• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.265-274
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• 1998

Purpose : This prospective study has been conducted to assess the value of three dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3DCRT) for lung cancer and to determine its potential advantage over current treatment approaches. Specific aims of this study were to 1) find the most ideal 3DCRT technique 2) establish the maximum tolerance dose that can be delivered with 3DCRT and 3) identify patients at risk for development of radiation pneumonitis. Materials and Methods : Beginning in Nov. 1994, 95 patients with inoperable non-small cell lung cancer (stage I; 4, stage II; 1, stage IIIa; 14, stage IIIb; 76) were entered onto this 3D conformal trial Areas of known disease and elective nodal areas were initially treated to 45 Gy and then using 3DCRT technique 65 to 70 Gy of total dose were delivered to the gross disease. Sixty nine patients received 65 Gy of total dose and 26 received 70 Gy Seventy eight patients (82.1$\%$) also received concurrent MVP chemotherapy. 3DCRT plans were compared with 2D plans to assess the adequacy of dose delivery to target volume, dose volume histograms for normal tissue, and normal tissue complication Probabilities (NTCP). Results : Most of plans (78/95) were composed of non-coplanar multiple (4-8) fields. Coplanar segmented conformal therapy was used in 17 pateints, choosing the proper gantry angle which minimize normal lung exposure in each segment. 3DCRT gave the full dose to nearly 100$\%$ of the gross disease target volume in all patients. The mean NTCP for ipsilateral lung with 3DCRT (range; 0.17-0.43) was 68$\%$ of the mean NTCP with 2D treatment planning (range; 0.27-0.66). DVH analysis for heart showed that irradiated volume of heart could be significantly reduced by non-coplanar 3D approach especially in the case of left lower lobe lesion. Of 95 patients evaluable for response, 75 (79$\%$), showed major response including 25 (26$\%$) with complete responses and 50 (53$\%$) with partial responses. One and two rear overall survivals of stage III patients were 62.6$\%$ and 35.2$\%$ respectively. Twenty percent (19/95) of patients had pneumonitis; Eight patients had grade 1 pneumonitis and 11 other patients had grade 2. Comparison of the average of NTCP for lung showed a significant difference between patients with and without radiation pneumonitis. Average NTCP for Patients without complication was 62$\%$ of those with complications. Conclusions : This study showed that non-coplanar multiple fields (4-8) may be one of the ideal plans for 3DCRT for lung cancer. It also suggested that 3DCRT may provide superior delivery of high dose radiation with reduced risk to normal tissue and that NTCP can be used as a guideline for the dose escalation.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.190-200
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• 1996

Background : Mechanical ventilation constitutes the last therapeutic method for acute respiratory failure when oxygen therapy and medical treatment fail to improve the respiratory status of the patient. This invasive ventilation, classically administered by endotracheal intubation or by tracheostomy, is associated with significant mortality and morbidity. Consequently, any less invasive method able to avoid the use of endotracheal ventilation would appear to be useful in high risk patient. Over recent years, the efficacy of nasal mask ventilation has been demonstrated in the treatment of chronic restrictive respiratory failure, particularly in patients with neuromuscular diseases. More recently, this method has been successfully used in the treatment of acute respiratory failure due to parenchymal disease. Method : We assessed the efficacy of Bilevel positive airway pressure(BiPAP) in the treatment of acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD). This study prospectively evaluated the clinical effectiveness of a treatment schedule with positive pressure ventilation via nasal mask(Respironics BiPAP device) in 22 patients with acute exacerbations of COPD. Eleven patients with acute exacerbations of COPD were treated with nasal pressure support ventilation delivered via a nasal ventilatory support system plus standard treatment for 3 consecutive days. An additional 11 control patients were treated only with standard treatment. The standard treatment consisted of medical and oxygen therapy. The nasal BiPAP was delivered by a pressure support ventilator in spontaneous timed mode and at an inspiratory positive airway pressure $6-8cmH_2O$ and an expiratory positive airway pressure $3-4cmH_2O$. Patients were evaluated with physical examination(respiratory rate), modified Borg scale and arterial blood gas before and after the acute therapeutic intervention. Results : Pretreatment and after 3 days of treatment, mean $PaO_2$ was 56.3mmHg and 79.1mmHg (p<0.05) in BiPAP group and 56.9mmHg and 70.2mmHg (p<0.05) in conventional treatment (CT) group and $PaCO_2$ was 63.9mmHg and 56.9mmHg (p<0.05) in BiPAP group and 53mmHg and 52.8mmHg in CT group respectively. pH was 7.36 and 7.41 (p<0.05) in BiPAP group and 7.37 and 7.38 in cr group respectively. Pretreatment and after treatment, mean respiratory rate was 28 and 23 beats/min in BiPAP group and 25 and 20 beats/min in CT group respectively. Borg scale was 7.6 and 4.7 in BiPAP group and 6.4 and 3.8 in CT group respectively. There were significant differences between the two groups in changes of mean $PaO_2$, $PaCO_2$ and pH respectively. Conclusion: We conclude that short-term nasal pressure-support ventilation delivered via nasal BiPAP in the treatment of acute exacerbation of COPD, is an efficient mode of assisted ventilation for improving blood gas values and dyspnea sensation and may reduce the need for endotracheal intubation with mechanical ventilation.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.99-110
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• 2012

