding to the globalization process economically and politically in various ways. In general, however, the economic response to the globalization is economic restructuring from the Fordist industries to 'flexible specialization'. And the political response to the globalization is 'global localization' as a new type of local politics(i.e., local policy activism or growth-enhancing local development policies). The crisis of Fordism shifted the role of local governments towards more involovement with local economic development. Local governments are mobilizing for loca economic development, they are taken into a process of institutional change that tends to redefine their responsibilities inside the state. Local governments thus tend to act as an entrepreneur in order to restructure theiir local economies and to compete with other national and international regions. State restructuring towards enerepreneurialism and efficient regional policy pursuing a pro-growth coalition trategy is chosen as a new mode of regulation for the post-Fordism at the local level. The flexible specialization as the post-Fordist economy and the local government as an entrepreneur are the global choice for globalization and a post-Fordist society. The paper focuses on the regulation theory which comprises the political economic perspective on resturcturing. Economic restructuring and state restructuring will be discussed in detail. And the paper tries to combine the economic globalization and the global localization as economic and political responses to globalization.

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A Study on the Improvement of Capital Gains Tax Act through the Analysis of the Precedents of the cases of the lawsuit - Focusing on the transfer of inherited and donated property - (행정소송판례 검토를 통한 양도소득세법 개선방안 - 상속·증여받은 자산의 양도를 중심으로 -)

  • Yu, Soon-Mi;Kim, Hye-Ri
    • Management & Information Systems Review
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    • v.38 no.4
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    • pp.61-78
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    • 2019
  • When calculating gains from transfers of assets inherited or donated, the value recognized at the market price as of the date of inheritance or acquisition is recognized as the actual transaction value at the time of acquisition. However, Precedents for the appeal for review by the NTS, the request for adjudgment by the Tax Tribunal(TT) and the request of examination by the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea(BAI) and the cases of the lawsuit have not shown a consistent results on how much such a the actual transaction value will be measured. This study investigates the operating state of the current tax appeal system using the statistical data of the TT, NTS, and BAI and cases of the lawsuit from 2008 to 2017, and suggests the Improvement of Capital Gains Tax Act on the transfer of inherited and donated property. As a result, total number of requested cases has diminished because cases of the pre-assessment review and the reconsideration appeal by the NTS have decreased steadily over the past decade, while the cases of the lawsuit and the administrative trials(the request for adjudgment by the TT, the appeal for review by the NTS, and the request of examination by the BAI) have been steadily increasing. Also This study found that more than 40% of the complainants proceeded with the cases of the lawsuit proceedings in disagreement with the disposition of tax dissatisfaction under the administrative trials. In addition, Even though the retrospective appraisal price is not recognized as the market price due to the strict interpretation of the tax regulations, it can be seen that it is interpreted as a more expanded concept in the application of the market price than the government office or the tax judge. Therefore, according to the precedents of the cases lawsuit, it is necessary to establish a regulation on the recognition of retroactive appraisal value.

Mediating Effects of Perceived Value on the Relationship between University Foodservice Quality Attributes and Satisfaction of Chinese Students in Daejeon (대학급식 서비스 품질 속성과 고객만족 관계에서 고객가치의 매개효과 -대전지역 중국유학생을 중심으로-)

  • Yi, Na-Young
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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    • v.44 no.11
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    • pp.1750-1758
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    • 2015
  • The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of university foodservice quality attributes on Chinese students' satisfaction, as well as the mediating effects of perceived value on the relationship between foodservice quality attributes and satisfaction. A total of 250 university students in Daejeon were surveyed, and 216 responses were returned. Excluding responses with significant missing data, 196 responses were used for data analysis. The reasons for using university foodservice were 'meal plan' (37.8%) and 'time saving' (22.4%), whereas the reasons for not using university foodservice were 'untasty food' (33.2%) and 'limited menu selection' (27.6%). Results confirm that enhanced performance of food quality, service quality, sanitation, and convenience had favorable effects on perceived value and satisfaction. Further, perceived value had a significant positive influence on satisfaction. In analyzing the mediating role, the effect of foodservice quality attributes on satisfaction was partially mediated by perceived value.

A Study on 21st Century Fashion Market in Korea (21세기 한국패션시장에 대한 연구)

