• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.58-81
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• 1987

The purpose of this study is to examine major factors that affect patterns of living arrangements of older Korean noncitizens in the United States using the 1990 8% Public Use Microdata Sample(PUMS). In order to do so, I analyzed the effects of four factors including acculturation(English proficiency and Age at migration), economic circumstances(Personal Income and Supplemental Security Income: SSI receipt), health status(Mobility and Personal care limitation), and the ethnic community. The results show that acculturation and economic circumstances play an important role in determining the patterns of living arrangements among older Korean aliens, whereas the health status and the ethnic community do not show consistent effects. Regardless of marital status, the impact of age at migration is positively associated with solitary living of older Korean noncitizens, though, the effect of English proficiency show the opposite direction in accordance with marital status. That is, among nonmarried elders, those who cannot speak English are more likely to live alone. The case is reverse for married elders. The impact of economic feasibility is also positively associated with independent living arrangements. Those who receive SSI are much more likely to live apart from family, and elders whose annual personal income between $5,001 and $10,000 have the greatest propensity of solitary living-a large proportion of their income source is SSI. Individuals who receive SSI are also qualified to collect Medicaid, food stamps, rent subsidies, and other welfare benefits. In a sense, the economic feasibility provided by welfare benefits is the key determinant of independent living of older Korean noncitizens. Therefore, the recent welfare reform which denies legal aliens welfare benefits such as SSI and food stamps will severly affect the present living arrangements of older Korean aliens, and give economic burden to their family member The findings also show that there are significant differences within the elderly Korean Americans in terms of demographics, income, fertility, health status, and patterns of living arrangements by U.S. citizenship status. In particular, after controlling for age at migration as a proxy for acculturation, there is a statistically significant variation in living arrangements between elderly Korean noncitizens and naturalized citizens. For both theoretical and methodological reasons, future research on minority aging needs to investigate the concept of U.S. citizenship status for its impact on patterns of living arrangements among the minority elderly.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.294-303
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• 2015

American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Published Task Group 40 report which includes recommendations for comprehensive quality assurance (QA) for medical linear accelerator in 1994 and TG-142 report for recommendation for QA which includes procedures such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in 2010. Recently, Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) published NSSC notification no. 2015-005 which is "Technological standards for radiation safety of medical field". This notification regulate to establish guidelines for quality assurance which includes organization and job, devices, methods/frequency/tolerances and action levels for QA, and to implement quality assurance in each medical institution. For this reason, all of these facilities using medical machine for patient treatment should establish items, frequencies and tolerances for proper QA for medical treatment machine that use the techniques such as non-IMRT, IMRT and SRS/SBRT, and perform quality assurance. For domestic, however, there are lack of guidelines and reports of Korean Society of Medical Physicists (KSMP) for reference to establish systematic QA report in medical institutes. This report, therefore, suggested comprehensive quality assurance system such as the scheme of quality assurance system, which is considered for domestic conditions, based the notification of NSSC and AAPM TG-142 reports. We think that the quality assurance system suggested for medical linear accelerator also help establishing QA system for another high-precision radiation treatment machines.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.519-529
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of food insecurity in Korean elderly and to analyze the health status as well as food and nutrient intakes according to food insecurity status. Methods: A total of 939 elderly subjects (over 65 years old) were used in our analysis from the fifth 2010 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES V-1). The variables consisted of general characteristics, physical and mental health, nutrient intake, rate of deficient intake of energy and nutrients compared with Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans (KDRIs) and food quality and diversity according to the status of food insecurity. Food insecurity status was measured using a self-reported food security questionnaire on the dietary situation in the previous year, and participants were classified according to three groups: food secure group, mildly food insecure group, and moderately/severely food insecure group. Results: The proportion of the food insecure group was approximately 67% and the food insecure group had lower income and educational status than the food secure group. Food insecurity was associated with worse physical and mental health status after adjusting potentially confounding variables. The results showed that food insecurity in Korean elderly significantly affected mental health (including stress cognition, depression experience, and suicide thoughts) which exceeded stages of physical health. In addition, food insecurity showed significant association with low nutrient intake and high rate of deficient intakes of energy and nutrients compared with KDRIs, and a reduction of dietary quality and diversity was indicated in the food insecure group. Conclusion: This study concludes that the prevalence of food insecurity may affect the physical and mental health as well as dietary intake of the elderly Korean population. Therefore, food insecurity should be considered as an important public health issue in Korea.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.99-134
