• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
• /
• v.59 no.3
• /
• pp.286-297
• /
• 2005

Background : Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a common cause of cancer-related death in North America and Korea, with an overall 5-year survival rate of between 4 and 14%. The TNM staging system is the best prognostic index for operable NSCLC . However, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), matrix metalloproteinase-9(MMP-9), and C-erbB-2 have all been implicated in the pathogenesis of NSCLC and might provide prognostic information. Methods : Immunohistochemical staining of 81 specimens from a resected primary non-small cell lung cancer was evaluated in order to determine the role of the biological markers on NSCLC . Immunohistochemical staining for EGFR, MMP-9, and C-erbB-2 was performed on paraffin-embedded tissue sections to observe the expression pattern according to the pathologic type and surgical staging. The correlations between the expression of each biological marker and the survival time was determined. Results : When positive immunohistochemical staining was defined as the extent area>20%(more than Grade 2), the positive rates for EGFR, MMP-9, and C-erbB-2 staining were 71.6%, 44.3%, and 24.1% of the 81 patients, respectively. The positive rates of EGFR and MMP-9 stain for NSCLC according to the surgical stages I, II, and IIIa were 75.0% and 41.7%, 66.7% and 47.6%, and 76.9% and 46.2%, respectively. The median survival time of the EGFR(-) group, 71.8 months, was significantly longer than that of the EGFR(+) group, 33.5 months.(p=0.018, Kaplan-Meier Method, log-rank test).. The MMP-9(+) group had a shorter median survival time than the MMP-9(-) group, 35.0 and 65.3 months, respectively (p=0.2). The co-expression of EGFR and MMP-9 was associated with a worse prognosis with a median survival time of 26.9 months, when compared with the 77 months for both negative-expression groups (p=0.0023). There were no significant differences between the C-erbB-2(+) and C-erbB-2 (-) groups. Conclusion : In NSCLC, the expression of EGFR might be a prognostic factor, and the co-expression of EGFR and MMP-9 was found to be associated with a poor prognosis. However, C-erbB-2 expression had no prognostic significance.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.37-63
• /
• 2012

In franchise business, exclusive sales territory (sometimes EST in table) protection is a very important issue from an economic, social and political point of view. It affects the growth and survival of both franchisor and franchisee and often raises issues of social and political conflicts. When franchisee is not familiar with related laws and regulations, franchisor has high chance to utilize it. Exclusive sales territory protection by the manufacturer and distributors (wholesalers or retailers) means sales area restriction by which only certain distributors have right to sell products or services. The distributor, who has been granted exclusive sales territories, can protect its own territory, whereas he may be prohibited from entering in other regions. Even though exclusive sales territory is a quite critical problem in franchise business, there is not much rigorous research about the reason, results, evaluation, and future direction based on empirical data. This paper tries to address this problem not only from logical and nomological validity, but from empirical validation. While we purse an empirical analysis, we take into account the difficulties of real data collection and statistical analysis techniques. We use a set of disclosure document data collected by Korea Fair Trade Commission, instead of conventional survey method which is usually criticized for its measurement error. Existing theories about exclusive sales territory can be summarized into two groups as shown in the table below. The first one is about the effectiveness of exclusive sales territory from both franchisor and franchisee point of view. In fact, output of exclusive sales territory can be positive for franchisors but negative for franchisees. Also, it can be positive in terms of sales but negative in terms of profit. Therefore, variables and viewpoints should be set properly. The other one is about the motive or reason why exclusive sales territory is protected. The reasons can be classified into four groups - industry characteristics, franchise systems characteristics, capability to maintain exclusive sales territory, and strategic decision. Within four groups of reasons, there are more specific variables and theories as below. Based on these theories, we develop nine hypotheses which are briefly shown in the last table below with the results. In order to validate the hypothesis, data is collected from government (FTC) homepage which is open source. The sample consists of 1,896 franchisors and it contains about three year operation data, from 2006 to 2008. Within the samples, 627 have exclusive sales territory protection policy and the one with exclusive sales territory policy is not evenly distributed over 19 representative industries. Additional data are also collected from another government agency homepage, like Statistics Korea. Also, we combine data from various secondary sources to create meaningful variables as shown in the table below. All variables are dichotomized by mean or median split if they are not inherently