  • Kim, Hye-Young
    • The Journal of Natural Sciences
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.209-216
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    • 1998
  • The results of the study of diving the 21st century's Korea fashion market into consumer market, fashion market, and a new marketing strategy are as follows. The 21st consumer market is First, a fashion democracy phenomenon. As many people try to leave unconditional fashion following, consumer show a phenomenon to choose and create their own fashion by subjective judgements. Second, a phenomenon of total fashion pursuit. Consumer in the future are likely to put their goals not in differentiating small item products, but considering various fashion elements based on their individuality and sense of value. Third, world quality-oriented. With the improvement of life level, it accomplishes to emphasize consumers' fashion mind on the world wide popular use of materials, quality, design and brand image. Fourth, with the entrance of neo-rationalism, consumers show increasing trends to emphasize wisdom, solidity in goods strategy pursuing high quality fashion and to demand resonable prices. Fifth, concept-oriented. Consumers are changing into pursuing concept appropriate to individual life scene. Prospecting the composition of the 21st century's fashion market, First, sportive casual zone will draw attention more than any other zone. This is because interest in sports will grow according to the increase of leisure time and the expasion of time and space in the 21st century, and also ecology will become the important issue of sports sense because of human beings's natural habit toward nature. Second, the down aging phenomenon will accelerate its speed as a big trend. Third, a retro phenomenon, a concept contrary to digital and high-tech, will become another big trend for its remake, antique, and classic concept in fashion market with ecology trend. New marketing strategy to cope with changing fashion market is as follows. First, with the trend of borderless concept, borders between apparels are becoming vague, for example, they offer custom-made products to consumers. Second, as more enterprises take the way of gorilla and guerrilla where guerrillas who aim at niche market show up will develop. Basically, they think highly of individual creative study, and pursue the scene adherence with high sensitiveness. However this polarization becomes mutually-supplementing relationship showing gorilla's guerilla movement, and guerilla's gorilla high-tech. Third with the development of value retailing, enterprises pursuing mass merchandising of groups called category killers are expanded and amplified to new product fields, and expand business' share. Fourth, using outsourcing, the trend to use exterior function leaving each enterprise's strength by inspecting its own work is gradually strong. Fifth, with the expansion of none store sale, the entrance of the internet and the CD-ROM sales added to communication sales such as catalogues are specified. An eminent American think tank expect that 5-5% of the total sale of clothes and home goods in 2010 will be done by none store sale. Accordingly, to overcome the problems, First international, global level marketing, Second, the improvement of technology, Third, knowledge-creating marketing are needed.

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Development of Industrial Embedded System Platform (산업용 임베디드 시스템 플랫폼 개발)

  • Kim, Dae-Nam;Kim, Kyo-Sun
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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    • v.47 no.5
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    • pp.50-60
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    • 2010
  • For the last half a century, the personal computer and software industries have been prosperous due to the incessant evolution of computer systems. In the 21st century, the embedded system market has greatly increased as the market shifted to the mobile gadget field. While a lot of multimedia gadgets such as mobile phone, navigation system, PMP, etc. are pouring into the market, most industrial control systems still rely on 8-bit micro-controllers and simple application software techniques. Unfortunately, the technological barrier which requires additional investment and higher quality manpower to overcome, and the business risks which come from the uncertainty of the market growth and the competitiveness of the resulting products have prevented the companies in the industry from taking advantage of such fancy technologies. However, high performance, low-power and low-cost hardware and software platforms will enable their high-technology products to be developed and recognized by potential clients in the future. This paper presents such a platform for industrial embedded systems. The platform was designed based on Telechips TCC8300 multimedia processor which embedded a variety of parallel hardware for the implementation of multimedia functions. And open-source Embedded Linux, TinyX and GTK+ are used for implementation of GUI to minimize technology costs. In order to estimate the expected performance and power consumption, the performance improvement and the power consumption due to each of enabled hardware sub-systems including YUV2RGB frame converter are measured. An analytic model was devised to check the feasibility of a new application and trade off its performance and power consumption. The validity of the model has been confirmed by implementing a real target system. The cost can be further mitigated by using the hardware parts which are being used for mass production products mostly in the cell-phone market.

Validation of QF-PCR for Rapid Prenatal Diagnosis of Common Chromosomal Aneuploidies in Korea

  • Han, Sung-Hee;Ryu, Jae-Song;An, Jeong-Wook;Park, Ok-Kyoung;Yoon, Hye-Ryoung;Yang, Young-Ho;Lee, Kyoung-Ryul
    • Journal of Genetic Medicine
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.59-66
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    • 2010
  • Purpose: Quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (QF-PCR) allows for the rapid prenatal diagnosis of common aneuploidies. The main advantages of this assay are its low cost, speed, and automation, allowing for large-scale application. However, despite these advantages, it is not a routine method for prenatal aneuploidy screening in Korea. Our objective in the present study was to validate the performance of QF-PCR using short tandem repeat (STR) markers in a Korean population as a means for rapid prenatal diagnosis. Material and Methods: A QF-PCR assay using an Elucigene kit (Gen-Probe, Abingdon, UK), containing 20 STR markers located on chromosomes 13, 18, 21, X and Y, was performed on 847 amniotic fluid (AF) samples for prenatal aneuploidy screening referred for prenatal aneuploidy screening from 2007 to 2009. The results were then compared to those obtained using conventional cytogenetic analysis. To evaluate the informativity of STR markers, the heterozygosity index of each marker was determined in all the samples. Results: Three autosomes (13, 18, and 21) and X and Y chromosome aneuploidies were detected in 19 cases (2.2%, 19/847) after QF-PCR analysis of the 847 AF samples. Their results are identical to those of conventional cytogenetic analysis, with 100% positive predictive value. However, after cytogenetic analysis, 7 cases (0.8%, 7/847) were found to have 5 balanced and 2 unbalanced chromosomal abnormalities that were not detected by QF-PCR. The STR markers had a slightly low heterozygosity index (average: 0.76) compared to those reported in Caucasians (average: 0.80). Submicroscopic duplication of D13S634 marker, which might be a unique finding in Koreans, was detected in 1.4% (12/847) of the samples in the present study. Conclusion: A QF-PCR assay for prenatal aneuploidy screening was validated in our institution and proved to be efficient and reliable. However, we suggest that each laboratory must perform an independent validation test for each STR marker in order to develop interpretation guidelines of the results and must integrate QF-PCR into the routine cytogenetic laboratory workflow.