• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

'The worstest environment disaster', 'World's first biocide massacre', 'Home-based Sewol ferry disaster' are all phrases attached to the recent humidifier disinfectant disaster. In the spring of 2011, four of 8 pregnant women including 1 adult man passed away at a university hospital in Seoul due to breathing failure. Epidemiologic investigation conducted by the Korean CDC soon revealed the inhalation of humidifier disinfectant, which had been widely used in Korea during the winter, to be responsible for the disease. As well as lung fibrosis hardening of the lungs, other diseases including asthma, rhinitis, skin disease, liver disease, fetal disease or cancers have been researched for their relation with exposure to the products. By February 9, 2017, 5,342 cases had registered for health problems and 1,131 of them were already dead (20.8% mortality rate). Based on studies by government agencies and a telephone survey of the general population by Seoul National University and civic groups, around 20% of the general public of Korea has used these products. Since the market release of the first product by SK Chemical in 1994, over 7.1 million items from around 20 brands were sold up to 2011. Most of the products were manufactured by well-known large conglomerates such as SK, Lotte, Samsung, Shinsegye, LG, and GS, as well as some European companies including UK-based Reckitt Benckiser and TESCO, the German firm Henkel, the Danish firm KeTox, and an Irish company. Even though this disaster was unveiled in 2011 by the Korean government, the issue of the victims was neglected for over five years. In 2016, an unexpected but intensive investigation by prosecutors found that Reckitt Benckiser manipulated and concealed animal tests for its own brand and brought several university experts and company employees to court. The matter was an intense social issue in Korea from May to June with a surge in media coverage. The prosecutor's investigation and a nationwide boycott campaign organized by victims and environmental groups against Reckitt Benckiser, whose product had been used by more than 70% of victims, led to the producer's official apology and a compensation scheme. A legislative investigation organized after the April 2016 national election revealed the producers' faults and the government's responsibility, but failed to meet expectations. A special law for the victims passed the National Assembly in January 2017 and a punitive system together with a massive environmental epidemiology investigation are expected to be the only solutions for this tragedy. Sciences of medicine, toxicology and environmental health have provided decisive evidence so far, but for the remaining problems the perspectives of social sciences such as sociology and jurisprudence are highly necessary, similar to with the Minamata disease and Wonjin Rayon events. It may not be easy to follow this issue using unfamiliar terminology from medical and chemical science and the long, complicated history of the event. For these reasons the author has attempted to write this article in a question and answer format to render it easier to follow. The 17 questions are: Q1 What is humidifier disinfectant? Q2 What kind of health problems are caused by humidifier disinfectant? Q3 How many victims are there? Q4 What is the analysis of the 1,112 cases of death? Q5 What is the problem with the government's diagnostic criteria and the solution? Q6 Who made what brands? Q7 Has there been a recall? What is still on sale? Q8 Was safety not checked by any producers? Q9 What are the government's responsibilities? Q10 Is it true that these products were sold only in Korea? Q11 Why and how was it unveiled only in 2011 after 17 years of sales? Q12 What delayed the resolution of the victim issue? Q13 What is the background of the prosecutor's investigation in early 2016? Q14 Is it possible to report new victim cases without evidence of product purchase? Q15 What is happening with the victim issue? Q16 How does it compare with the cases of Minamata disease and Wonjin Rayon? Q17 Are there prevention measures and lessons?