The purpose of the study is to collect basis data for to establish standard administrative processes of liquid fertilizer treatment. From this survey we could make out the key point of each step through a case of effective liquid manure treatment system in pig house. It is divided into six step; 1. piggery slurry management step, 2. Solid-liquid separation step, 3. liquid fertilizer treatment (aeration) step, 4. liquid fertilizer treatment (microorganism, recirculation and internal return) step, 5. liquid fertilizer treatment (completion) step, 6. land application step. From now on, standardization process of liquid manure treatment technologies need to be develop based on the six steps process.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.79-94
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• 2013

Recently, the high value added business is steadily growing in the culture and art area. To generated high value from a performance, the satisfaction of audience is necessary. The flow in a critical factor for satisfaction, and it should be induced from audience and measures. To evaluate interest and emotion of audience on contents, producers or investors need a kind of index for the measurement of the flow. But it is neither easy to define the flow quantitatively, nor to collect audience's reaction immediately. The previous studies of the group flow were evaluated by the sum of the average value of each person's reaction. The flow or "good feeling" from each audience was extracted from his face, especially, the change of his (or her) expression and body movement. But it was not easy to handle the large amount of real-time data from each sensor signals. And also it was difficult to set experimental devices, in terms of economic and environmental problems. Because, all participants should have their own personal sensor to check their physical signal. Also each camera should be located in front of their head to catch their looks. Therefore we need more simple system to analyze group flow. This study provides the method for measurement of audiences flow with group synchronization at same time and place. To measure the synchronization, we made real-time processing system using the Differential Image and Group Emotion Analysis (GEA) system. Differential Image was obtained from camera and by the previous frame was subtracted from present frame. So the movement variation on audience's reaction was obtained. And then we developed a program, GEX(Group Emotion Analysis), for flow judgment model. After the measurement of the audience's reaction, the synchronization is divided as Dynamic State Synchronization and Static State Synchronization. The Dynamic State Synchronization accompanies audience's active reaction, while the Static State Synchronization means to movement of audience. The Dynamic State Synchronization can be caused by the audience's surprise action such as scary, creepy or reversal scene. And the Static State Synchronization was triggered by impressed or sad scene. Therefore we showed them several short movies containing various scenes mentioned previously. And these kind of scenes made them sad, clap, and creepy, etc. To check the movement of audience, we defined the critical point, ${\alpha}$and ${\beta}$. Dynamic State Synchronization was meaningful when the movement value was over critical point ${\beta}$, while Static State Synchronization was effective under critical point ${\alpha}$. ${\beta}$ is made by audience' clapping movement of 10 teams in stead of using average number of movement. After checking the reactive movement of audience, the percentage(%) ratio was calculated from the division of "people having reaction" by "total people". Total 37 teams were made in "2012 Seoul DMC Culture Open" and they involved the experiments. First, they followed induction to clap by staff. Second, basic scene for neutralize emotion of audience. Third, flow scene was displayed to audience. Forth, the reversal scene was introduced. And then 24 teams of them were provided with amuse and creepy scenes. And the other 10 teams were exposed with the sad scene. There were clapping and laughing action of audience on the amuse scene with shaking their head or hid with closing eyes. And also the sad or touching scene made them silent. If the results were over about 80%, the group could be judged as the synchronization and the flow were achieved. As a result, the audience showed similar reactions about similar stimulation at same time and place. Once we get an additional normalization and experiment, we can obtain find the flow factor through the synchronization on a much bigger group and this should be useful for planning contents.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.887-894
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• 2011

