• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.91-106
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• 2015

This study aims to analyze the effects of service quality offered by automotive Ro-Ro terminal operators on customer satisfaction and loyalty. The results of the research can be used to understand how to enhance the service level in order to manage competitiveness of the terminal operators, finally resulting in global competitiveness of the automobile industry of Korea in both exports and imports. We carried out a survey on two groups: shippers (customers) and providers (related terminal operators and stakeholders). To identify and classify the factors into groups, we conducted Exploratory Factors Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), which showed construct validity and convergent validity. We also calculated Cronbach's alpha for reliability. Five factor groups were identified: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. We found that empathy is the most influential factor group among the five groups, and that the other groups too exhibited similar effects. Based on the results of the survey and analyses, we can conclude that empathy is most important in automotive Ro-Ro terminals. In particular, specialties, training, experiences, and loyalty of employees are crucial factors because automotive Ro-Ro terminals significantly rely on work forces, differently from other bulk terminals and container terminals. Flexible working hours and fringe benefits for work forces can increase empathy, finally resulting in productivity and efficiency. Next, well-designed work schedules are followed, based on visibility through logistics and SCM activities in automobile export and import processes with information and communication networks.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.57-68
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to classify that the quality factors for comparing the Visegrard Group with the Nordic Council have historical similarities against Germany and the Soviet Union. However, this is because in the integrated European market, the competitiveness possessed by the two groups of countries is invested in the priority order to grow. Research design, data, and methodology - The study was conducted on the research design, and the reason for trying to compare the competence of the automobile industry in the assessment of industrial capability is that the Visegrard Group focuses on automotive production and the Nordic Association focuses on the commercialization of the automobile(market). In this study, searching and quantifying indirect evidence was made through standards are more complementary in Europe since each country acts like the role of the European automotive industry for example, which is different from the realistic evaluation criteria, are more important than those of the United States(first in the world) or Germany(first in Europe). Results - The results of this study are as follows: In the global EV market U.S.(export: $ 2.62 billion /share: 36.7%), Germany($ 1.29 billion /18.1%), France($ 390 million /5.4%), United Kingdom($ 380 million /5.4%), and South Korea($ 320 million/ 4.4%). South Korea's share of the EV market is 4.4%, while TSI reaches at +0.9 which measures the comparative advantage of a specific commodity in the world trade market. There is great potential for evaluated as products processing in export competition. But, commercialization, standardization, and overall market expansion did not have a positive impact on global satisfaction. Conclusions - EVs put importance on various utilities. So this suggests that Korea's exports to the EU, including the Visegrard Group, should be more focused on marketability when illuminating with a sharing industrial system under the European Union. It is necessary to specialize in manufacturing and commercialization by country(region) to prepare sharing economy and blockchain in order to create a smart-sharing city linked on artificial intelligence, as the commercialization of electric vehicles, which will have a larger growth rate than that of manufacturing in the fourth revolutionary era.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Mechanical Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.65-71
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• 2011

Steering gear is the part of an automobile that change circular movement of steering wheel to lateral movement of rack to change driving direction. This can be classified with manual and power steering gear. Manual steering gear is operated only with human power while power steering gear use oil pressure support. These days power steering gear is more common to almost of the car. Recently a korean company manufactures a speed sensitive power steering which provide variable steering feel depend on the speed of car. The Broens company of Australia produces and exports the test equipments for the manufacture of power steering valves and assemblies to major vehicle manufactures. Some korean companies imported the test equipments from Australia, thus increasing the cost. The purpose of this study is development of the valve balance test equipment to measure the valve torque of the power steering gear. This study designed and manufactured the valve balance test equipment to take hold of the power steering valve using CAE analysis. In order to evaluate the performance of the developed valve balance test equipment, the R&R tests have been conducted.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.65-81
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• 2004

Foreign direct investment (FDI) by firms has various motives in terms of the strategy for firms' long-term growth. This research uses the case study of Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama to analyze the motives of the Korean auto industry's FDI in the U.S. and the locational factors that determined the selection of the site. This paper starts from the question of why Hyundai made the decision to invest in the U.S., which is not favorable in terms of production cost, especially considering that its exports to the U.S. have been on the increase. The results indicate that the strongest motive for the decision to invest in the U.S. was to ameliorate the trade friction between Korea and the U.S. Given that Hyundai depends on the U.S. market to a large extent for its exports, the foremost motive was to use local production in order to reduce the serious trade imbalance in the automobile sector between Korea and the U.S. in order that trade friction with the U.S. may be avoided and causes for trade disputes may be reduced. Other motives such as improving the access to local consumers were of secondary importance. After the selection of the country in which to invest, however, various factors were considered in the decision regarding the location of the plant, and incentives by local governments ultimately played a key role in this decision. The results imply that the Korean manufacturing industry's investment in the U.S. cannot be explained by traditional FDI theories and instead was greatly driven by a strategic defensive motive. In addition, the results confirm that the design of an appropriate incentive structure by host governments is important for attracting FDI.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.12-23
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• 2021