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• 1997

The purpose of this study is to examine major factors that affect patterns of living arrangements of older Korean noncitizens in the United States using the 1990 8% Public Use Microdata Sample(PUMS). In order to do so, I analyzed the effects of four factors including acculturation(English proficiency and Age at migration), economic circumstances(Personal Income and Supplemental Security Income: SSI receipt), health status(Mobility and Personal care limitation), and the ethnic community. The results show that acculturation and economic circumstances play an important role in determining the patterns of living arrangements among older Korean aliens, whereas the health status and the ethnic community do not show consistent effects. Regardless of marital status, the impact of age at migration is positively associated with solitary living of older Korean noncitizens, though, the effect of English proficiency show the opposite direction in accordance with marital status. That is, among nonmarried elders, those who cannot speak English are more likely to live alone. The case is reverse for married elders. The impact of economic feasibility is also positively associated with independent living arrangements. Those who receive SSI are much more likely to live apart from family, and elders whose annual personal income between $5, 001 and $10, 000 have the greatest propensity of solitary living-a large proportion of their income source is SSI. Individuals who receive SSI are also qualified to collect Medicaid, food stamps, rent subsidies, and other welfare benefits. In a sense, the economic feasibility provided by welfare benefits is the key determinant of independent living of older Korean noncitizens. Therefore, the recent welfare reform which denies legal aliens welfare benefits such as SSI and food stamps will severly affect the present living arrangements of older Korean aliens, and give economic burden to their family member The findings also show that there are significant differences within the elderly Korean Americans in terms of demographics, income, fertility, health status, and patterns of living arrangements by U.S. citizenship status. In particular, after controlling for age at migration as a proxy for acculturation, there is a statistically significant variation in living arrangements between elderly Korean noncitizens and naturalized citizens. For both theoretical and methodological reasons, future research on minority aging needs to investigate the concept of U.S. citizenship status for its impact on patterns of living arrangements among the minority elderly.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.189-224
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• 2010

Nowadays Korean society has a fast growing population of North Korean immigrant youth. Especially, North Korean immigrant youth, who are discontinuing formal education, experience difficulties in social exclusion and adaptation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of adaptation and social support of North Korean immigrant youth discontinuing formal education, and to seek affirmative supporting plans and solutions for their adaptation. The methodology utilized for this study was a case study research. On the basis of the results and categorization, 'a network between overall categories and of early adaptation' was derived. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows. First, the participants of this study experienced major difficulties during 'economical adaptation', and their economical adaptation was strongly interrelated with their 'educational adaptation'. The discontinuing of their education resulting from their fleeing period caused 'academic differential and age disparity.' Thus they could not enroll in the formal education system, and their insufficient educational background resulted in low wages and overwork due to manual labor jobs. Second, participants recognized 'interpersonal relations' as the most essential factor in adaptation, and 'social support' from the interpersonal relations played an important role in adaptation to and comfort in Korean society. 'Interactions with South Koreans' was recognized as a significant resource for gaining informational and appraisal support, but was not activated satisfactorily. On the other hand, interaction with North Korean immigrants was avoided by the reason that 'there's nothing to learn', however emotional support from North Korean immigrants of close relationship played an important role in participants' adaptation, especially in all aspects of psychological adaptation. Third, participants experienced a lot of difficulties and stresses in their 'physical health and psychological adaptation'. Their chronic diseases worsened by remaining untreated, and female perceived symptoms were observed more often than in male. Meanwhile, excessive 'stresses' from the unfamiliar environment of South Korea negatively affected their psychological adaptation. However, they were satisfied with sense of liberty and security from living in a democratic society.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.33-41