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.136-142
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• 2022

According to media reports, the carcasses of euthanized abandoned dogs were processed at high temperature and pressure to make powder, and then used as feed materials (meat and bone meal), raising the possibility of residuals in the feed of the anesthetic ketamine and dexmedetomidine used for euthanasia. Therefore, a simultaneous analysis method using QuEChERS combined with high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry was developed for rapid residue analysis. The method developed in this study exhibited linearity of 0.999 and higher. Selectivity was evaluated by analyzing blank and spiked samples at the limit of quantification. The MRM chromatograms of blank samples were compared with those of spiked samples with the analyte, and there were no interferences at the respective retention times of ketamine and dexmedetomidine. The detection and quantitation limits of the instrument were 0.6 ㎍/L and 2 ㎍/L, respectively. The limit of quantitation for the method was 10 ㎍/kg. The results of the recovery test on meat and bone meal, meat meal, and pet food showed ketamine in the range of 80.48-98.63 % with less than 5.00 % RSD, and dexmedetomidine in the range of 72.75-93.00 % with less than 4.83 % RSD. As a result of collecting and analyzing six feeds, such as meat and bone meal, prepared at the time the raw material was distributed, 10.8 ㎍/kg of ketamine was detected in one sample of meat and bone meal, while dexmedetomidine was found to have a concentration below the limit of quantitation. It was confirmed that the detected sample was distributed before the safety issue was known, and thereafter, all the meat and bone meal made with the carcasses of euthanized abandoned dogs was recalled and completely discarded. To ensure the safety of the meat and bone meal, 32 samples of the meat and bone meal as well as compound feed were collected, and additional residue investigations were conducted for ketamine and dexmedetomidine. As a result of the analysis, no component was detected. However, through this investigation, it was confirmed that some animal drugs, such as anesthetics, can remain without decomposition even at high temperature and pressure; therefore, there is a need for further investigation of other potentially hazardous substances not controlled in the feed.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2015

As opinion mining in big data applications has been highlighted, a lot of research on unstructured data has made. Lots of social media on the Internet generate unstructured or semi-structured data every second and they are often made by natural or human languages we use in daily life. Many words in human languages have multiple meanings or senses. In this result, it is very difficult for computers to extract useful information from these datasets. Traditional web search engines are usually based on keyword search, resulting in incorrect search results which are far from users' intentions. Even though a lot of progress in enhancing the performance of search engines has made over the last years in order to provide users with appropriate results, there is still so much to improve it. Word sense disambiguation can play a very important role in dealing with natural language processing and is considered as one of the most difficult problems in this area. Major approaches to word sense disambiguation can be classified as knowledge-base, supervised corpus-based, and unsupervised corpus-based approaches. This paper presents a method which automatically generates a corpus for word sense disambiguation by taking advantage of examples in existing dictionaries and avoids expensive sense tagging processes. It experiments the effectiveness of the method based on Naïve Bayes Model, which is one of supervised learning algorithms, by using Korean standard unabridged dictionary and Sejong Corpus. Korean standard unabridged dictionary has approximately 57,000 sentences. Sejong Corpus has about 790,000 sentences tagged with part-of-speech and senses all together. For the experiment of this study, Korean standard unabridged dictionary and Sejong Corpus were experimented as a combination and separate entities using cross validation. Only nouns, target subjects in word sense disambiguation, were selected. 93,522 word senses among 265,655 nouns and 56,914 sentences from related proverbs and examples were additionally combined in the corpus. Sejong Corpus was easily merged with Korean standard unabridged dictionary because Sejong Corpus was tagged based on sense indices defined by Korean standard unabridged dictionary. Sense vectors were formed after the merged corpus was created. Terms used in creating sense vectors were added in the named entity dictionary of Korean morphological analyzer. By using the extended named entity dictionary, term vectors were extracted from the input sentences and then term vectors for the sentences were created. Given the extracted term vector and the sense vector model made during the pre-processing stage, the sense-tagged terms were determined by the vector space model based word sense disambiguation. In addition, this study shows the effectiveness of merged corpus from examples in Korean standard unabridged dictionary and Sejong Corpus. The experiment shows the better results in precision and recall are found with the merged corpus. This study suggests it can practically enhance the performance of internet search engines and help us to understand more accurate meaning of a sentence in natural language processing pertinent to search engines, opinion mining, and text mining. Naïve Bayes classifier used in this study represents a supervised learning algorithm and uses Bayes theorem. Naïve Bayes classifier has an assumption that all senses are independent. Even though the assumption of Naïve Bayes classifier is not realistic and ignores the correlation between attributes, Naïve Bayes classifier is widely used because of its simplicity and in practice it is known to be very effective in many applications such as text classification and medical diagnosis. However, further research need to be carried out to consider all possible combinations and/or partial combinations of all senses in a sentence. Also, the effectiveness of word sense disambiguation may be improved if rhetorical structures or morphological dependencies between words are analyzed through syntactic analysis.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.431-439
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• 2014

