• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.1-13
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• 2017

Recently, due to worldwide industralization and urbanization, natural environment has been severly damaged and global warning is worsening. Heat wave, torrential rainfall, typhoon and other natural disasters continuously occur due to global warming. Policies such as carbon emission regulation are taken into effect to solve such problems. Such global trend has affected interest to natural ecosystem and developed as a concept of ecosystem-services. This study particularly focused on ground water storage capacity among various ecosystem-services such as climate control and soil formation. It is because Korea suffers from drought and flood every year. Therefore, this study aims to understand objective numerical value of ecosystem-services value regarding ground water storage capacity of biotop classes based on relationship among precipitation, amount of evapotranspiration, and runoff of 7 regions of Chilgok-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do and to convert the value into economic value. The study calculated ground water storage capacity based on relationship among precipitation, amount of evapotranspiration, and run off. Calculated amount of each capacity was 29.26 million ton($30.2mm/m^2$), 430.46 million ton($140.4mm/m^2$), 11.30 million ton($150.1.0mm/m^2$), 33 milion ton($3.0mm/m^2$). Economical value of ecosystem-service by each biotop classes appeared 4,128,800 thousand KRW ($21.32KRW/m^2$) for agricultural biotop, and 60,403,600 thousand KRW ($98.52KRW/m^2$) for forest biotop, 1,572,800 thousand KRW ($104.4KRW/m^2$) for grassland biotop, and 47,600 thousand KRW ($2.18KRW/m^2$) for bare ground biotop. The result of this study like above, it will be used as important evidentiary material to preserve natural resource effectively from various development business and policies that damages natural eco-system. Also, it is judged that ecosystem-service value by each land coverage will be used as important material for preparing legalistic institution such as establishing natural environment preservation plan, budget for alternative forest resource creation cost.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.91-113
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• 2002

We report and analyze the Korean physicians' recent general strike over the implementation of the Separation of Prescribing and Dispensing Practice (SPDP) in which more than 18,000 private clinics and 280 hospitals participated. Utilizing game-theoretic models of bargaining we explain why the Korean physicians were so successful in organizing intense collective action against the government and securing very favorable policy outcomes. In particular, we highlight the role of distributional conflict among social actors in shaping the details of institutional reform. The introduction of the SPDP was a necessary first step in the overall reform of health care system in Korea. However, the SPDP was perceived to be a serious threat to the economic viability of their profession by the vast majority of Korean physicians who had long been relied on the profits from selling medicines to compensate for the loss of income due to the low service fee under the previous health care system. The strong political coalition among heterogeneous physicians enabled them to organize an intense form of collective action, the general strike. Thus, physicians were successful not only in dragging the government to a bargaining table, but also winning in the bargaining and securing an outcome vastly favorable to them. On the other hand, the lack of an overall reform plan in the health care policy area, especially the finance of the National Health Insurance and the need for maintaining an image as a successful reform initiator, motivated the government to reach a quick resolution with the striking physicians.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.1-18
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• 2008

As medical insurance had been implemented for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) from January 1, 2005, this study investigated whether there had been any change in the amount of the medical care utilization of patients who undertook MRI before and after the insurance coverage, and was to examine factors affecting the amount of medical care utilization of MRI. Data were collected from patients who undertook MRI before and after the insurance coverage for a year at a general hospital in Kyeanggi-do. $X^2$ and t-test were used for the analysis of their general characteristics, the number of MRI, and its medical costs before and after the insurance coverage, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis for the factors affecting the amount of the medical care utilization of MRI. The results of this study were as follows. First, the number of MRI after the insurance coverage was significantly decreased. Second, there was no significant difference in the total medical costs of MRI after the insurance coverage, but a significant difference was found in patient's share of medical costs. Third, six variables were found to be affecting the amount of the medical care utilization of MRI, and the variables showed to lead the number of MRI decrease after the insurance coverage. These six factors explained 21.4% of the total number of MRI. As MRI had been covered by insurance, the use of MRI and patient's share of the costs were deceased, but the total medical costs were not affected. Reasons for that could be found in that MRI insurance, different from the case of CT insurance coverage, was allowed not to cover some items and the kinds of diseases subjected to the insurance coverage were extremely limited, lowering insurance prescription rate. In addition to that, the average medical cost of MRI was not changed after the insurance coverage. Therefore, as future measures for the MRI insurance, coverage, it should be considered to allow insurance coverage to no coverage items and to expand the scope of benefit coverage, or to lower patient's share of the costs. Furthermore, researches should be done to explore how recipients will act and how suppliers will react if the coverage is expanded, including expanding the scope of coverage and reducing patient's share of the costs, as well as to conduct research on its economic analysis according to case mix.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 2018

