• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.5D
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• pp.493-498
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• 2012

Korean construction companies have maintained stable market share based on high technology and cost competitiveness although international construction market has been stalled due to increasing global economy uncertainties. However, Korean construction companies have relied heavily on the general types of projects in Middle East and Asia although the portion of different types of projects such as Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO), Build-Transfer-Lease (BTL), and Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) has been increasing in the market. When delivering huge projects requiring contractors deal with activities from project planning to operation, securing finance sources and profitability is deemed critical. Therefore, Korean construction companies need more attentions on the construction market supported by Multilateral Development Banks. However, Korean construction companies have not utilized effective strategies for the market entry and also government supportive policies are not useful enough to help construction companies. This study aims both to analyze the contract structure of Korean construction companies for presenting critical factors that need to be prepared and to suggest various methods that can be applied to support construction companies that have much interest in the Multilateral Development Banks. According to the results of study, it is important that Korean government provide structural information system, make a specialized organization, prevent over-heating among Korean construction companies, and collaborate with Official Development Agency. In addition, it appeared that the fairness and financial stability of project have recognized main advantages of the Multilateral Development Banks.

• Journal of the Korean Society of International Agriculture
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.320-327
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to suggest the policy direction for promoting Korean grape, Shine Muscat, export to China. For this, the data were collected from 102 Chinese who live in Guangzhou province. The survey was conducted from Oct 10th to 13th 2017. PLS-SEM model is used to investigate the main factors that cause the Chinese consumers to purchase Korean grape, Shine Muscat. This study finds that the post-evaluation factor is more important to obtain final evaluation and to purchase Korean grape in the future. Thus farmers and research institutes should investigate how to improve the quality for the sweetness and the texture of the grape, reflecting the Chinese consumers' preference.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2D
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• pp.249-258
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• 2008

Korean engineering firms need to improve their performance in order to stay competitive in the globalize environments which has been led by some international movements including World Trade Organization (WTO) and Free Trade Agreements (FTA). There have been various activities and researches focusing on how to improve competitiveness of Korean engineering firms and the out-of-fashion Engineering Project Delivery System (EPDS) has repetitively identified as one of main barriers to deter advancements of Korean engineering industry. Therefore, this research attempted to investigate global standards of EPDS such as International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC), American Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), Brooks Act, and so on. The procedures of international EPDSs along with a few case studies were comprehensively analyzed and compared with Korean EPDS in order to propose recommendations of improving Korean EPDS. Some major differences between international and Korean EPDS were identified and they includes emphasis on qualifications of engineers and/or firms rather than their proposed cost, extensive use of long and short-list, common use of negotiation process, etc. Research findings are envisioned to guide the Korean public engineering sector to innovate Korean EPDS.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.12
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• pp.117-147
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• 2006

This study aims to propose efficient way to operate the security guarding system from the perspective of administration, policy, law, institution and operation as to the private security guarding system as the Korean security guarding system needs multifaced analysis and measure to ensure efficient operation. The growth strategy has to be restructured and segmentation market needs to be driven in order to cope with the changing conditions of company from the perspective of administration. And private security guarding service companies must refrain from excessive competition while improving the contracting method such as minimum price bidding, etc. From the perspective of policy, the functions of relevant organizations such as the National Police Agency, security association, etc, and mutual cooperation must expand. Also, the profit generation event needs to be privatized and the more positive perception toward the private security guarding service is necessary. In addition, security exhibition and seminar can be expanded to lay the groundwork for the advancement of private security system. From the legal and institutional perspective, the security guarding service related law must be revised and the certification system must b introduced to cope with the changing requirement. The security guarding instructor system must be strengthened to ensure a faithful and earnest implementation of duty to instruct, supervise and educate security guarding personnel. From the perspective of security guarding system's operation, professional security technique must be introduced and applied, and the volunteer application system must be established. In addition, standard 'security guarding manual' must be crafted, and the equipment for security guarding must be modernized to ensure an efficient operation of private security guarding services.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.16 no.1 s.79
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• pp.102-110
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• 2004