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to analyse the state of the energy industry and to determine the efficiency of its functioning on the basis of energy conservation principle and application of innovative technologies aimed at improving the ecological modernisation of agricultural sectors of Kazakhstan. The research methodology is based on an integrated approach of financial and economic evaluation of the effectiveness of the investment project, based on calculation of elasticity, total costs and profitability, as well as on comparative, graphical and system analysis. The current stage is characterised by widely spread restructuring processes of electric power industry in many countries through introduction of new technical installations of energy facilities and increased government regulation in order to enhance the competitive advantage of electricity market. Electric power industry features a considerable value of creating areas. For example, by providing scientific and technical progress, it crucially affects not only the development but also the territorial organisation of productive forces, first of all the industry. In modern life, more than 90% of electricity and heat is obtained by Kazakhstan's economy by consuming non-renewable energy resources: different types of coal, oil shale, oil, natural gas and peat. Therefore, it is significant to ensure energy security, as the country faces a rapid fall back to mono-gas structure of fuel and energy balance. However, energy resources in Kazakhstan are spread very unevenly. Its main supplies are concentrated in northern and central parts of the republic, and the majority of consumers of electrical power live in the southern and western areas of the country. However, energy plays an important role in the economy of industrial production and to a large extent determines the level of competitive advantage, which is a promising condition for implementation of energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies. In these circumstances, issues of modernisation and reforms of this sector in Kazakhstan gain more and more importance, which can be seen in the example of economically sustainable solutions of a large local monopoly company, significant savings in capital investment and efficiency of implementation of an investment project. A major disadvantage of development of electricity distribution companies is the prevalence of very high moral and physical amortisation of equipment, reaching almost 70-80%, which significantly increases the operating costs. For example, while an investment of 12 billion tenge was planned in 2009 in this branch, in 2012 it is planned to invest more than 17 billion. Obviously, despite the absolute increase, the rate of investment is still quite low, as the total demand in this area is at least more than 250 billion tenge. In addition, industrial infrastructure, including the objects of Kazakhstan electric power industry, have a tangible adverse impact on the environment. Thus, since there is a large number of various power projects that are sources of electromagnetic radiation, the environment is deteriorated. Hence, there is a need to optimise the efficiency of the organisation and management of production activities of energy companies, to create and implement new technologies, to ensure safe production and provide solutions to various environmental aspects. These are key strategic factors to ensure success of the modern energy sector of Kazakhstan. The contribution of authors in developing the scope of this subject is explained by the fact that there was not enough research in the energy sector, especially in the view of ecological modernisation. This work differs from similar works in Kazakhstan in the way that the proposed method of investment project calculation takes into account the time factor, which compares the current and future value of profit from the implementation of innovative equipment that helps to bring it to actual practise. The feasibility of writing this article lies in the need of forming a public policy in the industrial sector, including optimising the structure of energy disbursing rate, which complies with the terms of future modernised development of the domestic energy sector.

• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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• v.1
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• pp.193-222
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• 1989

The purpose of this study is to review the rights and duties of cargo owners, the party to the contract of international carriage of goods by air under the Warsaw Convention System and the IATA conditions. It is generally known that air freight is the most-cost mode of transportation. However, should there be considerations of total distribution cost, the use of air freight leads exporters to be advantageous in physical distribution. The Warsaw Convention System defined and limited the rights and duties of cargo owners and air carriers paticipating in the international carriage of goods, but it does not regulate every aspect of air transportation. Therefore, the unregulated parts are governed by national laws and by individual contracts of carriage. The International Air Transport Association(lATA), a worldwide organization of airlines, has formulated model conditions of contract for the carriage of cargo. These models are not uniformly followed but they serve as a basis for many of the individual standard form of contracts prepared by air carriers. The contract of air carriage of goods is a contract of adhesion, 'the consignor recognizing and accepting the conditions laid down by the carrier'. There are consignors and carriers as the parties to the contract of international carriage of goods. In addition to his basic right, implied in Warsaw Convention Article 18 and 19, to require devery of the goods in good condition and at the date agreed upon, the consignor has the right to dispose the goods in the course of the journey up to the moment when the consignee is entitled to require delivery. If it is impossible to carry out the orders of the consignor, the carrier must so inform him forthwith. The right conferred on the consignor ceases at the moment when that of the consignee begins in accordance with Warsaw Convention Article 13. Nevertheless, if the consignee declines to accept the air waybill or the goods, or if he cannot be communicated with, the consignor resumes his right of disposition. Unless it is otherwise agreed, it is the duty of the carrier to give notice to the consignee as soon as the goods arrive. The consignee is entitled, on arrival of the goods at the place of destination, to require the carrier to hand over to him the air waybill and to deliver the goods to him, on payment of the charges due and on complying with the conditions of carriage set out in the air waybill. The air waybill is supposed to be made out by the consignor. If the carrier makes it out, he is deemed, subject to proof to the contrary, to have done so on behalf of the consignor, whether there is one air waybill or several, each must be made