dichotomized by its definition, since each hypothesis is composed by multiple variables and there is no solid statistical technique to incorporate all these conditions to test the hypotheses. This paper uses a simple chi-square test because hypotheses and theories are built upon quite specific conditions such as industry type, economic condition, company history and various strategic purposes. It is almost impossible to find all those samples to satisfy them and it can't be manipulated in experimental settings. However, more advanced statistical techniques are very good on clean data without exogenous variables, but not good with real complex data. The chi-square test is applied in a way that samples are grouped into four with two criteria, whether they use exclusive sales territory protection or not, and whether they satisfy conditions of each hypothesis. So the proportion of sample franchisors which satisfy conditions and protect exclusive sales territory, does significantly exceed the proportion of samples that satisfy condition and do not protect. In fact, chi-square test is equivalent with the Poisson regression which allows more flexible application. As results, only three hypotheses are accepted. When attitude toward the risk is high so loyalty fee is determined according to sales performance, EST protection makes poor results as expected. And when franchisor protects EST in order to recruit franchisee easily, EST protection makes better results. Also, when EST protection is to improve the efficiency of franchise system as a whole, it shows better performances. High efficiency is achieved as EST prohibits the free riding of franchisee who exploits other's marketing efforts, and it encourages proper investments and distributes franchisee into multiple regions evenly. Other hypotheses are not supported in the results of significance testing. Exclusive sales territory should be protected from proper motives and administered for mutual benefits. Legal restrictions driven by the government agency like FTC could be misused and cause mis-understandings. So there need more careful monitoring on real practices and more rigorous studies by both academicians and practitioners.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.127-147
• /
• 2020

The world is suffering from numerous human and economic losses due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). The Korean government established a strategy to overcome the national infectious disease crisis through research and development. It is difficult to find distinctive features and changes in a specific R&D field when using the existing technical classification or science and technology standard classification. Recently, a few studies have been conducted to establish a classification system to provide information about the investment research areas of infectious diseases in Korea through a comparative analysis of Korea government-funded research projects. However, these studies did not provide the necessary information for establishing cooperative research strategies among countries in the infectious diseases, which is required as an execution plan to achieve the goals of national health security and fostering new growth industries. Therefore, it is inevitable to study information services based on the classification system and classification model for establishing a national collaborative R&D strategy. Seven classification - Diagnosis_biomarker, Drug_discovery, Epidemiology, Evaluation_validation, Mechanism_signaling pathway, Prediction, and Vaccine_therapeutic antibody - systems were derived through reviewing infectious diseases-related national-funded research projects of South Korea. A classification system model was trained by combining Scopus data with a bidirectional RNN model. The classification performance of the final model secured robustness with an accuracy of over 90%. In order to conduct the empirical study, an infectious disease classification system was applied to the coronavirus-related research and development projects of major countries such as the STAR Metrics (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation) of the United States(US), the CORDIS (Community Research & Development Information Service)of the European Union(EU), and the KAKEN (Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) of Japan. It can be seen that the research and development trends of infectious diseases (coronavirus) in major countries are mostly concentrated in the prediction that deals with predicting success for clinical trials at the new drug development stage or predicting toxicity that causes side effects. The intriguing result is that for all of these nations, the portion of national investment in the vaccine_therapeutic antibody, which is recognized as an area of research and development aimed at the development of vaccines and treatments, was also very small (5.1%). It indirectly explained the reason of the poor development of vaccines and treatments. Based on the result of examining the investment status of coronavirus-related research projects through comparative analysis by country, it was found that the US and Japan are relatively evenly investing in all infectious diseases-related research areas, while Europe has relatively large investments in specific research areas such as diagnosis_biomarker. Moreover, the information on major coronavirus-related research organizations in major countries was provided by the classification system, thereby allowing establishing an international collaborative R&D projects.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.141-154