Recently, production cost of ready mixed concrete(remicon) has been increased due to the rising cost of raw materials such as cement and aggregate etc. cause by the upturn of oil price and increase of shipping charge. The delivery cost of remicon companies, however, has been decreased owing to their excessive competition in sale. Consequently, remicon companies began to manufacture the concrete by mixing ground granulated blast furnace slag(GGBF) in order to lower the production cost. Therefore, the objective of this study was to predict 28-day strength of GGBF slag concrete by early strength(1 day-strength, 7 day-strength) for the sake of managing with ease the quality of remicon. In experimental results, the prediction equation for 28 day-strength of GGBF slag concrete could be produced through the linear regression analysis of early strength and 28 day-strength. In order to acquire the reliability, all mixture were repeated as 3 times and each mixture order was carried out by random sampling. The prediction equation for 28 day-strength of GGBF slag concrete by 1-day strength(hot-water method) won the good reliability.

• Korea Real Estate Review
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.105-120
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• 2014

This research is to examine the impacts of the on-going global financial crisis on the housing systems of welfare states. Four developed economies in the Western Europe were selected for the analysis, and the qualitative research employed in-depth interviews with scholars in the fields of housing market and social policy in order to meet the research goal. The major findings indicate that the global economic crisis embedded into the liberalization of housing finance and the inadequacy of regulatory measures caused the vicissitude of housing markets, and its scale and magnitude could be determined by the resilience of each state's housing system. While the globalization of housing finance markets rendered easy borrowing for homeownership, intensive competition for excessive lending among financial institutions backed by heavy reliance on inter-bank and overall bank triggered market volatility, and further worsened household and public debts. It's clearly evident that a housing system with varied safety nets becomes a greater cushion to bear the risks of the financial crisis and to weather the economic storm.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.530-537
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• 2022

Tug services are essential services to ensure port safety. However, due to the relatively low barrier to entry into the tug service market, the number of service companies has increased, which has led to growing concerns about excessive competition among companies and poor service quality. To solve these problems, it is necessary to prepare a service quality evaluation system, but full-fledged implementation remains far away. The purpose of this study is to develop a tug service quality evaluation model that can be practically applied. To this end, an evaluation model consisting of two major categories, eight middle categories, and 25 detailed evaluation indicators was developed through a literature review, case studies, and expert interviews. AHP analysis is also conducted to derive the relative importance of the evaluation items. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the weight of user satisfaction was higher than that of management evaluation. In addition, the weights for each detailed indicator of management evaluation were in descending order of facility management, company management, and financial soundness, and it was analyzed that the management of facilities directly used for services was important. User satisfaction is in descending order of safety, punctuality, service satisfaction convenience, and transparency. These results show that securing safety is a top priority, and that the inherent quality of services such as safety and punctuality is more urgent than those of the convenience and transparency of the process in terms of providing preliminary services.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.95-110
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• 2011

As global economic conditions are getting uneasy and polarization of our economy is intensified, the economic sentiment of small businesses is still low and unstable. The collapse of worldwide banking systems due to sub prime crisis in 2007 became the catalyst that shakes financial industries in each country in the world; the most sentiment people, small businesspersons, also have hard time facing survival way out, facing a great crisis. All organizing powers including manufactures, wholesales and retails are being gradually greater in mutual relations and dependence, and unstable factors about risks are also increasing. For exterior environmental and physical risk factors which cannot make small businesses survive themselves by developing ways out are eventually increasing, those who cannot cope with these factors face a great crisis. Although the government tries hard to overcome this situation conducting many ways, the effect does not continue. It is the real state that independent business markets including overall employment and establishing business have vicious cycle that they cannot be improved, due to increase of employment centered on short-term labors which lack durability in creation of employment and decline of household income. Recently, growth shows indication of slowdown because of multinational risk factors including financial crisis in each country in Europe, the death of Kim Jung-il, relationship with North Korea, and unstability of war situation in the Middle East Asia. Experts expect that growth rate will be about 4%, and independent business that ordinary people feel is still gloomy. It's reality that there is no adequate alternative for lack of jobs, unstable employment and a means of living after retirement. Also, the fact that large companies enter the market which is narrow and in the excessive competition should be an environmental factor that makes the situation worse. The business concept, a franchise, is the part we should think about whether it is the institutional solution that can guarantee independent businessmen stable life. Major companies are frightfully entering the market today, breaking the barrier to entry and shouting of a win-win with independent businesses. It's the small businesspersons who go through painful domestic recession, cannot predict the future and manage confusing and unstable independent business. It's very important to restore the domestic economy through wisely boosting consumption as soon as possible. It's also important to lead the situation by gathering powers of the government and related organizations, agonizing, suggesting solutions, and establishing accurate directions. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to suggest ways to strengthen competitiveness of small businesspersons by examining small business support policies which are currently implemented.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.39-57
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• 2012