The purposes of this research were to investigate the enrichment of metal-reducing bacteria from KURT groundwater and the identification of the microbial diversity by 16S rRNA as well as to examine microbial Fe(III)/Mn(IV) reduction and to analyze morphological features of interactions between microbes and precipitates and their mineralogical composition. To cultivate metal-reducing bacteria from groundwater sampled at the KURT in S. Korea, different electron donors such as glucose, acetate, lactate, formate, pyruvate and Fe(III)-citrate as an electron accepter were added into growth media. The enriched culture was identified by 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis for the diversity of microbial species. The effect of electron donors (i.e., glucose, acetate, lactate, formate, pyruvate) and electron acceptors (i.e., akaganeite, manganese oxide) on microbial iron/manganese reduction and biomineralization were examined using the 1st enriched culture, respectively. SEM, EDX, and XRD analyses were used to determine morphological features, chemical composition of microbes and mineralogical characteristics of the iron and manganese minerals. Based on 16S rRNA gene analysis, the four species, Fusibacter, Desulfuromonas, Actinobacteria, Pseudomonas sp., from KURT groundwater were identified as anaerobic metal reducers and these microbes precipitated metals outside of cells in common. XRD and EDX analyses showed that Fe(III)-containing mineral, akaganeite (${\beta}$-FeOOH), reduced into Fe(II)/Fe(III)-containing magnetite ($Fe_3O_4$) and Mn(IV)-containing manganese oxide (${\lambda}-MnO_2$) into Mn(II)-containing rhodochrosite ($MnCO_3$) by the microbes. These results implicate that microbial metabolism and respiratory activities under anaerobic condition result in reduction and biomineralization of iron and manganese minerals. Therefore, the microbes cultivated from groundwater in KURT might play a major role to reduce various metals from highly toxic, mobile to less toxic, immobile.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.50
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• pp.175-206
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• 2017

The current study described the history of Islamic extremism and the recent expansion of international Islamic extremism in Indonesia. For doing so, both content analysis of the existing written documents and qualitative interviews were conducted. For the content analysis, media reports and research articles were collected and utilized. For qualitative interviews, Indonesian students and workers in Korea, Korean spouses married to Indonesian, and Korean missionaries in Indonesia were contacted and interviewed. Qualitative interview was conducted between 30 minutes and 2 hours. On the spot, interviews were recorded and later transcribed into written documents. Due to the difficulty of identification of population and the uneasiness of accessability to th study subjects, convenient sampling and snowball sampling were used. According to the results, Islamic extremism in Indonesia had a deep historical root and generally shared similar historical experience with other muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia where Islamic extremism was deeply rooted in. That is, Islamic extremism began as a reaction to the western imperialism, after independence, Islamic extremism elements were marginalized in the process of construction of the modern nation-state, and Islamic extremist movement was radicalized and became violent during the Soviet-Afghan War. In addition, after 9.11, Islamic extremism in Indonesia was connected to international Islamic extremism network and integrated into such global movement. Such a historical development of Indonesian Islamic extremism was quite organized and robust. Meanwhile, the eastward infiltration and expansion of international Islamic extremism such as IS and Al Qaeda was observed in Indonesia. Particularly, such a worrisome expansion was more clearly visible in the marginalized and underdeveloped countrysides in Indonesia. Such expansion in Indonesia could negatively affect on the security of South Korea. Geographically, Indonesia is proximate to South Korea. This geographical proximity could be a direct security threat to the Korean society, as if Islamic extremism in North Africa and Middle East becomes a direct security threat to Europe. Considering the presence of a large size of Indonesian immigrant workers and communities in South Korea, such a concern is very realistic. The arrest of an Indonesian Islamic extremism supporter in November, 2016, could be a harbinger of the coming trend of Islamic extremism expansion inside South Korea. The Indonesian Islamic community in South Korea could be a passage of Indonesian Islamic extremism into the South Korean society. In this context, it is timely and necessary to pay an attention to the recent trend of Islamic extremism expansion in Indonesia.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.64-78
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• 2024