• /
• 2019

Rapid growth of internet technology and social media is progressing. Data mining technology has evolved to enable unstructured document representations in a variety of applications. Sentiment analysis is an important technology that can distinguish poor or high-quality content through text data of products, and it has proliferated during text mining. Sentiment analysis mainly analyzes people's opinions in text data by assigning predefined data categories as positive and negative. This has been studied in various directions in terms of accuracy from simple rule-based to dictionary-based approaches using predefined labels. In fact, sentiment analysis is one of the most active researches in natural language processing and is widely studied in text mining. When real online reviews aren't available for others, it's not only easy to openly collect information, but it also affects your business. In marketing, real-world information from customers is gathered on websites, not surveys. Depending on whether the website's posts are positive or negative, the customer response is reflected in the sales and tries to identify the information. However, many reviews on a website are not always good, and difficult to identify. The earlier studies in this research area used the reviews data of the Amazon.com shopping mal, but the research data used in the recent studies uses the data for stock market trends, blogs, news articles, weather forecasts, IMDB, and facebook etc. However, the lack of accuracy is recognized because sentiment calculations are changed according to the subject, paragraph, sentiment lexicon direction, and sentence strength. This study aims to classify the polarity analysis of sentiment analysis into positive and negative categories and increase the prediction accuracy of the polarity analysis using the pretrained IMDB review data set. First, the text classification algorithm related to sentiment analysis adopts the popular machine learning algorithms such as NB (naive bayes), SVM (support vector machines), XGboost, RF (random forests), and Gradient Boost as comparative models. Second, deep learning has demonstrated discriminative features that can extract complex features of data. Representative algorithms are CNN (convolution neural networks), RNN (recurrent neural networks), LSTM (long-short term memory). CNN can be used similarly to BoW when processing a sentence in vector format, but does not consider sequential data attributes. RNN can handle well in order because it takes into account the time information of the data, but there is a long-term dependency on memory. To solve the problem of long-term dependence, LSTM is used. For the comparison, CNN and LSTM were chosen as simple deep learning models. In addition to classical machine learning algorithms, CNN, LSTM, and the integrated models were analyzed. Although there are many parameters for the algorithms, we examined the relationship between numerical value and precision to find the optimal combination. And, we tried to figure out how the models work well for sentiment analysis and how these models work. This study proposes integrated CNN and LSTM algorithms to extract the positive and negative features of text analysis. The reasons for mixing these two algorithms are as follows. CNN can extract features for the classification automatically by applying convolution layer and massively parallel processing. LSTM is not capable of highly parallel processing. Like faucets, the LSTM has input, output, and forget gates that can be moved and controlled at a desired time. These gates have the advantage of placing memory blocks on hidden nodes. The memory block of the LSTM may not store all the data, but it can solve the CNN's long-term dependency problem. Furthermore, when LSTM is used in CNN's pooling layer, it has an end-to-end structure, so that spatial and temporal features can be designed simultaneously. In combination with CNN-LSTM, 90.33% accuracy was measured. This is slower than CNN, but faster than LSTM. The presented model was more accurate than other models. In addition, each word embedding layer can be improved when training the kernel step by step. CNN-LSTM can improve the weakness of each model, and there is an advantage of improving the learning by layer using the end-to-end structure of LSTM. Based on these reasons, this study tries to enhance the classification accuracy of movie reviews using the integrated CNN-LSTM model.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
• /
• no.26
• /
• pp.103-149
• /
• 2010

