• International Area Studies Review
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.215-235
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• 2018

Policy concerns related to raising fertility rates are not only common interests among the OECD countries, but they are also issues of great concern to South Korea whose fertility rate is the lowest in the world. The fertility rate in South Korea continues to decline, even though most of the national budget has been spent on measures to address this and many studies have been conducted on the increase in the fertility rates. In this regard, this study aims to verify the effectiveness of the detailed factors affecting the fertility rate that have been discussed in the previous studies on fertility rates, and to investigate the overall trend toward enhancing the quality of life and increasing the fertility rate through macroscopic and structural studies under the recognition of problems related to the policy approaches through the case studies of the European countries. Toward this end, this study investigated if a high quality of life in advanced countries contributes to the increase in the fertility rate, which country serves as a state model that has a high quality of life and a high fertility rate, and what kind of social and policy environment does the country have with regard to childbirth. The analysis of the OECD Better Life Index (BLI) and CIA fertility rate data showed that the countries whose people enjoy a high quality of life do not necessarily have high fertility rates. In addition, under the recognition that a country with a high quality of life and a high birth rate serves as a state model that South Korea should aim for, the social characteristics of Iceland, Ireland, and New Zealand, which turned out to have both a high quality of life and a high fertility rate, were compared with those of Germany, which showed a high quality of life but a low fertility rate. According to the comparison results, the three countries that were mentioned showed higher awareness of gender equality; therefore, the gender wage gap was small. It was also confirmed that the governments of these countries support various policies that promote both parents sharing the care of their children. In Germany, on the other hand, the gender wage gap was large and the fertility rate was low. In a related move, however, the German government has made active efforts to a paradigm shift toward gender equality. The fertility rate increases when the synergy lies in the relationship between parents and children; therefore, awareness about gender equality should be firmly established both at home and in the labor market. For this reason, the government is required to provide support for the childbirth and rearing environment through appropriate family policies, and exert greater efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the relevant systems rather than simply promoting a system construction. Furthermore, it is necessary to help people in making their own childbearing decisions during the process of creating a better society by changing the national goal from 'raising the fertility rate' to 'creating a healthy society made of happy families'

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.36
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• pp.39-69
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• 1998

The study is to grope for the unified device of the women's welfare policy in the United Korea by considering and comparing with the women's welfare in South Korea and North Korea centering on the women's welfare law and system among the social security laws and systems in the present both countries. The both Koreas have enforced the different women's welfare policies according to the different ideologies and constitutions. But in the welfare policy women are in the secondary stage by means of the ideology of sexual devision. It, therefore, is clear that the position of the North Korean woman goes in advance of the South Korean woman in the law and system. However, they are similar to the North Korean women in the aspects of the application of law and system. That is, both of them are discriminated not only in home and labor participation, but also in social welfare. There are the patriarchal family system and sexual devision of labor under the discrimination against woman. As though the both sexes are equal in law, the welfare law and system are applicated unequally to woman because of the ideology of sexual devision and familism which family should take the primary responsibility of welfare. From this perspective the women's welfare policy of the United Korea is not just to unify both laws and systems related women's welfare, but to search for the convergence on the higher level of quality and to make the real gender-equal society. The study suggests as the women's welfare the spread of the application of social welfare system, and social security network constructed through the mother protection policy, women's poverty and social security on basis of the primary principles such as the gender equal right as civil right, benefits of social welfare as social right, escape from the patriarchal familism, strengthening of resposibility of state and the principle of women participation in process of social welfare management. The device of women's welfare means building the social welfare system based on the real gender equality, so the unification will be the important turning point for the gender-equal society to the South-North Korean women.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.519-526
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• 2016

This study aims to verify the relationship between achievement goal orientation and life satisfaction. It consists of 450 athletes from high school, university, and professional teams as an object. After examining reliability and validity on questionnaires, the data, based on gender, was evaluated by analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. The result says that male athletes have higher scores in Mastery approach and Performance approach - two of the four achievement motivation factors - which means a meaningful difference between gender. Life satisfaction also shows that male players have more satisfaction and indicates a big difference between gender. Finally, according to the multiple regression analysis on the Athlete's achievement goal orientation and life satisfaction, Mastery approach affects statically but Mastery avoidance does negatively on athlete's life satisfaction. The gender-based relationship between Athlete's achievement goal orientation and life satisfaction reveals that mastery approach gives positive effects on life satisfaction for both genders, but mastery avoidance influences negatively on male and female life satisfaction.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.523-535
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• 2013

Purpose: This study was to investigate the socio-demographic and health factors affecting on the health related quality of life (HRQoL) in elderly by gender. Methods: Data of the study were derived from the fifth Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES V-2, 2011). The subjects were older adults aged 65 years or more (673 male and 925 female) and the number of the sample was 1,598. The authors analyzed the data with the SPSS/WIN 21.0 program. Results: For male, the affecting factors on the HRQoL were education level, monthly income, and number of chronic disease. For female, affecting factors on the HRQoL were depression, stress, and age. The activity limitation and subjective health showed statistically significant relationship with the HRQoL for both male and female. Conclusion: Health care providers should consider the gender difference when they plan to design program for the improvement of HRQoL for elderly in community.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.267-279
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• 2015

