• Title/Summary/Keyword: Socio-Economy

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A study on the traditional salt-making of the Joolpo inlet area during the 18th and 19th century (18~19世紀 茁浦灣의 煮鹽 - 鹽場의 分布와 煮鹽法을 중심으로 -)

  • ;Hong, Keum-Soo
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.29 no.1
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    • pp.46-64
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    • 1994
  • Among every civilized people salt has been recognized as an essential foodstuff to the human society without which even man's survivor is unthinkable. The cultural-anthropological meaning of salt is estimated highly as well, and in geographical perspective salt itself symbolize regional interrelationship. Playing a decisive role in freeing innermost settlement from isolation, salt aiso made a contribution to expanding human habitats. This study tries to reconstruct historica geography of 18th and 19th century surrounding traditional salt-roasting (chayeom). The Joolpo Inlet area which is located on the mid-western coast in Honem Region is selected for study area. Established on the basis of optimum physical geographical conditions such as topography, climate and vegetation, salt-making of Joolpo Inlet area was run dynamically with the sudden turn of events in the 18-19th century which was chacterized as an age of transition from medieval society to modern one. In this paper the writer attempts to clarify mainly following three points: physical conditions and socio-economic background leading to the initiation and later development of roasting of salt in Joolpo Bay; distribution of saltworks; methods of saltmaking. Main points drawn from these analyses can be summarized as follows: of iron pan and cow-drawn tools rendered labour-saving and output growth. 1, Saltworks of Joolpo Inlet area in the 18-19th century were distributed evenly over Kobu, Puan, Mujang and Heungduck counties among which Kobu's was located in Puanmyon - a sort of exclave. All saltworks belonging to above four counties were clasified as most lucrative ones in Honam Region on government archives. In particular, Gumdang saltwork which belongs to Mujang county is noteworthy in that it was first introduced by one Paekje priest in 6th century and therefore it provides a clue to examine the history of salt-roasting of Joolpo Inlet area. In light of the fact that temple or monastery economy, regardless of East and West, has been closely connected with traditional industry, the case of Gumdang is not unusual. 2. The process of saltmaking follows this order: harrowing of salt field exposed to solar heat; construction of saltern mound with saline earth; acquiring of brine by leaching saline earth; roasting of salt. Salterns (saltworks) are consisted with various salt making facilities such as roasting shed, saltern mound, salt field, salt well) salt pit or brine pit) and seawater reservoir. Among them roasting shed which is constructed chiefly with hundreds of pieces of pine tree as a frame and with straw as roof and wall is customarily considered as an unit of saltwork. And inside it is saltpan made of two kinds of materials, that is iron pan or plaster pan. The area attached to one unit of roasting shed is approximately 1 ha, and that of saltern mound is a tenth of it.

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An Influence of the Korean Wave on Chinese Tourism to South Korea (중국인의 방한관광에 대한 한류의 영향)

  • Choi, Kyung-Eun
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.42 no.4
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    • pp.526-539
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    • 2007
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of the Korean Wave on Chinese tourism to South Korea through a behavioral analysis of Chinese tourists in the general group package tours. China suppressed the needs of the Chinese people's geographical movement and imposed restrictions on information about the outside world with the use of a policy of "closure" for a long time. But since reforms and open-door policies were introduced in China, especially in the context of relaxation of control policies over Chinese outbound tourism after the mid-1990's, more and more Chinese make trips abroad including visits to South Korea. In this situation, the recent Korean Wave(especially, drama/film) describes the Korean national image by forming a bridge between fiction and reality and plays a pivotal role in broadening or reconstructing the geographical imagination of the Chinese people who have been historically isolated from the outside world. Although Chinese have imagined the Korean nationscape on the basis of geopolitical or economic factors in the past, they have currently broadened or reconstructed their geographical imagination to include socio-cultural factors related closely to the Korean way of life due to the recent Korean Wave. This newly constructed geographical imagination led by the Korean Wave functions as an important pulling factor in Chinese destination choices, affecting Chinese tourists' motivation formation and the recommendation of main attractions. The more influential the Korean Wave is on their destination choice, the more the respondents select the cultural factors in both their motivation for tourism to South Korea and their recommendations of tourism attractions to other people. Through the analysis results of both satisfaction and intention to revisit, the more influential the Korean Wave is on their destination choice, the higher is the degree of both satisfaction and intention to revisit. In other words, although Chinese tourism to South Korea is chiefly in the general group package tours, Chinese tourists who are influenced by Korean Wave on their destination choice have more attachment to(or affection for) Korea as a tourism destination. This result suggests that the Korean Wave affects qualitative change - that is, change of attitude - as well as quantitative change in Chinese demand for tourism to South Korea.