Documentation strategy has been experimented in various subject areas and local regions since late 1980's when it was proposed as archival appraisal and selection methods by archival communities in the United States. Though it was criticized to be too ideal, it needs to shed new light on the potentialities of the strategy for documenting local regions in digital environment. The purpose of this study is to analyse the implementation issues of documentation strategy and to suggest the directions for documenting local regions of Korea through the application of the strategy. The documentation strategy which was developed more than twenty years ago in mostly western countries gives us some implications for documenting local regions even in current digital environments. They are as follows; Firstly, documentation strategy can enhance the value of archivists as well as archives in local regions because archivist should be active shaper of history rather than passive receiver of archives according to the strategy. It can also be a solution for overcoming poor conditions of local archives management in Korea. Secondly, the strategy can encourage cooperation between collecting institutions including museums, libraries, archives, cultural centers, history institutions, etc. in each local region. In the networked environment the cooperation can be achieved more effectively than in traditional environment where the heavy workload of cooperative institutions is needed. Thirdly, the strategy can facilitate solidarity of various groups in local region. According to the analysis of the strategy projects, it is essential to collect their knowledge, passion, and enthusiasm of related groups to effectively implement the strategy. It can also provide a methodology for minor groups of society to document their memories. This study suggests the directions of documenting local regions in consideration of current archival infrastructure of Korean as follows; Firstly, very selective and intensive documentation should be pursued rather than comprehensive one for documenting local regions. Though it is a very political problem to decide what subject has priority for documentation, interests of local community members as well as professional groups should be considered in the decision-making process seriously. Secondly, it is effective to plan integrated representation of local history in the distributed custody of local archives. It would be desirable to implement archival gateway for integrated search and representation of local archives regardless of the location of archives. Thirdly, it is necessary to try digital documentation using Web 2.0 technologies. Documentation strategy as the methodology of selecting and acquiring archives can not avoid subjectivity and prejudices of appraiser completely. To mitigate the problems, open documentation system should be prepared for reflecting different interests of different groups. Fourth, it is desirable to apply a conspectus model used in cooperative collection management of libraries to document local regions digitally. Conspectus can show existing documentation strength and future documentation intensity for each participating institution. Using this, documentation level of each subject area can be set up cooperatively and effectively in the local regions.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
• /
• v.45 no.3
• /
• pp.60-79
• /
• 2012

Environment of ancient Chinese Buddhist temple can be classified to three types such as regional society(鄕村), famous mountain(名山), and urban areas(都市). This made differences in environment where a temple existed and in turn, affected development of Buddhism. And this made another type in relationship between Buddhist temple and a society. This study explains influences which regional society gave on not only Buddhist temple and a monk but also existence and development of Buddhism. When temples are placed in different environmental position, that is, urban areas and regional society, among a social structure, they eventually should adapt to a different society externally and internally. As told in above, ancient Chinese Buddhist temple was located in regional society, famous mountain, and urban areas. Since Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms, as number of temple much increased, and temples and monks were concentrated on famous mountain, temples in famous mountains and urban areas had developed showing similar aspects each other. But because temples in regional society were influenced a little differently, this study focused on the point. There are four kinds of influences between temples and monks in regional areas. Monks in regional areas had a comparatively close relationship with a society because they came from same area or surrounding areas. Therefore,powers of regional areas restrict influences made by monk group in temple. Second, temples in regional areas shared their joys and sorrows depending on regional economy. Temples in regional areas became a public place for the society and often a market place. In fact, construction and existence of a temple originally became a driving force in regional economy. This is because construction of temple needs artisans and materials and some temples had visitors and included market economy like consumption of incense and candles, though the economic size was large or small. And when regional areas experienced natural disaster or man-made disaster or had poor harvest or economy was in depression, monks left temples and then, temples themselves could not exist. Third, the relationship between temples in regional areas and Buddhists was distinguished from the temples in urban areas and famous mountains. This is because temples in China were places where monks practiced and at the same time, places where general Buddhists worshipped. So there were always a number of Buddhists around the temples. Forth, Buddhism in resional areas was connected