• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.88-96
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• 2015

The recent increase in the production of 3D contents allowed viewers to experience various 3D contents. However, some of the viewers did not experience 3D depth well. Several researches were done in past to measure viewers' 3D depth perception, but these researches were done with certain limitations. In this paper, we measured viewers' 3D depth perception and recovery rate in relation with the changes in binocular disparities, saturation, and brightness values after subjects' watching 2D/3D contents. The results showed that when viewers watched the 3D content with positive binocular disparities for 42 minutes, viewers felt that the object seemed to have moved further forward than it was before; with 3D content with negative binocular disparities, viewers felt that the object seemed to be moved backwards. We found that the locational differences of the object in positive disparities were greater than those in the negative binocular disparities. The recovery rate was computed by comparing two measured values of before and after watching 3D contents for 30 minutes. On average, after 30-minute break, viewers showed roughly 50 % of recovery rate.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.345-352
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• 2015

Background: Goal-oriented communication of risk of hazards is necessary in order to reduce risk of workers' exposure to chemicals. Adequate training of workers and enterprise priority setting are essential elements. Cleaning enterprises have many challenges and the existing paradigms influence the risk levels of these enterprises. Methods: Information on organization and enterprises' prioritization in training programs was gathered from cleaning enterprises. A measure of enterprises' conceptual level of importance of chemical health hazards and a model for working out the risk index (RI) indicating enterprises' conceptual risk level was established and used to categorize the enterprises. Results: In 72.3% of cases, training takes place concurrently with task performances and in 67.4% experienced workers conduct the trainings. There is disparity between employers' opinion on competence level of the workers and reality. Lower conceptual level of importance was observed for cleaning enterprises of different sizes compared with regional safety delegates and occupational hygienists. Risk index values show no difference in risk level between small and large enterprises. Conclusion: Training of cleaning workers lacks the prerequisite for suitability and effectiveness to counter risks of chemical health hazards. There is dereliction of duty by management in the sector resulting in a lack of competence among the cleaning workers. Instituting acceptable easily attainable safety competence level for cleaners will conduce to risk reduction, and enforcement of attainment of the competence level would be a positive step.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.58
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• pp.171-203
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• 2017

There has been a growing number of research about children's development indicators and child well-being indicators. After the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and concluding observations on the second report of Korea, the effort to monitor and measure children's rights and the use of child rights indicators has increased within policy and academic research. However, few indicators provide a realization of children's rights. The purpose of this paper was to analyze children's own perceptions of their rights and to develop a children's rights index to measure children's rights. In this study, a children's rights index was developed from 38 indicators categorized into nine components and four domains (survival rights, development rights, protection rights, and participation rights) to measure children's rights. Data were gathered from 17,000 elementary and middle school children and their parents in 16 cities. The survey revealed significant differences in the children's rights index by region and age group. There was also a correlation between the economic circumstances of both households and communities and the children's rights index. In the light of the findings, it is suggested that there is a need to increase public investment on children and to raise awareness of children's rights in order to improve children's rights and to decrease disparity.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.679-690
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• 2020

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Concerns about regional disparities in heathy eating and nutritional status among South Korean adults are increasing. This study aims to identify the magnitude of regional disparities in diet and nutritional status among Korean adults who completed the 2017 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). SUBJECTS/METHODS: The participants were a nationally representative sample of Korean adults aged 19 years and older from the 2017 KNHANES (n = 6,126). We employed the svy commands in STATA to accommodate the complex survey design. The relative concentration index (RCI), absolute concentration index (ACI) and index of disparity were used to measure regional nutritional inequalities. RESULTS: Overweight and obese adults were more prevalent among the poor than among the rich in urban areas (RCI = -0.041; P < 0.05), while overweight and obese adults were more prevalent among the rich than among the poor in rural areas of South Korea (RCI = 0.084; P < 0.05). Economic inequality in fruit and vegetable intake ≥ 500 g per day was greater in rural areas than in urban areas in both relative size (RCI = 0.228 vs. 0.091, difference in equality = 0.137; P < 0.05) and absolute size (ACI = 0.055 vs. 0.023, difference in equality = 0.032; P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides useful information identifying opposite directions in the relative concentration curves between urban and rural areas. Adult overweight/obesity was more prevalent among the poor in urban areas, while adult overweight/obesity was more prevalent among the rich in rural areas. Public health nutrition systems should be implemented to identify nutritional inequalities that should be targeted across regions in South Korea.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.23-48
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• 2008