The development of new technology and process in industrial Plant which builds integrated structures, facilities and systems. Has become a key element for strengthening its competitiveness. Although domestic industrial Plant has demonstrated excellence in technology with a persistent increase in order quantity and orders received, the technology gap between countries has narrowed due to global construction trend. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new technology that could help overcome constraints and limitations of the current one to follow the trend in the age of unlimited competition. This study has focused on assembly technology of Pipe-rack joint connection in an effort to strengthen technological competitiveness in industrial Plant. Through an analysis of earlier studies on Pipe-rack and a coMParative analysis of strengths and weaknesses of current assembly technology of it, a new design plan has been made to improve it efficiently. In doing this, standards for design factors of both structural and performance features have been drawn, and value of stress, strain, moment and rotation has been calculated using finite element analysis. As a result, installation technology of modular type Pipe-rack, which has not been developed in Korea and is differentiated from the current one, has been developed. It is considered that the technology reduces work time and saves cost due to simplified joint connection of steel structure, unlike the current one. Moreover, since it is installed without a welding process in the field, industrial accidents would be reduced, which is likely to have economic competitiveness and satisfy.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.87-94
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• 2002

Recently, there have been numerous attempts to expand the traditional temporary soil nailing system into a permanent wall. Two reasons for this include the soil nailed system's advantage of efficient and economic use of subgrade space and its ability to decrease the total construction cost. However, the systematic and logical design approach has not been proposed yet. The permanent soil nailing wall system, which utilizes precast concrete from soil nailing system, is already used in many countries, but the study of cast-in-place concrete lacing or rigid walls in bottom-up construction of traditional soil nailing walls is imperfect and insufficient. In this paper, various laboratory model tests have been carried out to investigate the influence of parameters, including stiffness of the rigid wall to the soil nailing structure with respect to failure mode, displacement patterns and tensile forces at the nail head in several levels of load. Then, the variation of earth pressure distribution on the soil nailing wall, built with a rigid front plate, is sought through different levels of surcharge load and tensile forces at the nail head.

• Clean Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.96-101
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• 2020

In this paper, the commercial feasibility of trigeneration, producing heat, power, and hydrogen (CHHP) and using biogas derived from macroalgae (i.e., seaweed biomass feedstock), are investigated. For this purpose, a commercial scale trigeneration process, consisting of three MW solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), gas turbine, and organic Rankine cycle, is designed conceptually and simulated using Aspen plus, a commercial process simulator. To produce hydrogen, a solid oxide fuel cell system is re-designed by the removal of after-burner and the addition of a water-gas shift reactor. The cost of each unit operation equipment in the process is estimated through the calculated heat and mass balances from simulation, with the techno-economic analysis following through. The designed CHHP process produces 2.3 MW of net power and 50 kg hr^-1 of hydrogen with an efficiency of 37% using 2 ton hr^-1 of biogas from 3.47 ton hr^-1 (dry basis) of brown algae as feedstock. Based on these results, a realistic scenario is evaluated economically and the breakeven electricity selling price (BESP) is calculated. The calculated BESP is ¢10.45 kWh^-1, which is comparable to or better than the conventional power generation. This means that the CHHP process based on SOFC can be a viable alternative when the technical targets on SOFC are reached.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.768-774
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to grasp the benefits from pit and fissure sealants and to analyze the factors of influencing the benefit amount by using the raw data of the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 2007~2013 targeting the subjects aged from 6 years in full to 18 years. The analysis was used STATA 11.0. As a result of the analysis, the following conclusions were obtained. It rose up to 1.24 pieces after carrying out the national health insurance coverage from averagely 0.93 piece until the year in 2007~2009 (up to November) when is before enforcing the national health insurance coverage in the pit and fissure sealants. The benefits from pit and fissure sealants depending on general characteristics were surveyed to be higher in the higher income level, in the more subscription to health insurance and private insurance, and in the more toothbrushing frequency per day. The factors that have influence upon the benefits from pit and fissure sealants were shown to include whether or not to have the national health insurance coverage in the pit and fissure sealants, income level, health insurance type and private insurance subscription appearance, and one-day toothbrushing frequency. Synthesizing the results, a rise in the benefits from pit and fissure sealants is shown in 2010 based on December 2009 when the national health insurance coverage in the pit and fissure sealants was implemented, but is showing the tendency of declining again from 2011. To increase the benefits from pit and fissure sealants, it is thought that the schemes will need to be discussed such as reinforcing publicity on the national health insurance coverage in the pit and fissure sealants, expanding a support for low-income bracket, and differentiating the outpatient cost sharing according to socio-economic level.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.269-284
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• 2004