to regional Folk beliefs. As a result, Buddhism was spread across the nation, worship with local color often was changed to Buddhist belief or was tinged with Buddhism. While temples in regional areas maintained a close relationship with regional society.they were influenced by the region or gave influences. As a representative example, temples in regional areas showed model behaviors instead of roles of facilities related to various cultures with comparatively advanced level - for example, school, hospital etc. The temples highly affected funerary rites in regional areas. Chinese tombs were mainlymade in regional areas. After death,people living in urban areas were buried in hometown or at least, they were buried in suburbs not urban areas. Temples in regional areas generally participated in funerary rites. Above shows that though most of famous Buddhist temples were located in urban areas not in famous mountains,majority of temples were located in vast regional areas. Through mutual interaction between temples and regional society, the temples in the regional areas were related to Chinese people of over 90% and regional areas became the most important foundation for Buddhism in China. Mutual influences between temples in regional areas and the general public in regions were omnidirectional and spreaded to every aspects of social life in small or large degree. Thus Tombs in temple were widely spreaded across regional areas over time and space. This is enough to explain a close relationship between Buddhist temples and rural society in ancient China.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.165-173
• /
• 1985

The objectives of the study were to investigate the effects of foliage clipping on photosynthesis and grain filling for branch and non branch types under the polyethylene film mulch and non mulch conditions in mono cropping and second cropping after barley in sesame (Sesamum indicum L.), and to improve poor grain filling at later flowering time utilizing these data. One thousand grain weight was more decreased in branch type than in non branch type, in polyethylene film mulch condition than in non mulch condition, and in second cropping after barley than in mono cropping by clipping lower part foliage. Twentyfive percent clipping of lower part foliage showed a little increase than no clipping. Matured grain rate also showed same tendency between branch and non branch type and between mono cropping and second cropping after barley as well as 1,000 grain weight except for polyethylene film mulch. Matured grain rate of 25% foliage clipping at 30 days after flowering in non branch type presented a little increase but decreased in branch type. Clipping of higher part leaves were so serious decrease of matured grain rate that higher part leaves at late maturing time have a major role in photosynthesis. Matured grain rate of foliage clipping at 10 days after flowering was decreased in all treatments. Chlorophyll content of higher part leaves at 50% lower part foliage clipping presented 39% increase compared to same positioned leaves of non treatment, and 66% increase by 50% higher part foliage clipping in lower part leaves. Photosynthetic activity was 58% more increased in 50% lower part foliage clipping than no clipping, but seriously decreased in 50% higher part foliage clipping. Therfore, photosynthates of remained lower part leaves could not only support their own demands, but also any contribution to translocation of photosynthates from source to sink at late maturing time. Harvest index was 28% increased in 25% lower part foliage clipping and 13% decreased in 50% higher part foliage clipping compared to no clipping. Leaf area was 48% increased in 50% lower part foliage clipping compared to the same positioned leaves of no clipping, and only 5% increased in higher part foliage clipping. Productivity by foliage clipping compared to non treatment, was highly decreased in branch type than in non branch type, in second cropping after barley than in mono cropping. Little difference was detected between polyethylene film mulch and non mulch conditions. Twenty five percentage of lower part foliage clipping on mono cropping of non branch type appeared 5% and 8% yield increase in each of polyethylene film mulch and non mulch conditions compared to no clipping, and all decreased in other treatments. Mean loss of productivity by foliage clipping at 10 days after flowering was serious than clipping at 30 days after flowering. As the result, contribution to photosynthesis of source at 10 days after flowering are larger than that at 30 days after flowering in sesame. Fifty percent lower part foliage clipping at 10 days after flowering showed so the most serious yield decrease that lower part leaves at that time were considered as the main role leaves for photosynthesis.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.35-45
• /
• 2023