out in three original parts. The first is for the carrier, the second is for the consignee, and the the third is handed to the consignor when the shipment has been accepted. The consignor is responsible for the correctness of the particulars and statement concerning the cargo appearing in the air waybill. Each of the original parts of the air waybill has evidential value and possession of his part is a condition for the exercise by the consignor or consignee of his rights under the contract of carriage. Hague Protocol set forth in Article 9 that nothing in this. Convention prevents the issue of a negotiable air waybill, but Montreal Additional Protocol No. 4 deleted this article. All charges applicable to a shipment are payable in cash at the time of acceptance thereof by the carrier in case of a prepaid shipment or at the time of delivery thereof by the carrier in case of a collect shipment. The carrier shall have lien the cargo for unpaid charges and, in the event of non-payment thereof, shall have the right to dispose of the cargo at public or private sale and pay itself out of the proceeds of such sale any and all such amounts. In conclusion, the Warsaw Convention System has the character of ambiguity in various respects, not only in the part of the forms of documents but also in conditions of contract. Accordingly, the following propositions might be considered: (1) If the carrier does not obey the orders of the consignor for the disposition of the goods without proper reasons, he will be liable strictly for any damage which may be caused thereby to the cargo owner. The special agreement and carrier's conditions of carriage which limit unreasonably the consignor's right of disposition of the goods will be nullified. (2) The instrument of the Warsaw Convention System which is not yet in force(Montreal Additional Protocol No. 4) would considerably simplfy the processing and keeping of computerized records of the carriage. Until this instrument enters into force, the airlines will be faced with practical problems preventing them to substitute computerized data processing techniques for the formal issuance of the documents. Accordingly, Montreal Additional Protocol No. 4 should become effective as soon as posisble. From a practical point of view in the international trade, the issuance of negotiable air waybill should be permitted for the security of the bank.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.333-370
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• 2011

This study views the aged inequalities according to the inequality hypothesis of the life course perspective in OECD 10 countries. Focusing on educational level which is early social status and welfare state regime which is social structure factors of inequality, this study analyzes income inequality for the aged who have transformed into old age period from non-aged period. The analysis is based on the data SHARE of Europe and HRS of USA. The main results of this study are summarized in four points. First, the income inequality is quite high by welfare system and the educational level. Second, the income inequality is somewhat reduced in case the people move from the period of non-aged to the period of aged. However, gini coefficient is still high(0.475). Considering welfare state regimes, although the income inequality is high in conservative regime of non-aged period, this would be higher in aged period. This result supports cumulative advantages/disadvantages hypothesis. The liberal regime remains high income inequality which supports the theoretical argument of status maintenance. Social democratic regime provides evidence to offer some support for the status leveling hypothesis. In there, income inequality is lower in aged period even though income inequality of non-aged period is low. Third, the cumulative advantages/disadvantages of disposable income according to educational level are strengthened and heterogeneity is grown in case people transition from the late period of non-aged to aged period. But public pension has been more equally distributed than gross income. Fourth, seeing welfare state regimes, public pension of aged-period is more inequally distributed than that of non-aged period in liberal and conservative regime. Specially in conservative regime, inequality of gross income is very high and public pension is also inequally distribute So this might show that the social security system strengthens the cumulative advantages/disadvantages. However, in the social democratic regime, public pension is more equally distributed than gross income and it could be much more equally distributed in aged period, which can support the status leveling hypothesis.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.109-125
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• 2020

The Ministry of National Defense is pushing for the Defense Acquisition Program to build strong defense capabilities, and it spends more than 10 trillion won annually on defense improvement. As the Defense Acquisition Program is directly related to the security of the nation as well as the lives and property of the people, it must be carried out very transparently and efficiently by experts. However, the excessive diversification of laws and regulations related to the Defense Acquisition Program has made it challenging for many working-level officials to carry out the Defense Acquisition Program smoothly. It is even known that many people realize that there are related regulations that they were unaware of until they push ahead with their work. In addition, the statutory statements related to the Defense Acquisition Program have the tendency to cause serious issues even if only a single expression is wrong within the sentence. Despite this, efforts to establish a sentence comparison system to correct this issue in real time have been minimal. Therefore, this paper tries to propose a "Comparison System between the Statement of Military Reports and Related Laws" implementation plan that uses the Siamese Network-based artificial neural network, a model in the field of natural language processing (NLP), to observe the similarity between sentences that are likely to appear in the Defense Acquisition Program related documents and those from related statutory