Although the universal health insurance, National Health Insurance (NHI), have improved access to health care and financial burden of health care costs for Koreans, limited coverage of the NHI leads to high out-of-pocket payment for health care. This study examines financial burden of household health expenditures by income level. Data from the Urban Household Expenditure Survey from 1985 through 2005 is analyzed and household expenditure is used as a proxy measure for income. Health expenditures include spending for inpatient care, ambulatory care and pharmaceuticals. If a household spends health expenditure above 40% of household consumption except for foods, that is defined as catastrophic health expenditure. Access to health care for the lowest income group had been improved for two decades relative to other income groups as well as in absolute term. However, both financial burden of health expenditures and the proportion of households that experienced catastrophic health expenditure had been increased in the lowest income group. Study findings have several policy implications. First, in terms of financial burden of health expenditures. the differences among income groups decreased until 2000 but it was worsen in 2005. This suggests that recent policies for extending NHI coverage are not enough to improve the disparity by income level. Second, a differential catastrophic coverage by income level would be an effective strategy that relieves financial burden for low income group. Third, since the catastrophic coverage is applied to only covered services by the NHI, additional strategy for uncovered services should be considered.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.133-149
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• 1996

The aim of this study is to compare open space planning between Australia and Korea by Local Governments Areas. Open space planning is carried out at the state and municipal level in Australia, but by metropolitan city government in Korea. This study is structured by reviewing the presemt phenomena of provision of open space in Sydney and Seoul, By measuring disparity in terms of open spaces by L. G. A. s an by comparing planning approaches between two cities, for example policy, government standards, government administration system in open space management. In this paper, the provision of parks in Sydney and Seoul are comparatively examined and geographically mapped, and multiple repression analysis is applied to measure the residuals from the line of equality. The results of this study show that, 1) During the last 1 dacade from '80 and '90. Sydney has increased the quantity of open spaces from ratio of 19.11ha/1000 to 22.33ha/1000 of parks, however Seoul decreased it by the ratio of 12.21$m^2$/person to 1012$m^2$ per person. 2) Sydney has more programs, such as Greenspace program, Metropolitan open space program etc. to increase and to distribute open spaces equally rather than Seoul which has less open spaces. 3) There exists patterned inequality in terms of open space provision in inner city and suburb between Sydney and Seoul. 4) Seoul requires more active polices to increase open spaces like Greenacre Program of New Jerrsey State, Double Open Space Pland of Tokyo or Green Space Program of Sydney.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.127-135
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• 2020

A safe work environment is crucial in high-risk industries, such as construction refurbishment. Safety incidents caused by uncertainty and unexpected events in construction refurbishment systems are difficult to control using conventional safety management techniques. Resilience engineering (RE) is proposed as an alternative to traditional safety management approaches. It presents a successful safety management methodology designed to deal with uncertainty in high-risk work environments. Despite the fact that RE resides in the safety domain, there is no common set of RE indicators to measure and assess resilient in the work environment. The main aim of this research is to explore RE indicators that have been identified as important in developing and assessing the resilient work environment in high-risk industries, particularly in construction refurbishment. Indicators have been attained through a systematic literature review of research and scholarly articles published between the years 2004 and 2019. The literature review explored RE indicators in various industries. Descriptive analysis and co-occurrence-based network visualization were used for data analysis. The findings revealed 28 RE indicators in 11 different high-risk industries. The results show that the four commonly used indicators were: top-management commitment, awareness, learning, and flexibility, all of which have a strong relationship with RE. The findings of this study are useful for stakeholders when making decisions concerning the most important RE indicators in the context of their research or practice as this would avoid the ambiguity and disparity in the identification of RE indicators.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.225-231
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• 2021