First, The spatial distribution characteristics of old big trees were analyzed using ArcGIS figures by combining basic information such as species and ages of old big trees in Handan City, which were compiled by the local bureau of landscaping. The types of species, distribution by ages of trees, ownership status, growth status, and diversity status were comprehensively analyzed. Statistically, Styphnolobium, Acacia, Gleditsia, and Albizia of Fabaceae accounted for the majority, of which Sophora japonica accounted for the highest proportion. Sophora japonica is widely and intensively distributed to each prefecture and district in Handan city. According to the age and distribution, the old big trees over 1000 years old were mainly Sophora japonica, Zelkova serrata, Juniperus chinensis, Morus australis Koidz., Dalbergia hupeana Hance, Ceratonia siliqua L., and Pistacia chinensis, and Platycladus orientalis. Second, as found in each type of old big tree status, various types of old big tree status were investigated, the protection management system, protection management process, and protection management benefits were studied, and the protection of old big tree was closely related to the growth environment. Currently, the main driving force behind the protection of old big trees is the worship of old big trees. By depositing its sacredness to the old big tree and sublimating the natural character that nature gave to the old big tree into a guiding consciousness of social activities, nature's "beauty" and personality's "goodness" are well combined. The protection state of the old big tree is closely related to the degree of interaction with the surrounding environment and the participation of various cultures and subjects. In the process of continuously interacting with the surrounding environment during the long-term growth of old big trees, it seems that a natural sanctuary was formed around old big trees in the process of voluntarily establishing a "natural-cultural-scape" system involving bottom-up and top-down cross-regions, multicultural and multi-subjects. Third, China focused on protecting and recovering old big trees, but the protection management system is poor due to a lack of comprehensive consideration of historical and cultural values, plant diversity significance, and social values of old big trees in the management process. Three indicators of space's regional characteristics, property and protection characteristics, and value characteristics can be found in the evaluation of the natural characteristics of old giant trees, which are highly valuable in terms of traditional consciousness management, resource protection practice, faith system construction, and realization of life community values. A systematic management system should be supported as to whether they can be protected and developed for a long time. Fourth, as the perception of protected areas is not yet mature in China, "natural sanctuary" should be treated as an important research content in the process of establishing a nature reserve system. The form of natural sanctuary management, which focuses on bottom-up community participation, is a strong supplement to the current type of top-down nature reserve management in China. Based on this, the protection of old giant trees should be included in the form of a nature reserve called a natural monument in the nature reserve system. In addition, residents of the area around the nature reserve should be one of the main agents of biodiversity conservation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.1-20
• /
• 1972

The trend and achievements of forest genetics research in abroad were investigated through observation tours and reference work and following facts were found to be important aspects which should be adopted in the forest genetics research program in Korea. Because of world wide recognization on the urgency of taking a measure to reserve some areas of the representative forest type on the globe before the extingtion of such forest type as the results of continuous exploitations of the natural forests to meet the timber demand all over the world, it is urgently needed to take a measure to reserve certain areas of natural stand of Pinus koraiensis, Pinus parviflora, Pinus densiflora f. erectra, Abies koreana, Quercus sp., Populus sp., etc. as gene pool to be used for the future program of forest tree improvement. And the genetic studies of those natural forest of economic tree species are also to be performed. 1. Increase of the number of selected tree for breeding purpose. Because of the fact that the number of plus tree at present is too small to carry out selection program for tree improvement, particularly for the formation of source population for recurrent selection of parent trees of the 2nd generation seed orchard it is to be strongly emphasized to increase the number of plus tree by alleviating selection criteria in order to enlarge the population size of plus trees to make the selection program more efficient. 2. Progeny testing More stress should be placed on carrying out progeny testing of selected trees with open pollinated seeds. And particular efforts are to be made for conducting studies on adult/juvenile correlation of important traits with a view to enable to predict adult performances with some traits revealed in juvenile age thus to save time for progeny testing. 3. Genotype-environment interaction Studies on genotype and environment interaction should be conducted in order to elucidate whether the plus trees selected on the good site express their superiority on the poor site or not and how the environment affect the genotype. And the justification of present classification of seed distribution area should be examined. 