Storytelling is a communication technique to express and convey the story using various media, where the audience accepts the story, reinterprets the topic and interacts with the storyteller. It was assumed that the user's significance and awareness about the storytelling technique applied to historical theme parks would have an impact on the satisfaction of using the theme park and intention to revisit. In this study, it was purposed to derive the structural factors of spatial storytelling in historical theme parks, and to understand the impact of user's awareness and constituent factors on user responses. Based on previous researches, the structural factors of spatial storytelling in historical theme parks were derived related to theme, experientiality, unusualness, educationalness, unity, expressiveness, interactivity, and interest, and for which the users' awareness was surveyed. The survey was conducted targeting the users of Samguk Yusa Theme Park located in Gunwi-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, where the collected data was analyzed using EXCEL2020 and SPSS 21.0 statistical programs, and the results are as follows: First, the spatial storytelling technique applied as a conveying method of the theme of Samguk Yusa Theme Park affects users' satisfaction and intention to revisit, and most respondents responded that the storytelling was significant. Second, it showed that the significance of unusualness and educationalness among the awareness of significance of the spatial storytelling constituent factors of Samguk Yusa Theme Park has a significant impact on user's satisfaction, and the significance of unusualness, interactivity, educationalness, and interest has a significant impact on intention to revisit. Third, it showed that the awareness of interest, theme, and unity has a significant impact on user's satisfaction depending on the user's awareness of spatial storytelling constituent factors of Samguk Yusa Theme Park, and the awareness of interactivity and experientiality has a significant impact on intention to revisit. This study is meaningful in quantitative analysis and interpretation of the influence of storytelling on user's response to historical theme parks by the exploratory analysis of characteristic factors and spatial storytelling constituent factors on historical theme parks and deriving the structural factors of spatial storytelling in historical theme parks.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.958-969
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• 1998