Induced from government policy to boost regional economic competitiveness, regional informatization forming e-community has been the subject included in the various regional informatization master plans in Korea. However, few cases are reported for its successful implementation mainly due to the lack of profitable business model to encourage investment. On the other hand, most efforts to build smart apartments, part of the home networking in a broad sense, has been pursued from the different directions. Telecommunication giant such as Korea Telecom tries to find new source of revenue exploiting enhanced broad band technology. Also, construction companies started constructing housing complexes equipped with built-in high speed network infrastructure as a means to differentiation to other competitors. The contents providing community portal has become mandatory in the sense of bearing the cost from customer side who are willing to adopt those services for new smart house. Our research motivation stems from exploring critical value aspects of realizing the profitability of this emerging new business model, that is, industry convergence model. In this paper, mainly from the survey results of the Korean smart apartment complexes, we reported recent home networking services development in Korea, and value propositions from the business model perspective. Merged business model components of telecommunications, construction, and internet contents are analyzed to provide the insights for future directions.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.219-246
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• 2020

From the Phase II (2018~2020) of K-ETS, the offset credit from 'CDM projects that domestic companies and others have carried out in foreign countries' can be used in the K-ETS. As a result, stakeholders in the K-ETS market are actively developing overseas CDM projects, such as the 'high-efficiency cook stove project'. which can secure a large amount of credits while marginal cost is relatively low. This paper develops the investment decision-making model of offset project for the 'high-efficiency cook stove project' using the real option approach. Under the uncertainty of the emission allowance price, the optimal investment threshold (p^⁎) is derived and sensitivity analysis is conducted. As a result, in the standard scenario (PoA-S), the optimal investment threshold is 29,054won/ton, which is lower than the stock price (p^⁎_spot). However, allocation entities are not only economics in the CDM project, but also CDM risk factors such as non-renewable biomass ratio, cook stove replacement ratio, equity ratio with host country, investment period and submission limitation of emission allowance. In addition, offset project developers will be able to derive the optimal investment threshold for each business stage and use it for economic feasibility checks.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.491-498
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• 2005

J sewage treatment plant (WWTP) in Busan has used methanol as an external carbon source for the biological denitrification process. Methanol is widely used. but rather expensive and very dangerous in handling. Therefore, it has been required that the economic alternative carbon source must be developed. By-product from a fine chemical industry can be Purified by removing high molecular weight substances using the ultrafilter membrane separation process and RBDCOD fraction becomes $98{\sim}99%$ of COD substances in the purified by-product. The purified by-product containing three types of alcohols, methanol, prophylenglycol and methoxypropanol; showed similar chemical characteristics to the methanol, a main external carbon source, in biodegradation pathway. Shown above, the compatibility between main and alternative carbon sources has been achieved. Also very short or no adaptation period is necessary in the case of exchanging these carbon sources. The compatibility between external carbon sources is an essential element for stabilizing WWTP operations. During the full-scale application test of the by-product, the alternative carbon source line got on par with the treatment efficiency of the methanol line. With the test result, J-WWTP changed methanol to a fine chemical by-product, in two out of three J-WWTP lines. Moreover, it is expected that 55.4% of the external carbon source cost reduction can be achieved in the alternative carbon source applied lines.