In Search of "Excess Competition" (과당경쟁(過當競爭)과 정부규제(政府規制))

  • Nam, II-chong;Kim, Jong-seok
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.31-57
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    • 1991
  • Korean firms of all sizes, from virtually every industry, have used and are using the term "excessive competition" to describe the state of their industry and to call for government interventions. Moreover, the Korean government has frequently responded to such calls in various ways favorable to the firms, such as controlling entry, curbing capacity investments, or allowing collusion. Despite such interventions' impact on the overall efficiency on the Korean economy as well as on the wealth distribution among diverse groups of economic agents, the term "excessive competition", the basis for the interventions, has so far escaped rigorous scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to clarify the notion of "excessive competition" and "over-investment" which usually accompanies "excessive competition", and to examine the circumstances under which they might occur. We first survey the cases where the terms are most widely used and proceed to examine those cases to determine if competition is indeed excessive, and if so, what causes "excessive competition". Our main concern deals with the case in which the firms must make investment decisions that involve large sunk costs while facing uncertain demand. In order to analyze this case, we developed a two period model of capacity precommitment and the ensuing competition. In the first period, oligopolistic firms make capacity investments that are irreversible. Demand is uncertain in period 1 and only the distribution is known. Thus, firms must make investment decisions under uncertainty. In the second period, demand is realized, and the firms compete with quantity under realized demand and capacity constraints. In the above setting, we find that there is "no over-investment," en ante, and there is "no excessive competition," ex post. As measured by the information available in period 1, expected return from investment of a firm is non-negative, overall industry capacity does not exceed the socially optimal level, and competition in the second period yields an outcome that gives each operating firm a non-negative second period profit. Thus, neither "excessive competition" nor "over-investment" is possible. This result will generally hold true if there is no externality and if the industry is not a natural monopoly. We also extend this result by examining a model in which the government is an active participant in the game with a well defined preference. Analysis of this model shows that over-investment arises if the government cannot credibly precommit itself to non-intervention when ex post idle capacity occurs, due to socio-political reasons. Firms invest in capacities that exceed socially optimal levels in this case because they correctly expect that the government will find it optimal for itself to intervene once over-investment and ensuing financial problems for the firms occur. Such planned over-investment and ensuing government intervention are the generic problems under the current system. These problems are expected to be repeated in many industries in years to come, causing a significant loss of welfare in the long run. As a remedy to this problem, we recommend a non-intervention policy by the government which creates and utilizes uncertainty. Based upon an argument which is essentially the same as that of Kreps and Wilson in the context of a chain-store game, we show that maintaining a consistent non-intervention policy will deter a planned over-investment by firms in the long run. We believe that the results obtained in this paper has a direct bearing on the public policies relating to many industries including the petrochemical industry that is currently in the center of heated debates.

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New horizon of geographical method (인문지리학 방법론의 새로운 지평)

