• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-165
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• 1994

Structural adjustment of industry (or industrial restructuring) seems to be inherent in the process of capitalist economic development, which tends to be proceeded with shifts from one stage to another in order to overcome structural crises generated in each stage. The structural adjustment of industry is necessarily accompanied with regional restructuring, since it is not only projected on spece, but also mediated by space. Such a restructuring necessitates industrial and uneven regional devlopment through which capital can seek excessive profits over the rate of socio-spatial average. The industrial restructuring and uneven regional development in the 1980s in Korea can be seen as a process in which capital attempted with a strong support of the govenment to overcome the crises in the end of 1970s and hence to go on rapid economic growth. In this process, capital, especially monopoly capital concentrated into few conglomerates, pursued both extensive expansion and intensive development of industry simultaneously. In results, the Korean economy could eliminate some of peripheral characters and maturate the Fordist accumulation system. The extensive expansion of the Korean industry in the 1980s was stimulated mainly through the enlargement and adjustment of investment for equipment facilities which was planned to exclude or rationalize traditional light industries on some places, and to continue rapid growth of key heavy-chemical industries, especially of fabricated metal industry, on other places. In this process, keeping mainly the existing developmental axis which polarized the Seoul Metroplitan region and the Southeast region in Korea, the enhancing spatial mobiiity of capital and the further differentiating division of labour enforced a tendency of concentration of all types of industry in the Seoul Metropolitan region, and at the same time provoked the diffusion of some industries over Jeolla and Chungchong regions in a considerable extent. The intensive development of industriai structure in the 1980s was pursued through the strategic encouragement of subcontracting small firms mainly which produced assembling components, the technical enhancement and factory (semi-) automation, and the enrichment of service industries for estate management, finance, distribution and retailing which supported and complemented the production of goods. In this process, enabling capital to extend and elaborate its domination over space through the reorganization of regulating systems, the Fordist division of labour generated a socio-spatial hierarchy in the nation-wide scale that characterized: the Seoul Metropolitan region as an overmaturated (or overarching) Fordist region performing the conceptive functions of management, research and development, in which all types of industry (including service industries) tended to be reconcentrated; Kyungsang region as a maturated Fordist region with excutive branches of large conglomerates and with subcontracting firms around them which produced standardized products through the automized production processes in secialized Fordist industries or rationalized traditional industries; and Jeolla and Chungchong regions as newly devloping Fordist regions with newly migrated branches and some subcontracting small firms-in relatively older Fordist industries or partly rationalized traditional industries. From these analyses, it can be argued that the structural adjustment of the Korean industry in the 1980s, which had carried out both through the extensive expansion and the intensive deveiopment, strengthened further uneven regional development process, even though it appears to have reduced apparently the economic and regional disparity by balancing numerically large and small firms and by extending the Fordist industrial space nation-wideiy. And it seems more persuasive to see that the Korean industrial structure in the 1980s maturated the Fordist system of accumulation, but not yet transformed towards the post-Fordist (or the so-called flexible) accumulation system, even though the Korean economy in the 1990s seems to be under a pressure of restructuring towards the latter system.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.358-376
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• 2011

This study investigated the agglomeration process of the towel industry in the Daejeon and Chungcheong regions, which are located in the mid-western part of South Korea, focusing in particular on industrial restructuring. Moreover, it aimed to identify the spatial features of the towel industry by analyzing the subcontracting linkages and to discover the implications of such linkages on government policy. The towel industry in the Daejeon and Chungcheong regions began to grow from the end of the Korean War when textile technicians from North Korea settled down in this area, spreading their techniques and know-how within the region. Later, in the 1980s, the industry underwent restructuring when companies within the region strengthened their linkages through corporate specialization based on the concept of social division of labor. Accordingly, the industrial linkages and linkage spaces, as well as characteristics of the industry, should all be considered to develop and implement policies for the regions of the towel industry.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.597-612
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to examine the building process of industrial competitiveness of the Korean cosmetics industry in the global production network. For this study, cosmetics industry in Korea is selected as a research subject. Secondary data and the Korea Health Industry Statistics are analyzed to examine the overall changes of the cosmetics firms under the changes of global economy overtime. In-depth interviews of the case firms are also conducted to understand the old and new corporate strategies which locate with the sustainability and competitive advantages under an uncertain environment. As a result of the restructuring processes, the Korea cosmetics industry has upgraded its position as an innovative power in the world cosmetics industry. In addition, during the restructuring processes, cosmetics industry is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Capital Region, reflecting intensification of agglomeration economies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.20 no.42
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• pp.121-130
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• 1997

The purpose of this study was to find altermatives on restructuring of distribution system and rationalization of management in tourism industry. A theoretical approach was used to determine how principle concepts and strategies in marketing can be applied into tourism industries.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.189-197
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• 2017

Background: Despite the recent efforts to prevent industrial accidents in the Republic of Korea, the industrial accident rate has not improved much. Industrial safety policies and safety management are also known to be inefficient. This study focused on dynamic characteristics of industrial safety systems and their effects on safety performance in the Republic of Korea. Such dynamic characteristics are particularly important for restructuring of the industrial safety system. Methods: The effects of damping and elastic characteristics of the industrial safety system model on safety performance were examined and feedback control performance was explained in view of cost and benefit. The implications on safety policies of restructuring the industrial safety system were also explored. Results: A strong correlation between the safety budget and the industrial accident rate enabled modeling of an industrial safety system with these variables as the input and the output, respectively. A more effective and efficient industrial safety system could be realized by having weaker elastic characteristics and stronger damping characteristics in it. A substantial decrease in total social cost is expected as the industrial safety system is restructured accordingly. Conclusion: A simple feedback control with proportional-integral action is effective in prevention of industrial accidents. Securing a lower level of elastic industrial accident-driving energy appears to have dominant effects on the control performance compared with the damping effort to dissipate such energy. More attention needs to be directed towards physical and social feedbacks that have prolonged cumulative effects. Suggestions for further improvement of the safety system including physical and social feedbacks are also made.

• Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.28-30
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• 2001

In now, the Industrial plant has been situated by the difficult status in Korea. But maybe we want to look for development direction of Industrial plant technology in order to overcome this difficult economic situation. And we should overcome this difficult position by restructuring our industrial plant part and by preconsiderating our future economic circumstances . This paper will a little help us to know the growth direction of industrial plant technology in Korea.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.69-81
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• 2018

The fishing vessel buyback program, that is, the project of fishing vessel reduction is a complex challenge that needs to take into consideration for both fishing resource protection and industrial restructuring. By the way, the fishing vessel buyback program in Korea is still poorly fruitful and there are few applications for the project in the country. For example, the buyback program of this nation has some problems like uncertainly set goals, conflicts among targets, no flexibility in the program implementation, low participation in the project and lack in follow-up actions. To solve these problems, this study offers the following alternatives. First, it is setting up detailed targets for fishing vessel buyback. Those targets should be what can be actually driven under policy support, such as reduction in illegal fishing, decrease in an exact number of fishing vessels and decline in fishing capacity rather than what seem to be comprehensive such as protection of coastal or offshore fishery and industrial restructuring. Second, it is taking measures for the livelihood of those who would face disadvantages due to fishing vessel reduction. Those measures providing or supporting the re-education and re-employment of fishery workers and building up systems that help the workers transfer fishing to another job. Third, it is adopting the governance system that overcomes lacks in communications between the fishing vessel buyback program and improves the performance effectiveness of that program. Here, governance means that businesses and authorities concerned in the program interact and cooperate with one another in making and implementing policies related to the project of fishing vessel reduction and assessing the results of that project. Fourth, it is taking actions for fishery reorganization after the fishing vessel buyback program. Factors that can be considered as those actions include supporting fishery workers' cost of fishing vessel reduction, decreasing and modernizing fishing fleets and improving the quality of fishing equipment. In conclusion, the fishing vessel buyback program should be prepared with comprehensive actions or measures that can cope well with a variety of problems that may be arisen from it while keeping itself on the track of its original goals.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.17-34
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• 2001

This paper is to analyze how firms in a large firm-led industrial city have carried out the restructuring in the face of radical shifts, with focus on the strategy and the restructuring of firms in Ulsan, a typical industrial district in Korea that is specialized in heavy & chemical industry. It has been well known that the local economy has been led by a small number of large firms, including affiliates of chaebol, and its industrial structure has also been characterised as a clear dichotomy between large firms as a customer and small and medium-size firms as a supplier, which can be called not horizontal but vertical relations. It can identify some tendencies, however, that local companies have been rather dynamically changing in response to increasingly turbulent environment since the Asian crisis. Some are radical, but some incremental. These can be summarized in four distinctive but interlinked ways. First, more than half of local companies surveyed have attempted to change their production systems, mainly from the fordist mass production towards the flexible mass production, seeking both economies of scale and scope. Second, local firms have vigorously continued to reorganize the boundary of the production and the organization, by specializing products and focusing on the core competence in order to save costs and cope with radically changing customer demands in a flexible way. Third, there have been various strategies for the organizational innovation such as the introduction of team organization, the boundary blurring between the managerial and production workers and the intra-firm spin-offs, so as to improve managerial efficiency and competence in the use of internal labour market. Finally, they have tried to be more sensitive to the market and customers. These tendencies seem to be increasingly critical to sustain their competitiveness. To do so, they tend to focus increasingly not only on the competing via the product quality rather than through price, but also to seek to diversify the market and customer firms beyond national boundary.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.239-253
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• 2008

This paper aims to explore the viability of a rural-industrial complex neighbouring in the metropolitan area and suggest policy implications for the restructuring of the rural industrial complex. In particular, the paper focuses on the location and management practices of the firms operating in the industrial complex. Research shows that the key elements of the viability of the rural industrial complex in Koryung-Gun are the geographical and relational proximities to the metropolitan city of Daegu and the decentralization of urban industries towards rural areas neighbouring in the large city as a result of the deterioration of location conditions in the large city. It is revealed that the major pull factors of location are 'availability of cheap industrial sites', 'agglomeration in a specialized industry' and 'proximity to major customers and suppliers' rather than 'availability of labour pool'. However, it shows that 'weak university-industry linkages' and 'insufficiency of cooperation culture' are the major limitations to attracting firms. In the context of pub1ic policy, the author argues that the restructuring of the rural industrial complex should be sought to promote social infrastructures centered on networks and learning rather than firm centered financial and tax incentives.

• IE interfaces
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.269-281
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• 2004

How to maintain the optimal electric power generation mix is one of the important problems in electric power industry. The objective of this study is to develop a computer model which can be used to forecast the investment in power generation unit by the plant owners after restructuring of electric power industry. Restructuring of electric power industry will make difference in decision making process of investment in power generation unit. After Privatiazation of Power Industry, Gencos will think that profit is the most important factor among all others attracting the investment in the industry. Coal power generation is better than LNG CCGT in terms of profit. However, many studies show that LNG CCGT will be main electric power generation source because the rest of factors other than profit in LNG CCGT are superior than Coal power generation. The impacts of the various government policies can be analyzed using the computer model, thus the government can formulate effective policies for achieving the desired electric power generation mix.