To evaluate the effects of abiotic factors of paddy fields on greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from rice paddy fields, $CH_4$ emission amounts were investigated from rice paddy fields by different soil organic matter contents, paddy types, and agricultural climatic zone in Yeongnam area during 3 years. $CH_4$ emission amounts according to soil organic matter contents in paddy field were conducted at having different contents of 5 soil organic matters fields (23.6, 28.7, 31.0, 34.5, and $38.0g\;kg^{-1}$), The highest $CH_4$ emission amount was recorded in the highest soil organic matters plot of $38.0g\;kg^{-1}$. High correlation coefficient (r=$0.963^{**}$) was obtained between $CH_4$ emissions from paddy fields and their soil organic matter contents. According to paddy field types, $CH_4$ emission amounts were investigated at 4 different paddy fields as wet paddy, sandy paddy, immature paddy, and mature paddy. The highest $CH_4$ emissions was recorded in wet paddy (100%) and followed as immature paddy 64.0%, mature paddy 46.8%, and sandy paddy 23.8%, respectively. For the effects of temperature on $CH_4$ emissions from paddy fields, 4 agricultural climatic zones were investigated, which were Yeongnam inland zone (YIZ), eastern coast of central zone (ECZ), plain area of Yeongnam inland mountainous zone (PMZ), and mountainous area of Yeongnam inland mountainous zone (MMZ). The order of $CH_4$ emission amounts from paddy fields by agricultural climatic zone were YIZ (100%) > ECZ (94.6%) > PMZ (91.6%) > MMZ (78.9%). The regression equation between $CH_4$ emission amounts from paddy fields and average air temperature of Jul. to Sep. of agricultural climatic zone was y = 389.7x-4,287 (x means average temperature of Jul. to Sep. of agricultural climatic zone, $R^2=0.906^*$)

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.202-215
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• 2019

This study was conducted to investigate the spawning preference of the Acheilognathinae fishes in relation to the shell size of host mussels after identifying the species of eggs and fries in the host mussel using our recently developed RFLP (Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism) molecular marker at four sites [Hongcheon Naechoncheon (HN) and Deokchicheon (HD) from the North Han River basin and Jeongseon Goljicheon (JG) and Joyanggang (JJ) from the South Han River] in South Korea during May in each year between 2015 and 2018. The Acheilognathinae fish observed in the studied sites included one species (Acheilognathus signifer) in HN and JG, three species (Rhodeus uyekii, A. signifer, and Acheilognathus yamatsutae) in HD, and two species (A. signifer and Acheilognathus yamatsutae) in JJ, and we collected 982 host mussels (Unio douglasiae sinuolatus) that inhabited in all four sites. Using the RFLP molecular marker, we confirmed 46 eggs and fry of the Acheilognathinae fish (454 A. signifer, 43 Acheilognathus yamatsutae, and 149 Acheilognathus yamatsutae) in Unio douglasiae sinuolatus (N=163; 16.6%). We compare the average shell length, shell height, and shell width of mussels with [presence] eggs/fry and mussels without [absence] eggs/fry to examine the spawning preference according to the size of host mussels in each site. The results show that the shell length (1.98 mm), shell height (0.85 mm), and shell width (0.73 mm) of mussels with the eggs/fry were significantly larger (Mann-Whitney U test, P=0.002; difference=1.98 mm) than those of mussel without eggs/fry in HD where three species cohabitated. Although the shell length, shell height, and shell width of mussels with the eggs/fry were larger also in the other three sites, the difference was not statistically significant. In addition, we analyzed the mean number of spawned eggs and fry of each species and found $9.31{\pm}5.94$ R. uyekii, $2.86{\pm}2.45$ A.signifer, and $2.50{\pm}1.32$ A. yamatsutae. R. uyekii spawned 6.45-6.81 more eggs than A.signifer and A. yamatsutae on average per mussel, and it was statistically significant (Kruskal-Wallis test, P < 0.001). These findings indicate that the three species of Acheilognathinae fish tend to prefer larger mussels as their spawning hosts, and this tendency increases when the number of cohabitating bitterling fish species increases. Moreover, A.signifer and A. yamatsutae spawned a smaller number of eggs evenly in more host mussels while R. uyekii spawned many eggs on relatively fewer mussels. We found mussels (N=4) having the eggs/fry of two coexisting species, A. signifier and A. yamatsutae in HD and JJ where more than two bitterling fish species occurred. It suggests the interspecific competition taking place between the Acheilognathinae fishes for utilizing the same resource of mussels for spawning when two or more species cohabitate. This study is expected help to understand better the spawning patterns and reproductive ecology of the Acheilognathinae fishes, which will provide insightful information for advancing our understanding of their ecological relationships - mutualism or host-parasitism - with host mussels.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.39-55
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• 2019