The study aimed to examine the longitudinal relationship between addictive use of mobile phones and learning activities for elementary school students and to analyze (1)temporal changes of the addictive use of mobile phones and learning activities, (2)temporal relationship between them, and (3)multiple and complex group analysis across gender on the relationship. For the study, 3-year longitudinal data(2010-2012) of the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey and autoregressive cross-lagged modeling were used. The findings showed that the addictive use of mobile phones and learning activities had a significant positive effect on the future selves of children over time. The addictive use of mobile phones influenced positively subsequent learning activities, but, the learning activities did not affect the addictive use of mobile phones. Further, there were no significant gender differences in the longitudinal relationship. The study provided the useful data to make guidelines on how to protect mobile phone addiction for elementary school students.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.435-441
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• 2020

This study attempts to analyze by the gender political point of view of the recent film, 'A Special Lady', focusing on the case of setting up women as the main characters in the 2000s Korean film noir genre. Concretely, this study conducted a narrative analysis focusing on the three elements of genre film, the identity of the characters and their family relationships, and the Oedipal trajectory. The film, 'A Special Lady', has the narrative about the maternal love assigned to female protagonist, and that emphasizes male pure love. And the film shows the flashbacks concerning to motherhood that prove the biological identity of the female protagonist, and signs that weaken the castration fear resulting from male voyeurism. Further, the film depicts the fragmentation of identity and the cracking of family relationships, revealing the confusion of gender identity and the narrative degeneration into family melodrama. Meanwhile, the film fails to complete the feminine Oedipal trajectory by reducing the female character's motherhood to a biological one instead of expanding it into an alternative quality embracing the other. These findings suggest that the korean gangster is closely related to gender politics and is not completely out of gender bias.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.65-84
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• 2016

This study examined the factors that were associated with longitudinal changes for ten years from 2004 to 2014 in time spent on housework by married couples who had a preschooler as their first-born child. It also sought to figure out how much of such temporal changes were attributable to differences in the means on associated factors as well as to differences in the influence or slope of such factors. A total of 9,668 time diaries from the Korean Time Use Survey were used to analyze the influence of couple's weekly work hours, wife's relative income, couple's education and gender role attitudes on the time spent on housework of husbands and wives. Results from descriptive statistics, regression and decomposition analysis were as follows. First, women decreased, while men increased their time doing housework. Second, weekly work hours of husband and wife were related to their time doing housework in every year surveyed. Third, wife's relative earnings and couple's gender role attitudes affected wife's time doing housework more than husbands', whereas couple's education had stronger effects on husbands than wives. However, such influence was apparent on a certain survey year, and then disappeared in another, or became stronger or weaker longitudinally. Fourth, the temporal decrease in wife's housework time and increase in husband's housework time were attributable to social and cultural changes such as reduced working hours, rising female income, higher educational background, and prevalence of egalitarian gender role attitudes. Findings suggest that the trend in spending time on housework is expected to continue, and provide a timely policy implications to facilitate the change.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.467-483
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to explore the role and meaning of smartphone in the context of daily life. This research focuses on the woman in twenties living in Hangzhou, China. As a result of research, smartphones affected the various parts of female users' daily lives such as consumption habits, ways of spending their times and ways of information gathering and communication. Nevertheless gender gap in smartphone use was much smaller than before in the quantitative aspect, women's use of smartphone in qualitative aspect such as the way of use and choice of contents showed previous gender role and gender value in society. Also, the results of the research, based on the case of China which emerges as a new IT powerhouse, have a significant implication for smartphone use in Korea.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.193-210
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to understand the influence of entrepreneurial motivation upon entrepreneurial intentions of college students majoring in foodservice through the pull and push factors of the motivation theory, analyzing the moderating effects by gender. Based on total 317 college students, this study was conducted with exploring factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and hierarchical moderated regression. The results showed that, among the pull factors, need for achievement (p<0.001) and self-actualization (p<0.01) had a significant positive influence on entrepreneurial intentions. It appears that entrepreneurial intentions of college students majoring in foodservice were developed by positive entrepreneurial motivation. The moderating effects by gender were not significant. Through the study results with theoretical suggestions, this study proposed a policy to encourage entrepreneurial activation and desires in college students. Limitations and further research directions are also discussed.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.301-310
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• 2017

The purpose of the study is to examine the effects of acculturative stress, ego-resilience, and gender role attitude of married migrant women on their marital satisfaction. For the study, a pre-survey was conducted in November 2015 and based on the result, the data collected in this survey over January 2016 through March 2016 was used. SPSS Win 21.0 program was utilized to proceed the analysis for the attributes of variables in marital satisfaction, correlation among variables, and hierarchical regression analysis. 274 subjects around the Multicultural Center users in Geonggi-do were selected as research targets and drew a conclusion as the following results. First, it showed that acculturative stress of married migrant women left a negative effect on the marital satisfaction and had the highest effect on it among the independent variables. Second, both ego-resilience and gender role attitudes influenced positively on the marital satisfaction of married migrant women. The need for program development to reduce acculturative stress and enhance ego-resilience was discussed.