4. Seed orchard of broad leaf tree species. Due to the difficulty of accurate comparison of growth rate of neighbouring trees of broad leaf tree species in natural stand, it is recommended that for the improvement of broad leaf trees a seedling seed orchard is to be made by roguing the progeny test plantation planted densely with control pollinated seedlings of selected trees. 5. Breeding for insect resistant varieties. In the light of the fact that the resistant characteristics against insect such as pine gall midge (Thiecodiplosis japonensis U. et I.) and pine bark beetle (Myelophilus pinipera L.) are highly correlated with the amount and quality of resin which are known as gene controlled characteristics, breeding for insect resistance should be carried out. 6. Breeding for timber properties. With the tree species for pulp wood in particular, emphasis should be placed upon breeding for high specific gravity of timber. 7. Introduction of Cryptomeria and Japanese Cypress In the light of the fact that the major clones of Cryptomeria are originated from Yoshino source and are being planted up to considerably north and high elevation in Japan, those species should be examined on their cold resistance in Korea by planting them in further northern part of the country.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.103-134
• /
• 1977

The physiological and biochemical role of potassium for upland crops according to recent research reports and the nutritional status of potassium in Korea were reviewed. Since physical and chemical characteristics of potassium ion are different from those of sodium, potassium can not completely be replaced by sodium and replacement must be limited to minimum possible functional area. Specific roles of potassium seem to keep fine structure of biological membranes such as thylacoid membrane of chloroplast in the most efficient form and to be allosteric effector and conformation controller of various enzymes principally in carbohydrate and protein metabolism. Potassium is essential to improve the efficiency of phoro- and oxidative- phosphorylation and involve deeply in all energy required metabolisms especially synthesis of organic matter and their translocation. Potassium has many important, physiological functions such as maintenance of osmotic pressure and optimum hydration of cell colloids, consequently uptake and translocation of water resulting in higher water use efficiency and of better subcellular environment for various physiological and biochemical activities. Potassium affects uptake and translocation of mineral nutrients and quality of products. potassium itself in products may become a quality criteria due to potassium essentiality for human beings. Potassium uptake is greatly decreased by low temperature and controlled by unknown feed back mechanism of potassium in plants. Thus the luxury absorption should be reconsidered. Total potassium content of upland soil in Korea is about 3% but the exchangeable one is about 0.3 me/100g soil. All upland crops require much potassium probably due to freezing and cold weather and also due to wet damage and drought caused by uneven rainfall pattern. In barley, potassium should be high at just before freezing and just after thawing and move into grain from heading for higher yield. Use efficiency of potassium was 27% for barley and 58% in old uplands, 46% in newly opened hilly lands for soybean. Soybean plant showed potassium deficiency symptom in various fields especially in newly opened hilly lands. Potassium criteria for normal growth appear 2% $K_2O$ and 1.0 K/(Ca+Mg) (content ratio) at flower bud initiation stage for soybean. Potassium requirement in plant was high in carrot, egg plant, chinese cabbage, red pepper, raddish and tomato. Potassium content in leaves was significantly correlated with yield in chinese cabbage. Sweet potato. greatly absorbed potassium subsequently affected potassium nutrition of the following crop. In the case of potassium deficiency, root showed the greatest difference in potassium content from that of normal indicating that deficiency damages root first. Potatoes and corn showed much higher potassium content in comparison with calcium and magnesium. Forage crops from ranges showed relatively high potassium content which was significantly and positively correlated with nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium content. Percentage of orchards (apple, pear, peach, grape, and orange) insufficient in potassium ranged from 16 to 25. The leaves and soils from the good apple and pear orchards showed higher potassium content than those from the poor ones. Critical ratio of $K_2O/(CaO+MgO)$ in mulberry leaves to escape from winter death of branch tip was 0.95. In the multiple croping system, exchangeable potassium in soils after one crop was affected by the previous crops and potassium uptake seemed to be related with soil organic matter providing soil moisture and aeration. Thus, the long term and quantitative investigation of various forms of potassium including total one are needed in relation to soil, weather and croping system. Potassium uptake and efficiency may be increased by topdressing, deep placement, slow-releasing or granular fertilizer application with the consideration of rainfall pattern. In all researches for nutritional explanation including potassium of crop yield reasonable and practicable nutritional indices will most easily be obtained through multifactor analysis.