• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.91-116
• /
• 1991

Market liberalization progressing simultaneously with high and rapidly rising domestic wages has created an adverse business environment for domestic firms. Korean firms are losing their international competitiveness in comparison to firms from LDC(Less Developed Countries) in low-tech industries. In high-tech industries, domestic firms without government protection (which is impossible due to the liberalization policy and the current international status of the Korean economy) are in a disadvantaged position relative to firms from advanced countries. This paper examines the division of roles between the private sector and the government in order to achieve a successful structural adjustment, which has become the impending industrial policy issue caused by high domestic wages, on the one hand, and the opening of domestic markets, on the other. The micro foundation of the economy-wide structural adjustment is actually the restructuring of business portfolios at the firm level. The firm-level business restructuring means that firms in low-value-added businesses or with declining market niches establish new major businesses in higher value-added segments or growing market niches. The adjustment of the business structure at the firm level can only be accomplished by accumulating firm-specific managerial assets necessary to establish a new business structure. This can be done through learning-by-doing in the whole system of management, including research and development, manufacturing, and marketing. Therefore, the voluntary cooperation among the people in the company is essential for making the cost of the learning process lower than that at the competing companies. Hence, firms that attempt to restructure their major businesses need to induce corporate-wide participation through innovations in organization and management, encourage innovative corporate culture, and maintain cooperative labor unions. Policy discussions on structural adjustments usually regard firms as a black box behind a few macro variables. But in reality, firm activities are not flows of materials but relationships among human resources. The growth potential of companies are embodied in the human resources of the firm; the balance of interest among stockholders, managers, and workers of the company' brings the accumulation of the company's core competencies. Therefore, policymakers and economists shoud change their old concept of the firm as a technological black box which produces a marketable commodities. Firms should be regarded as coalitions of interest groups such as stockholders, managers, and workers. Consequently the discussion on the structural adjustment both at the macroeconomic level and the firm level should be based on this new paradigm of understanding firms. The government's role in reducing the cost of structural adjustment and supporting should the creation of new industries emphasize the following: First, government must promote the competition in domestic markets by revising laws related to antitrust policy, bankruptcy, and the promotion of small and medium-sized companies. General consensus on the limitations of government intervention and the merit of deregulation should be sought among policymakers and people in the business world. In the age of internationalization, nation-specific competitive advantages cannot be exclusively in favor of domestic firms. The international competitiveness of a domestic firm derives from the firm-specific core competencies which can be accumulated by internal investment and organization of the firm. Second, government must build up a solid infrastructure of production factors including capital, technology, manpower, and information. Structural adjustment often entails bankruptcies and partial waste of resources. However, it is desirable for the government not to try to sustain marginal businesses, but to support the diversification or restructuring of businesses by assisting in factor creation. Institutional support for venture businesses needs to be improved, especially in the financing system since many investment projects in venture businesses are highly risky, even though they are very promising. The proportion of low-value added production processes and declining industries should be reduced by promoting foreign direct investment and factory automation. Moreover, one cannot over-emphasize the importance of future-oriented labor policies to be based on the new paradigm of understanding firm activities. The old laws and instititutions related to labor unions need to be reformed. Third, government must improve the regimes related to money, banking, and the tax system to change business practices dependent on government protection or undesirable in view of the evolution of the Korean economy as a whole. To prevent rational business decisions from contradicting to the interest of the economy as a whole, government should influence the business environment, not the business itself.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.16B no.5
• /
• pp.341-346
• /
• 2009

The motion data glove is a representative human-computer interaction tool that inputs human hand gestures to computers by measuring their motions. The motion data glove is essential equipment used for new computer technologiesincluding home automation, virtual reality, biometrics, motion capture. For its popular usage, this paper attempts to develop an inexpensive visual.type motion data glove that can be used without any special equipment. The proposed approach has the special feature; it can be developed as a low-cost one becauseof not using high-cost motion-sensing fibers that were used in the conventional approaches. That makes its easy production and popular use possible. This approach adopts a visual method that is obtained by improving conventional optic motion capture technology, instead of mechanical method using motion-sensing fibers. Compared to conventional visual methods, the proposed method has the following advantages and originalities Firstly, conventional visual methods use many cameras and equipments to reconstruct 3D pose with eliminating occlusions But the proposed method adopts a mono vision approachthat makes simple and low cost equipments possible. Secondly, conventional mono vision methods have difficulty in reconstructing 3D pose of occluded parts in images because they have weak points about occlusions. But the proposed approach can reconstruct occluded parts in images by using originally designed thin-bar-shaped optic indicators. Thirdly, many cases of conventional methods use nonlinear numerical computation image analysis algorithm, so they have inconvenience about their initialization and computation times. But the proposed method improves these inconveniences by using a closed-form image analysis algorithm that is obtained from original formulation. Fourthly, many cases of conventional closed-form algorithms use approximations in their formulations processes, so they have disadvantages of low accuracy and confined applications due to singularities. But the proposed method improves these disadvantages by original formulation techniques where a closed-form algorithm is derived by using exponential-form twist coordinates, instead of using approximations or local parameterizations such as Euler angels.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.69-96
• /
• 1991