In this study, we attempted to investigate the needs and problems of the terminal cancer patients and their family caregivers to provide them with nursing information to improve their quality of life and prepare for a peaceful death. Data was collected from August 1, 1995 to July 31, 1996 at the internal medicine unit of S hospital in Seoul area with the two groups of participants who were family members of terminal cancer patients seventy four of them were in-patients and 34 were out-patients who were discharged from the same hospital for home care. The research tool used in this study has been developed by selecting the questionnaires from various references, modifying them for our purpose and refining them based on the results of preliminary study. While general background information about the patients was obtained by reviewing their medical records, all other information was collected by interviewing the primary family caregivers of the patients using the questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed with the SPSS PC/sup +/ program. The results of this study are summarized as follows ; 1) Most frequently complained symptoms of the terminal cancer patients were in the order of pain(87%), weakness(86.1%), anorexia(83.3%) and fatigue (80.6%). 2) Main therapies for the terminal cancer patients were pain control (58.3%), hyperalimentation(47.2%) and antibiotics(21.3%). 3) Special medical devices that terminal cancer patients used most were oxygen device (11.1%), and feeding tube(5.6%). Other devices were used by less than 5% of the patients. 4) The mobility of 70.4% of the patients was worse than ECOG 3 level, they had to stay in bed more than 50% of a day. 5) Patients wanted their medical staffs to help relieve pain(45.4%), various physical symptoms(29.6%), and problems associated with their emotion(11.1%). 6) 16.7% of the family caregivers hoped for full recovery of the patients, refusing to admit the status of the patients. Also, 37% wished for the extension of the patient's life at least for 6 months. 7) Only 38.9% of the family members was preparing for the patient's funeral. 8) 45.4% of family caregivers prefer hospital as the place for the patient's death, 39.8% their own home, and 14.8% undetermined. 9) Caregivers of the patients were mostly close family members, i.e., spouse(62%), and sons and daughters or daughter-in-laws(21.3%). 10) 43.5% of the family caregivers were aware of hospice care. 46.8% of them learned about the hospice care from the mass media, 27.7% from health professionals, and the rest from books and other sources. 11) Caregivers were asked about the most difficult problems they encounter in home care, 41 of them pointed out the lack of health professionals they can contact, counsel and get help from in case of emergency, 17 identified the difficulty of finding appropriate transportation to hospital, and 13 stated the difficulty of admission in hospital as needed. 12) 93.6% of family caregivers demanded 24-hour hot line, 80% the visiting nurses and doctors, and 69.4% the volunteer's help. The above results indicate that terminal patients and their family caregivers demand help from qualified health professionals whenever necessary. Hospice care system led by well-trained medical and nursing staffs is one of the viable answers for such demands.

• Archives of design research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.151-160
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• 2003

Packages have been used for a wide variety of purposes, for protection, for display, for transportation of goods, or for keeping personal belongings. According to the demands of society and the times, liquor packages have been specialized and have appeared in almost every shape and size without restriction to cine particular type of material. In spite of its rapid development and wide application in our society, liquor package design has rarely been considered as a subject of comprehensive study. Majoring in package design, I have become especially interested in the area of liquor package design. I would like to explore liquor package design from several aspects. With the advent of new market and the rise of a new consumer society, advertising and mass media have expanded rapidly. While convenience of use is not a major issue, serving size certainly are quality, appeal of heritage and health concerns. Heritage is a major consumer appeal in Whisky, Beer, Wine and spirits. Designers have drawn heavily on the tradition of alcoholic products, have used type and graphics to create the illusion of heritage for new products. A sidelight to the heritage aspect of spirits package is the evolution of outer boxes for international liquors. International liquors package design illustrated the past and current themes. The design is contemporary and spare. Colored panels correlated to the liquor flavor used on clean white, black, gold boxes. While this research does not deny the impact of structural innovation and convenience package design , it does deny the existence of a graphic plateau. It is assumed therefore, that development in technology can facilitate communication between East and West. This can be accomplished because as containers of products are used in social setting, their form will gradually apply strong influence to the need for economical, easily handled, easily utilized packaging. Typically, ethnic package designs are those packages containing products which are prepared and marketed to a category of people who are prepared and marketed to a culture traits. They are liquor products sold in the metropolitan New York area which are marketed specially to Asians, Hispanics, or Eurpean population. These cultural groups share numerous traits including religion, language, dietary habits and traditional drinking styles. Therefore, the products which are familiar or common in their native countries are often imported or marketed there to serve them. These packages and products are frequently found on the shelves of supermarkets in predominantly ethnic areas. That is Korea, Japan if packaging is correctly design it would appeal to the American market. My research is that oriental beverage -Soju is good example of this precept. Assumedly, there must be a degree of subjectivity since it is a mean in which the consumers can relate to its advertising. This degree to relate and identify is the degree to which the package will be remembered and purchased. Subjectivity is intimately related to purchases since there is no such thing as a rational purchase in a society that operates on mass consumption. It is essential that packages become more personal human, entertaining, and more like advertising in order to maximize merchandising potential.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.213-224
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• 2007