The unabated influx of micro businesses has turned the Korean retailing market to a rat race, which causes severe financial distress for micro business owners due to heavy competition. The woes of these micro business owner's are exacerbated by the presence of large scale distributors such as Super Supermarket(SSM) and large discount stores. In summary, the Korean retail market is overburdened an uneconomically viable. Retailing has low barriers to entry which attracts unskilled labor or those with little capital. These start-ups have low opportunity costs since they would make low wages elsewhere in the economy. Thus, these owners are content with relatively low returns on their investment. These 'subsistence ventures' are maintained for economical viability rather than economic growth. These 'subsistence ventures' intensifies competition among small-scale businesses. The presence of large retail corporations also aggravates the situation. The recent stagnation of the economy has worsened the retail market in Korea. The overwhelming competition solidifies the coarse structural system and the prolonged economic sluggishness has increased the risk of insolvency for micro business owners. As the economy continues to stagnate, the imminent risk in retailing market will rise up to surface threatening economic stability. More systematic inflows and outflows of retailers are required in order to redress this structural problem. It has been empirically shown that the self-employment rate is high in Korea compared to other OECD countries. To draw the comparison of self-employment rate by industry, Korea shows high rates among transportation, whole sale, retail, education, lodging, and restaurants. In the case of the transportation and education service sectors, this high rate can be explained by the idiosyncratic nature of Korean culture. In the transportation sector, political policies favor private cap service and private freight carriers. In the education service sector, Koreans put particular emphasis on education that leads to many private institutions that outnumber other OECD countries. For these singular reasons, Korea maintains high micro business, self-employed rates particularly in retailing. A comparable nation is Japan, with its similar social, economic, cultural environment among OECD countries. Unlike Korea, Japan has much lower rates of micro business which continues to decrease. Also Korean retailers are much more destitute than Japanese. The fundamental problem of Korean retailing is the involuntary exit of these 'subsistence ventures,' micro businesses with low margins, in which a small drop in demand can lead to financial difficulties for the owner. This problem will be exacerbated when Korean babyboomers retire and join the micro business ventures. The first priority in order to cope with the severity of oversupply in retailing is to provide better opportunities for the potential self-employers. There should be viable alternatives to subsistent ventures. Strengthening the retirement program, scrutiny of exit process, reconfiguration of policy funds are the recommendations.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.85-95
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• 2014

This paper suggested an efficient mathematical model for strategic alliance of liner shipping companies. Even though a few previous research papers proposed the mathematical models for container slot chartering and allocation under liner shipping, those models were nonlinear and very difficult to solve. So their models had limits to apply them to real world problems. On the other hand, the model suggested in this paper is easy to solve and apply to real world problems because it is a integer linear programming model. This paper tried to apply the model to the same example problem as used in existing research paper. Excel add-in program, Premium Solver Platform was used to solve the problem and the optimal allocation and slot chartering for containers were able to be found easily. The result also showed that the total container shipping cost for applying the strategic alliance model was reduced compared to non-strategic alliance model.