Economic circumstances of enterprise began to change after a series of democratization measures in 1987. Accompanied with it, competitive advantage of enterprise began to change as well. By that time Korean enterprises had a competitive advantage based on low wages of labor. Abrupt and steady upsurge in wage, however, weakened competitive advantage based on low wages, upward revaluation of won currency caused by surplus in BOP strengthened upward trend in price increase of export products. An urgent problem in Korea economy is, therefore, to find 'new' competitive advantage. For the time being preserving competitiveness based on cost advantage must inevitably remain our basic strategy in industrial policy. While cost advantage in the past referred to low wage level, this cost advantage must have foundation on the improvment in producing technology, which will increase labor productivity and decrease unit cost of products. Besides, other measure to improve competitiveness can be considered such as increasing the extent of production automation, self-development of new products, and spread and strengthening subcontracting system among various enterprises. In this paper we tried to perceive how subcontracting system as a form of intercompany division of labor operates and to which direction this system proceeds responding to the recent changes in economic circumstances. Speaking more concretly, we tried to perceive how large the gap of bargaining power between mother-company and subcontracting company is and how effectively subcontracting company's technical power contributes to mother-company. Facing up to weakeening of competitiveness, how stably is the partnership between mother-company and subcontracting company established and what measures are being prepared to retore the weakened competitiveness. In conclusion the result of investigation through the questionaire on subcontracting system is positive, from which we can infer the optimistic view of restoring Korean economy's competitiveness.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.5-22
• /
• 1994

This paper attempts to define some general characteristics of the Abstracting Journals published in Korea as evidenced in those published during last ten years. This purpose is achieved by comparing the results of the two studies conducted by the author in 1984 and in 1994. Both studies were conducted to present the state of the art in the abstracting services in Korea. The major conclusions made in this paper are summarised as follows： (1) Researchers and professionals working in a small number of subject fields are benefited by the abstracting journals, which provide current-awareness services of recent achievements in research and development in Korea. Those in most of the fields have no abstracting journals of their own, and naturally they have no substantial abstract-ing services. Even many researchers and professionals in the fields that have some abstracting journals are not informed of research results in their fields because the abstracting journals are scattered in many narrow subjects and in many cases, the abstracting journals only cover publications in some specific forms and kinds. (2) Abstracting journals that cover more than two subject fields, which are supposed to be of more or less help to the researchers and professionals in the subject fields that have no abstracting journals published in their fields, have rapidly increased in number in the past ten years. Most of suh abstracting journals carry thesis and dissertation abstracts, and the rest, those of research papers published in specific places, in specific forms, by specific institutions, and of reports of research projects sponsored by specific foundations. These abstracting journals are not of the kind that comprehensively provide researchers in related fields with current awareness of publications of research results in Korea. (3) Most of the abstracting Journals existing in Korea are Published by institutions of higher education and research institutes, and the rest, by commercial publishers, industrial firms, libraries, information centres, government agencies, research foundations, learned societies, etc. Those which publish many titles are small in number and those publish one or two titles are large in number. The former is largely made up of institutions of higher education and research institutes. (4) The abstracting journals published in Korea are classified by type into those of dissertations, research papers, journal articles, patent specifications in that descending order. The fact that Master; and doctoral dissertation abstracts ate dominating in Korea is due to the irrational practice of publishing those abstracts at many different institutions. (5) Most of the abstracting journals existing in Korea are published by national or government-supported research institutes in order to publicise their own research outputs. Their coverage of literature is normally narrow, and naturally their value to users is limited. (6) Korean is the desirable language for the abstracting journals intended to be distributed within Korea. About half of the abstracting jornals published in Korea is printed in Korean and the other half, in foreign languages, and in Korean and in foreign languages together. All the abstracting journals in foreign languages are printed in English except one, which is printed in Japanese. (7) Some twenty per cent of the abstracting journals in Korea is published monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly. The others are published annually, biannually and irregularly. The latter may not function properly as a current-awareness tool due to long intervals between their issues. It is particularly undesirable that about half of the abstracting journals in Korea is published irregularly. Most of the abstracting journals published in Korea are distributed freely to individuals and institutions selected by the publishers. (8) The abstracting journals published by the use of computers increased drastically in the past ten years. The abstracting journals produced by the conventional type-setting method will possibly disappear in Korea in another ten years to come. Automation of the production of abstracting journals does not simply mean technical, economic improvement in publishing processes but availability of machine-readable databases that can be used for many other pur-poses, including generation of other bibliographical publications and provision of machine literature searching capabilities. Necessary steps should be taken for this important development immediately.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
• /
• v.24
• /
• pp.9-51
• /
• 1993