Recently banks and large financial institutions have introduced lots of Robo-Advisor products. Robo-Advisor is a Robot to produce the optimal asset allocation portfolio for investors by using the financial engineering algorithms without any human intervention. Since the first introduction in Wall Street in 2008, the market size has grown to 60 billion dollars and is expected to expand to 2,000 billion dollars by 2020. Since Robo-Advisor algorithms suggest asset allocation output to investors, mathematical or statistical asset allocation strategies are applied. Mean variance optimization model developed by Markowitz is the typical asset allocation model. The model is a simple but quite intuitive portfolio strategy. For example, assets are allocated in order to minimize the risk on the portfolio while maximizing the expected return on the portfolio using optimization techniques. Despite its theoretical background, both academics and practitioners find that the standard mean variance optimization portfolio is very sensitive to the expected returns calculated by past price data. Corner solutions are often found to be allocated only to a few assets. The Black-Litterman Optimization model overcomes these problems by choosing a neutral Capital Asset Pricing Model equilibrium point. Implied equilibrium returns of each asset are derived from equilibrium market portfolio through reverse optimization. The Black-Litterman model uses a Bayesian approach to combine the subjective views on the price forecast of one or more assets with implied equilibrium returns, resulting a new estimates of risk and expected returns. These new estimates can produce optimal portfolio by the well-known Markowitz mean-variance optimization algorithm. If the investor does not have any views on his asset classes, the Black-Litterman optimization model produce the same portfolio as the market portfolio. What if the subjective views are incorrect? A survey on reports of stocks performance recommended by securities analysts show very poor results. Therefore the incorrect views combined with implied equilibrium returns may produce very poor portfolio output to the Black-Litterman model users. This paper suggests an objective investor views model based on Support Vector Machines(SVM), which have showed good performance results in stock price forecasting. SVM is a discriminative classifier defined by a separating hyper plane. The linear, radial basis and polynomial kernel functions are used to learn the hyper planes. Input variables for the SVM are returns, standard deviations, Stochastics %K and price parity degree for each asset class. SVM output returns expected stock price movements and their probabilities, which are used as input variables in the intelligent views model. The stock price movements are categorized by three phases; down, neutral and up. The expected stock returns make P matrix and their probability results are used in Q matrix. Implied equilibrium returns vector is combined with the intelligent views matrix, resulting the Black-Litterman optimal portfolio. For comparisons, Markowitz mean-variance optimization model and risk parity model are used. The value weighted market portfolio and equal weighted market portfolio are used as benchmark indexes. We collect the 8 KOSPI 200 sector indexes from January 2008 to December 2018 including 132 monthly index values. Training period is from 2008 to 2015 and testing period is from 2016 to 2018. Our suggested intelligent view model combined with implied equilibrium returns produced the optimal Black-Litterman portfolio. The out of sample period portfolio showed better performance compared with the well-known Markowitz mean-variance optimization portfolio, risk parity portfolio and market portfolio. The total return from 3 year-period Black-Litterman portfolio records 6.4%, which is the highest value. The maximum draw down is -20.8%, which is also the lowest value. Sharpe Ratio shows the highest value, 0.17. It measures the return to risk ratio. Overall, our suggested view model shows the possibility of replacing subjective analysts's views with objective view model for practitioners to apply the Robo-Advisor asset allocation algorithms in the real trading fields.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.40-51
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• 2019