Unmet healthcare is an important indicator to measure accessibility of healthcare services. To examine the latest status of unmet healthcare needs in South Korea, the four different data which is composed of nationally representative sample of South Korean population were used; the Korea Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNAHANES, 2007-2019), the Community Health Survey (CHS, 2008-2019), the Korea Health Panel Survey (KHP, 2011-2017), and the Korean Welfare Panel Study (KOWEPS, 2006-2019). The proportion of individuals reporting unmet healthcare needs were 5.8% (KNHANES), 5.3% (CHS), and 11.6% (KHP). Annual percentage change (APC) which identifies trend for the follow-up period was -9.5%, -8.0%, and -6.5%, respectively. The proportion of individuals reporting unmet healthcare needs due to cost were 1.1% (KNAHANES), 0.7% (CHS), 2.4% (KHP), and 0.4% (KOWEPS). The APC was -10.5%, -14.2%, -12.2%, and -19.6%, respectively. Compared to last year, the rate of unmet healthcare needs has declined in general. However, the low-income and the elderly population were reporting the highest rate of unmet health care needs, and the disparity between lowest and highest groups were remained. These results suggest that adequate benefit coverage is needed for low-income and elderly population.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.1-18
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• 2022

Purpose - Recent international studies have largely focused on measuring the welfare gains from increased trade varieties. To adequately capture the variety gains, it is of importance to estimate the elasticity of substitution between varieties of trade goods because it is one of the key parameters to determine the magnitude of the variety gains. Using the import data of South Korea, this paper shows that the elasticities vary substantially across the estimators, which affects the magnitude of the gains from trade. Design/methodology - Empirical studies working on the gains from trade variety have heavily depended on the estimation methods for the elasticity of substitution between trade varieties, developed by Feenstra (1994) and refined by Broda and Weinstein (2006). We estimate and compare the estimated elasticities for 8,945 HS 10 goods of South Korea, obtained from the three estimation methods: Feenstra's weighted least square (F-WLS), Feenstra's feasible generalized least square (F-FGLS), and Broda and Weinstein's feasible generalized least square (BW-FGLS). Findings - Using the estimated elasticities from the F-FGLS, considered as a suitable estimator, A typical Korean consumer saved 228 dollars per year by the greater access to new import varieties. This leads to gains from imported variety of 2.06% of GDP. In 2017, a typical Korean consumer would gain by 611 dollars, compared with 2000. China is the country with the largest contribution (28.4%), followed by Japan and USA. About 50% of all the welfare gains come from the imports from the three main trade partners. The Southern Asian countries are more important to the South Korean welfare gain than the Western European countries. Originality/value - Existing studies have chosen one of the methods without any criterion for the choice and then estimated the elasticities of substitution between varieties of trade goods. This paper focuses on the estimation specifications and methods as the cause of the disparity in estimated elasticities and welfare gains from trade variety. According to the Ramsey RESET and White tests, the F-FGLS estimates are relatively better compared to the F-WLS and BW-FGLS estimates. As another contribution, this paper provides the first measure of the welfare gains from trade variety for South Korea, using the estimated elasticities of substitution between trade varieties.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.336-347
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• 2024

Objectives: This cross-sectional study examined sex differences in Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) among seniors with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Methods: Data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2008-2020) were analyzed. The EuroQol-5 Dimensions (EQ-5D), a measure of HRQoL, was used. It comprises five dimensions: mobility, self-care, usual activity, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression, each with three levels. Results: Analysis of 3,826 older adults with T2DM showed a significant increasing trend in the EQ-5D Index from the 4th survey phase onwards (P for trend < 0.001 for both men and women). Men consistently reported higher EQ-5D levels than women across all survey years. Women's EQ-5D levels remained lower than men's, maintaining a decade-old disparity (P < 0.05). Men scored significantly higher (P < 0.05) in most EQ-5D domains, except for self-care and anxiety/depression, resulting in a higher total EQ-5D Index (P = 0.001). Increased comorbidities were strongly associated with lower EQ-5D levels in both sexes. Additionally, there was a negative correlation between the EQ-5D Index and refined grain intake for both sexes (P for trend < 0.001), with high-EQ-5D groups consuming fewer refined grains. Women in the high-EQ-5D group consumed more nuts, vegetables, and meat compared to men (P for trend < 0.05). Conclusions: Our study highlights the sex disparities in HRQoL among older adults with T2DM. The findings suggest the need for tailored treatment guidelines aimed at improving the HRQoL of elderly T2DM patients, with a focus on their sex-specific characteristics. Implementing these tailored guidelines could enhance the HRQoL of older women with T2DM and promote more equitable healthcare outcomes. This underscores the importance of considering sex differences to comprehensively improve the well-being of this population.