provisions to determine and classify the risk of illegality and to make users aware of the consequences. Various artificial neural network models (Bi-LSTM, Self-Attention, D_Bi-LSTM) were studied using 3,442 pairs of "Original Sentence"(described in actual statutes) and "Edited Sentence"(edited sentences derived from "Original Sentence"). Among many Defense Acquisition Program related statutes, DEFENSE ACQUISITION PROGRAM ACT, ENFORCEMENT RULE OF THE DEFENSE ACQUISITION PROGRAM ACT, and ENFORCEMENT DECREE OF THE DEFENSE ACQUISITION PROGRAM ACT were selected. Furthermore, "Original Sentence" has the 83 provisions that actually appear in the Act. "Original Sentence" has the main 83 clauses most accessible to working-level officials in their work. "Edited Sentence" is comprised of 30 to 50 similar sentences that are likely to appear modified in the county report for each clause("Original Sentence"). During the creation of the edited sentences, the original sentences were modified using 12 certain rules, and these sentences were produced in proportion to the number of such rules, as it was the case for the original sentences. After conducting 1 : 1 sentence similarity performance evaluation experiments, it was possible to classify each "Edited Sentence" as legal or illegal with considerable accuracy. In addition, the "Edited Sentence" dataset used to train the neural network models contains a variety of actual statutory statements("Original Sentence"), which are characterized by the 12 rules. On the other hand, the models are not able to effectively classify other sentences, which appear in actual military reports, when only the "Original Sentence" and "Edited Sentence" dataset have been fed to them. The dataset is not ample enough for the model to recognize other incoming new sentences. Hence, the performance of the model was reassessed by writing an additional 120 new sentences that have better resemblance to those in the actual military report and still have association with the original sentences. Thereafter, we were able to check that the models' performances surpassed a certain level even when they were trained merely with "Original Sentence" and "Edited Sentence" data. If sufficient model learning is achieved through the improvement and expansion of the full set of learning data with the addition of the actual report appearance sentences, the models will be able to better classify other sentences coming from military reports as legal or illegal. Based on the experimental results, this study confirms the possibility and value of building "Real-Time Automated Comparison System Between Military Documents and Related Laws". The research conducted in this experiment can verify which specific clause, of several that appear in related law clause is most similar to the sentence that appears in the Defense Acquisition Program-related military reports. This helps determine whether the contents in the military report sentences are at the risk of illegality when they are compared with those in the law clauses.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.17-26
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• 2010

Recently concerns have been raised due to the unbalanced supply of crops: the price of crops has been unstable and at one point the price went up so high that the word Agflation(agriculture+ inflation) was coined. Korea, in particular, is a small-sized country and needs to secure the stable supply of crops by investing in the produce importation at a national level. Investment in foreign produce importation is becoming more important as a measure for sufficient supply of crops, limited supply of domestic crops, weakened farming conditions worldwide, as well as recent changes in the use of crops due to the development of bio-fuels, influence of carbon emission on crops, the price increase in crops, and influx of foreign hot money. However, there are many problems with investing in foreign produce importation: lack of support from the government; lack of farming information and technology; difficulty in securing the capital; no immediate pay-off from the investment and insufficient management. Although foreign produce is originally more price-competitive than domestic produce, it loses its competiveness in the process of importation (due to high tariffs) and poor distribution system, which makes it difficult to sell in Korea. Therefore, investment in foreign produce importation is being questioned for feasibility; to make it possible, foreign produce must maintain the price-competitiveness. Especially, harvest of agricultural products depends on natural and geographical conditions of each country and those products have indigenous properties, so distribution system according to import and export of agricultural products should be treated more carefully than that of other industries. Distribution costs are differentiated into each item and include cost of sorting and wrapping, cost of wrapping materials, cost of domestic transport, cost of international transport and cost of clearing customs for import and export. So transporting and storing agricultural products generates considerable costs compared with other products. Also, due to upgrade of dietary life, needs for stability, taste and visible quality toward food including agricultural products are being raised and wrong way of storage causes decomposition of food and loss of freshness, making the storage more difficult than that in room temperature, so storage and transport in distribution of agricultural products needs specialty. In addition, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. However, existing distribution system of agricultural products is exposed to various problems including problems in distribution channel, making distribution and strategy for distribution and those problems are as follows. First, in case of investment in overseas agricultural industry, stable supply of the products is difficult because areas of production are dispersed widely and influenced by outer factors due to including overseas distribution channels. Also, at the aspect of quality, standardization of products is difficult, distribution system is quite complicated and unreasonable due to long distribution channels according to international trade