Ginseng has a unique production system that is different from those used for other crops. It is subject to the Ginseng Industry Act., requires a long-term cultivation period of 4-6 years, involves complicated cultivation characteristics whereby ginseng is not produced in a single location, and many ginseng farmers engage in mixed-farming. Therefore, to bring the production of Ginseng in line with GAP standards, it is necessary to better understand the on-site practices of Ginseng farmers according to established control points, and to provide a proper action plan for improving efficiency. Among ginseng farmers in Korea who applied for GAP certification, 77.6% obtained it, which is lower than the 94.1% of farmers who obtained certification for other products. 13.7% of the applicants were judged to be unsuitable during document review due to their use of unregistered pesticides and soil heavy metals. Another 8.7% of applicants failed to obtain certification due to inadequate management results. This is a considerably higher rate of failure than the 5.3% incompatibility of document inspection and 0.6% incompatibility of on-site inspection, which suggests that it is relatively more difficult to obtain GAP certification for ginseng farming than for other crops. Ginseng farmers were given an average of 2.65 points out of 10 essential control points and a total 72 control points, which was slightly lower than the 2.81 points obtained for other crops. In particular, ginseng farmers were given an average of 1.96 points in the evaluation of compliance with the safe use standards for pesticides, which was much lower than the average of 2.95 points for other crops. Therefore, it is necessary to train ginseng farmers to comply with the safe use of pesticides. In the other essential control points, the ginseng farmers were rated at an average of 2.33 points, lower than the 2.58 points given for other crops. Several other areas of compliance in which the ginseng farmers also rated low in comparison to other crops were found. These inclued record keeping over 1 year, record of pesticide use, pesticide storages, posts harvest storage management, hand washing before and after work, hygiene related to work clothing, training of workers safety and hygiene, and written plan of hazard management. Also, among the total 72 control points, there are 12 control points (10 required, 2 recommended) that do not apply to ginseng. Therefore, it is considered inappropriate to conduct an effective evaluation of the ginseng production process based on the existing certification standards. In conclusion, differentiated certification standards are needed to expand GAP certification for ginseng farmers, and it is also necessary to develop programs that can be implemented in a more systematic and field-oriented manner to provide the farmers with proper GAP management education.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.85-107
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• 2019

Online consumers browse products belonging to a particular product line or brand for purchase, or simply leave a wide range of navigation without making purchase. The research on the behavior and purchase of online consumers has been steadily progressed, and related services and applications based on behavior data of consumers have been developed in practice. In recent years, customization strategies and recommendation systems of consumers have been utilized due to the development of big data technology, and attempts are being made to optimize users' shopping experience. However, even in such an attempt, it is very unlikely that online consumers will actually be able to visit the website and switch to the purchase stage. This is because online consumers do not just visit the website to purchase products but use and browse the websites differently according to their shopping motives and purposes. Therefore, it is important to analyze various types of visits as well as visits to purchase, which is important for understanding the behaviors of online consumers. In this study, we explored the clustering analysis of session based on click stream data of e-commerce company in order to explain diversity and complexity of search behavior of online consumers and typified search behavior. For the analysis, we converted data points of more than 8 million pages units into visit units' sessions, resulting in a total of over 500,000 website visit sessions. For each visit session, 12 characteristics such as page view, duration, search diversity, and page type concentration were extracted for clustering analysis. Considering the size of the data set, we performed the analysis using the Mini-Batch K-means algorithm, which has advantages in terms of learning speed and efficiency while maintaining the clustering performance similar to that of the clustering algorithm K-means. The most optimized number of clusters was derived from four, and the differences in session unit characteristics and purchasing rates were identified for each cluster. The online consumer visits the website several times and learns about the product and decides the purchase. In order to analyze the purchasing process over several visits of the online consumer, we constructed the visiting sequence data of the consumer based on the navigation patterns in the web site derived clustering analysis. The visit sequence data includes a series of visiting sequences until one purchase is made, and the items constituting one sequence become cluster labels derived from the foregoing. We have separately established a sequence data for consumers who have made purchases and data on visits for consumers who have only explored products without making purchases during the same period of time. And then sequential pattern mining was applied to extract frequent patterns from each sequence data. The minimum support is set to 10%, and frequent patterns consist of a sequence of cluster labels. While there are common derived patterns in both sequence data, there are also frequent patterns derived only from one side of sequence data. We found that the consumers who made purchases through the comparative analysis of the extracted frequent patterns showed the visiting pattern to decide to purchase the product repeatedly while searching for the specific product. The implication of this study is that we analyze the search type of online consumers by using large - scale click stream data and analyze the patterns of them to explain the behavior of purchasing process with data-driven point. Most studies that typology of online consumers have focused on the characteristics of the type and what factors are key in distinguishing that type. In this study, we carried out an analysis to type the behavior of online consumers, and further analyzed what order the types could be organized into one another and become a series of search patterns. In addition, online retailers will be able to try to improve their purchasing conversion through marketing strategies and recommendations for various types of visit and will be able to evaluate the effect of the strategy through changes in consumers' visit patterns.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.