The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate into general characteristics of the abstracting services in Korea and to discuss general directions of development of the abstracting services in the country. This study is designed to achieve the purpose by gathering and analysing data related to the abstracting journals published in the past ten years and by comparing the results with similar data gathered by the investigator in 1984. The major conclusions made in this study is summarised as follows. (1) Researchers and professionals working in limited numbers of subject fields are benefited by abstracting services of recent achievements in research and development in Korea. Those in most of the fields have essentially no abstracting services of such achievements. Even many researchers and professionals in the limited numbers of the fields that have some elementary abstracting services are not informed of research results in their fields because the abstracting journals are scattered in many narrow subjects and in many cases, the abstracting journals only cover publications in some specific forms and kinds. (2) Abstracting journals of general subjects, which are supposed to be of more or less help to the researchers in the subject fields that have no abstracting journals of their own, have rapidly increased in number in the past ten years. Most of such abstracting journals carry thesis and dissertation abstracts, and the rest those of research papers published in specific places, in specific forms, by specific institutes, and of reports of research projects sponsored by specific foundations. These abstracting journals are not of the kind that comprehensively provide general readers with current awareness of publications of research results in Korea. (3) Most of the abstracting journals existing in Korea are published by institutions of higher education and research institutes, and the rest by commercial publishers, industrial firms, libraries, information centers, government agencies, research foundations, learned societies, etc. Those which publish many titles are small in number and those publish one or two titles are large in number. The former is largely made up of institutions of higher education and research institutes. (4) Ten years ago, there was not a single publishing house that produced abstracting journals. Three commercial publishing houses now produce abstracting journals. As this change occurs, centers of excellence are founded and competitive elements are introduced in abstracting services. This change, in turn, is expected to improve quality of the other abstracting journals in Korea. (5) The abstracting journals published in Korea are classified by type into those of dissertations, research papers, journal articles, patent specifications in that descending order. The fact that Master's and doctoral dissertation abstracts are dominating in Korea is due to the irrational practice of publishing those abstracts at many institutions. (6) Most of the abstracting journals existing in Korea are published by national or government-supported research institutes in order to publicise their own research outputs. Their coverage of literature is normally narrow, and naturally their value to users is limited. (7) The abstracting journals published in Korea increased in number at the rate of $77.8-100\%$ every five years in the past twenty-five years. Most of the abstracting journals that ceased to be published during the period survived for two years. (8) Korean is the desirable language for the abstracting journals designed to be distributed within Korea. About half of the abstracting journals published in Korea is printed in Korean and the other half in foreign languages, and in Korean with foreign languages. All the abstracting journals in foreign languages are printed in English xcept one, which is printed in Japanese. (9) Some twenty percent of the abstracting journals in Korea is published monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly. Others are published annually, biannually, and irregularly. The latter may not function properly as a current-awareness tool due to long intervals between their issues. It is particularly undesirable that about half of the abstracting journals in Korea is published irregularly. Most of the abstracting journals published in Korea are distributed freely to individuals and institutions selected by the publishers. (10) The abstracting journals published by the use of computers increased drastically in the past ten years. The abstracting journals produced by the conventional type-setting method will probably disappear In Korea in another ten years to come. Automation of the production of abstracting journals does not simply mean technical, economic improvement of publishing processes but availability of machine-readable databases that can be used for other purposes, including the generation of other publications and the provision of machine literature searching capabilities. Necessary steps should be taken for this important development that is occurring in the abstracting services in Korea.