and financial and institutional support is not enough. Especially, there are quite a lot of ineffective factors including multi level distribution process, dramatic gap between production cost and customer's cost, lack of physical distribution facilities and difficulties in storage and transport due to lack of wrapping containers. Besides, because import and export of agricultural products has been manages under the company's own distribution according to transaction contract between manufacturers and exporting company, efficiency is low due to excessive investment in fixed costs and lack of specialty in dealing with agricultural products causes fall of value of products, showing the limit to lose price-competitiveness. Especially, because lack of specialty in distribution and circulation such as storage and wrapping does not solve limit factors in distance, the distribution and circulation has been limited to a form of import and export within short-distant region. Therefore, need for distribution out-sourcing which can satisfy specialty in managing distribution and circulation and it is needed to establish more effective distribution system. Second, among tangible and intangible services which promote the efficiency of the whole distribution, a function building distribution environment which includes distribution information, system for standard and inspection, distribution finance, system for diversification of risks, education and training, distribution administration and tax system is wanted. In general, such a function building distribution environment is difficult to be changed and supplement innovatively because its effect compared with investment does not appear immediately despite of its necessity. Especially, in case of distribution of agricultural products, as a function of collecting and distributing is performed individually through various channels, the importance of distribution information and standardization is getting more focus due to the problem of repetition of work and lack of specialty. Also, efficient management of distribution is quite difficult due to lack of professionals in distribution, so support to professional education is needed. Third, though effort to keep self-sufficiency ratio of staple food, rice is regarded as important at the government level, level of dependency on overseas of others crops is high. Therefore, plan for stable securing food resources aside from staple food is also necessary. Especially, governmental organizations of agricultural products distribution in Korea are production-centered and have unreasonable structure whose function at the aspect of distribution and consumption is quite insufficient. And development of new distribution channels which can deal with changes in distribution environment and they do not achieve actual results of strategy for distribution due to non-positive strategy for price distribution. That is, it implies the possibility that base for supply will become vulnerable because it does not mediate appropriate interests on total distribution channels such as manufacturers, wholesale dealers and vendors by emphasizing consumer protection excessively in the distribution of agricultural products. Therefore, this study examined fundamental concept and actual situation for our investment to overseas agriculture, drew necessities, considerations, problems, etc. of overseas agricultural investment and suggested improvements at the level of distribution for price competitiveness of agricultural products cultivated in overseas under five aspects; government's indirect support, distribution's modernization and distribution information function's strengthening, government's political support for distribution facility, transportation route, load and unloading works' improvement, price competitiveness' securing, professional manpower's cultivation by education and training, etc. Here are some suggestions for foreign produce importation. First, the government should conduct a survey on the current distribution channels and analyze the situation to establish a measure for long-term development plans. By providing each agricultural area with a guideline for planning appropriate production of crops, the government can help farmers be ready for importation, and prevent them from producing same crops all at the same time. Government can sign an MOU with the foreign government and promote the importation so that the development of agricultural resources can be stable and steady. Second, the government can establish a strategy for an effective distribution system by providing farmers and agriculture-related workers with the distribution information such as price, production, demand, market structure and location, feature of each crop, and etc. In order for such distribution system to become feasible, the government needs to reconstruct the current distribution system, designate a public organization for providing distribution information and set the criteria for level of produce quality, trade units, and package units. Third, the government should provide financial support and a policy to seek an efficient distribution channel for foreign produce to be delivered fresh: the government should expand distribution facilities (for selecting, packaging, storing, and processing) and transportation vehicles while modernizing old facilities. There should be another policy to improve the efficiency of unloading, and to lower the cost of distribution. Fourth, it is necessary to enact a new law covering exceptional cases for importing produce in order to maintain the price competitiveness; currently the high tariffs is keeping the imported produce from being distributed domestically. However, the new adjustment should be made carefully within the WTO regulations since it can create a problem from giving preferential tariffs. The government can also simplify the distribution channels in order to reduce the cost in the distribution process. Fifth, the government should educate distributors to raise the efficiency and to modernize the distribution system. It is necessary to develop human resources by educating people regarding the foreign agricultural environment, the produce quality, management skills, and by introducing some successful cases in advanced countries.