In this study, hatched male broiler chicks(Ross) were fed on a basal diet and LPS was administered via intraperitoneal injection three times every other day, on the 9th, 11th and 13th days of the experiment, and then PBMC and splenocytes were isolated on day 14. The degree of alama blue reduction was evaluated at 4, 24, 48, 96 and 120 h in the splenocytes, and at 4, 8, 12, 24 and 48 h for PBMC of incubation after the addition of alama blue solution to the media. The cell numbers used in this experiment were 103, 104 and 105 cells per well, and the con A levels were 0.0, 1.0, 5.0, and 10.0 ㎍ per ml of medium. 1. The degree of alama blue reduction was found to increase in a linear fashion with increasing incubation time and cell numbers, for both splenocytes and PBMC. 2. During acute phase response, the degree to which alama blue was reduced was significantly elevated (p<0.05) at an incubation time of 24 hr for the splenocytes, 4 hr for PBMC, and a cell number of 105 cells per well, respectively. 3. The raised reduction of alama blue to control was linear with Con A levels in medium, and higher reduction in Con A 10.0 ㎍ relative to 1.0 or 5.0 ㎍ in ml medium was shown 4. The medium with autologous serum evidenced a significantly (p<0.05) higher reduction of alama blue relative to FBS. 5. Splenocytes and PBMC from the LPS-injected birds evidenced significantly higher levels of alama blue reduction regardless of incubation time, number of cells, level of Con A added, or serum type, as compared with what was observed in normal birds. The results indicated that the assay conditions for proliferative activity using the alama blue method in birds in which the acute phase response had been activated via intraperitoneal LPS injection requires 4 hrs of incubation for PBMC, 24 hrs of incubation for splenocytes, and 10㎍ of Con A per ml of medium.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.140-146
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• 2018

This research was conducted to determine the influence of incorporation levels of sulfur into a coir dust+pine bark medium (1:1, v/v) on the changes in the bicarbonate ($HCO_3{^-}$) concentrations and pH of soil solution, crop growth, and nutrient uptake of 'Ssanta' strawberry. In the preparing of the mixed medium, sulfur powder was added with the rate of 0 (control), 0.23, 0.45, 0.90, and $1.80g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ and Hoagland nutrient solution containing $240mg{\cdot}L^{-1}$ $HCO_3{^-}$ was supplied during the crop cultivation. The growth measurements and tissue analysis for the determination of nutrient contents were carried out 140 days after solution application and the soil solution analysis was performed every two weeks. As the level of sulfur was elevated, the overall growth of mother plants became better showing that the growth indexes except chlorophyll contents were the lowest in control treatment but the statistical differences were not found among the three treatments of $0.45g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ or higher sulfur. The higher the levels of sulfur incorporation, the higher the occurrence of runners and the growth of daughter plants. The length of the runners and the number of daughter plants occurred per mother plants were higher in the treatments of 0.90 and $1.80g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ than the three treatments of 0, 0.23, and $0.45g{\cdot}L^{-1}$, but the statistical differences were not observed between the 0.90 and $1.80g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ treatments. The rose of pH and $HCO_3{^-}$ concentrations in soil solution of root media continued all the cropping period, but those decreased slightly in the treatments of $0.90g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ or higher. The soil solution concentrations of $K^+$ and $PO_4{^3-}$ in the treatments of 0.90 and $1.80g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ was lower than those in other treatments and the statistical differences in the $Ca^{2+}$ and $Mg^{2+}$ concentrations were not observed among all treatments. The nutrient contents in tissue analyzed in this experiment were the lowest in the control treatments and those increased as incorporation rates of sulfur were elevated. Above results indicated that when 'Ssanta' strawberry is grown hydroponically and the root medium is coir dust and the pine bark (5:5, v/v) mix, the sulfur incorporation rate as pre-planting fertilizer has to be higher than $0.9g{\cdot}L^{-1}$ root medium to reduce the $HCO_3{^-}$ injury.