Due to high proportion of exports, Korea has a higher dependence on the global value chain (GVC) than other major developed countries. This reason, Korea has a structure that is sensitive to GVC changes. This is because Korean exports are concentrated on specific countries and items, and most of the materials for export tend to depend on imports. Currently, export restrictions resulting from trade disputes with Japan can affect the industry of Korea as a whole due to the supply of core materials. Therefore, in order to minimize economic damage caused by export regulations in the current situation, it is necessary to reorganize the GVC, through efforts to rapidly diversify imports and localize imports that depend on Japan. To this end, it is necessary to derive and classify imported goods that depend on Japan, and to localize items that are difficult to diversify imports, and prompt R&D investment is required for this. This study aims to support R&D investment policy through quantitative analysis based on big data rather than a decision-making method based on expert-centered qualitative analysis.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.249-280
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• 2004

This paper analyzes the industrial growth of Korea in the 1990s and its relationship with the nation's export performance. The result shows that total factor productivity (TFP) played a significant role in the growth of some industries, where in particular a sharp increase in TFP was observed in the electrics and electronics industry and the automobile industry in the late 1990s. While CEPII RCA indexes for the Korean industries such as IT industry and automobile industry significantly increased since 1998, only limited evidence was found that TFP or TFI influenced RCA. Investigating Korea's export performance in the Northeast Asian context, this paper shows that, in the 1990s, the growth of Korea's exports to Japan was led by industries that recorded relatively fast growth in total factor input (TFI). In contrast, that to China was almost equally contributed by industries that experienced relatively fast growth in TFP or TFI. This paper also investigates competition between Korea and China, and Korea and Japan in the world market. The competition between Korea and China was relatively stronger for the Korean industries to whose growth TFI made a more significant contribution. While no decisive evidence is found for the relationship between TFP growth in Korean industries and their competition against Japan in the world market, it is revealed that the competition between Korea and Japan became less intense for the Korean industries to whose growth TFI made a stronger contribution. In this regard, the paper supports the view of 'nut-cracking' that the Korean economy has lost its competitiveness in the sectors where it maintained comparative advantage, but failed to catch up more advanced countries such as Japan by gaining competitiveness in more capital or technology intensive sectors.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.467-492
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• 2008

This paper analyzes the specific product-basis trade structure between Busan and Japan using the recent 2000-2007 trade statistical data. Several specific product-basis trade structure tests such as intra-industry trade index and market comparative advantage index show that there are considerable differences in intra-industry trade structure between Busan and Japan. Furthermore, this paper found that Busan has high quality vertical intra-industry trade and horizontal intra-industry trade as well as low quality vertical intra-industry trade in trading with Japan. While Busan has the market comparative disadvantage in automobile-part products in Japan. This paper also examines the contribution to trade balance of Busan's exports and the movement of Busan's comparative advantage patterns in Japan. The comparative advantage appears to have overall stability and convergence properties using symmetric indices.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.47-72
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• 2016

The Government of Korea has always focused on developing and maintaining a surplus on the balance of payments as a successful trade policy. The focus should now be on spatial information hiding, revealing patterns in trade activities that enable viewing trade in a more sophisticated manner. This study utilizes trade statistical data such as the United States-South Korea imports and exports from 2003 to 2015 officially released by the two countries. It allows us to analyze and extract the spatial information pertaining to the origin, transit, and destination. First, in the case of export data to the United States, the origin of the trade goods has expanded and decentralized from the metropolitan area. With regard to transit, in 2003, most of the exported goods were shipped by ocean vessels and arrived at the ports on the western coast of the United States. However, trade patterns have changed over the 12-year period and now more of that trade has moved to the southern ports of the United States. In terms of destination, California and Texas were importing goods from South Korea. With the development of the automotive industry in Georgia and Alabama, these two states also imported huge volumes of automobile parts. Second, in case of import data, most imported goods from the United States originated from California and Texas. In this case, 40% of goods were shipped by air freight and arrived at the Incheon-Seoul International Airport; most ocean freight was handled at the Port of Busan. The purpose of this study is to decompose the spatial information from the trade statistics data between Korea and the United States and to depict visualized bilateral trade structure by origin, transit, and destination.