  • ;Choi, Byung-Doo
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.38
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    • pp.15-36
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    • 1988
  • In this paper, I consider the development of methods in contemporary human geography in terms of a dialectical relation of action and structure, and try to draw a new horizon of method toward which geographical research and spatial theory would develop. The positivist geography which was dominent during 1960s has been faced both with serious internal reflections and strong external criticisms in the 1970s. The internal reflections that pointed out its ignorance of spatial behavior of decision-makers and its simplication of complex spatial relations have developed behavioural geography and systems-theoretical approach. Yet this kinds of alternatives have still standed on the positivist, geography, even though they have seemed to be more real and complicate than the previous one, The external criticisms that have argued against the positivist method as phenomenalism and instrumentalism suggest some alternatives: humanistic geography which emphasizes intention and action of human subject and meaning-understanding, and structuralist geography which stresses on social structure as a totality which would produce spatial phenomena, and a theoretical formulation. Human geography today can be characterized by a strain and conflict between these methods, and hence rezuires a synthetic integration between them. Philosophy and social theory in general are in the same in which theories of action and structural analysis have been complementary or conflict with each other. Human geography has fallen into a further problematic with the introduction of a method based on so-called political ecnomy. This method has been suggested not merely as analternative to the positivist geography, but also as a theoretical foundation for critical analysis of space. The political economy of space with has analyzed the capitalist space and tried to theorize its transformation may be seen either as following humanistic(or Hegelian) Marxism, such as represented in Lefebvre's work, or as following structuralist Marxism, such as developed in Castelles's or Harvey's work. The spatial theory following humanistic Marxism has argued for a dialectic relation between 'the spatial' and 'the social', and given more attention to practicing human agents than to explaining social structures. on the contray, that based on structuralist Marxism has argued for social structures producing spatial phenomena, and focused on theorising the totality of structures, Even though these two perspectives tend more recently to be convergent in a way that structuralist-Marxist. geographers relate the domain of economic and political structures with that of action in their studies of urban culture and experience under capitalism, the political ecnomy of space needs an integrated method with which one can overcome difficulties of orthhodox Marxism. Some novel works in philosophy and social theory have been developed since the end of 1970s which have oriented towards an integrated method relating a series of concepts of action and structure, and reconstructing historical materialism. They include Giddens's theory of structuration, foucault's geneological analysis of power-knowledge, and Habermas's theory of communicative action. Ther are, of course, some fundamental differences between these works. Giddens develops a theory which relates explicitly the domain of action and that of structure in terms of what he calls the 'duality of structure', and wants to bring time-space relations into the core of social theory. Foucault writes a history in which strategically intentional but nonsubjective power relations have emerged and operated by virtue of multiple forms of constrainst wihthin specific spaces, while refusing to elaborate any theory which would underlie a political rationalization. Habermas analyzes how the Western rationalization of ecnomic and political systems has colonized the lifeworld in which we communicate each other, and wants to formulate a new normative foundation for critical theory of society which highlights communicatie reason (without any consideration of spatial concepts). On the basis of the above consideration, this paper draws a new norizon of method in human geography and spatial theory, some essential ideas of which can be summarized as follows: (1) the concept of space especially in terms of its relation to sociery. Space is not an ontological entity whch is independent of society and has its own laws of constitution and transformation, but it can be produced and reproduced only by virtue of its relation to society. Yet space is not merlely a material product of society, but also a place and medium in and through which socety can be maintained or transformed.(2) the constitution of space in terms of the relation between action and structure. Spatial actors who are always knowledgeable under conditions of socio-spatial structure produce and reproduce their context of action, that is, structure; and spatial structures as results of human action enable as well as constrain it. Spatial actions can be distinguished between instrumental-strategicaction oriented to success and communicative action oriented to understanding, which (re)produce respectively two different spheres of spatial structure in different ways: the material structure of economic and political systems-space in an unknowledged and unitended way, and the symbolic structure of social and cultural life-space in an acknowledged and intended way. (3) the capitalist space in terms of its rationalization. The ideal development of space would balance the rationalizations of system space and life-space in a way that system space providers material conditions for the maintainance of the life-space, and the life-space for its further development. But the development of capitalist space in reality is paradoxical and hence crisis-ridden. The economic and poltical system-space, propelled with the steering media like money, and power, has outstriped the significance of communicative action, and colonized the life-space. That is, we no longer live in a space mediated communicative action, but one created for and by money and power. But no matter how seriously our everyday life-space has been monetalrized and bureaucratised, here lies nevertheless the practical potential which would rehabilitate the meaning of space, the meaning of our life on the Earth.

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The Present State of Marine Oil Spills and the Enhancement Plans of National Oil Spill Response Capability in Vietnam - Through the Comparison of Statistics and OSR System between Vietnam and Republic of Korea - (베트남의 해양기름유출 현황과 국가대응역량 증강 방안 - 통계자료와 유출유 방제시스템에 대한 베트남과 한국 간의 비교를 통하여 -)

  • Phan, Van Hung;Kim, Kwang-Soo
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.23 no.6
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    • pp.690-698
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    • 2017
  • Vietnam is a marine nation with more than 3,444 km of shorelines, thousands of islands, and 2,360 rivers and canals of over 42,000 km long. As the frequency and the volume of oil transportation by ships increase, the possibility of oil spill incidents becomes higher than ever. Fuel oil and cargo oil spills at sea have widespread impact and long-term consequences on marine ecosystems, coastal resources and human health as well as socio-economy. This study is to show not only the present state of marine oil spills in Vietnam such as the number and the volume of oil spills for two decades, and an overall about Vietnamese national response system like national framework for Oil Spill Response (OSR), etc. but also to present the recommendations for enhancing national capability in response to oil spill incidents in Vietnam, especially, with a comparison of national OSR systems between Vietnam and South Korea. As the result, the number and the volume of marine oil spills in Vietnam showed an upward trend as opposed to a downward trend in South Korea. This means that Vietnam has the possibility of oil spills in coastal waters. Therefore, three main recommendations for the enhancement of national OSR capability in Vietnam are proposed as follows: (1) the development of alternative plan for reenforcing national OSR system involving legal system for preparedness and response to oil spill pollution such as the acceptance and implementation of OPRC Convention as well as the establishment of national fund compensating for the damage and loss caused by oil pollution; (2) the enhancement of a consistent reporting, alerting and monitoring system; and (3) the development of training and exercise programs with standard contents of educational courses.

Design and Implementation of IoT based Low cost, Effective Learning Mechanism for Empowering STEM Education in India

  • Simmi Chawla;Parul Tomar;Sapna Gambhir
    • International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.163-169
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    • 2024
  • India is a developing nation and has come with comprehensive way in modernizing its reducing poverty, economy and rising living standards for an outsized fragment of its residents. The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education plays an important role in it. STEM is an educational curriculum that emphasis on the subjects of "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics". In traditional education scenario, these subjects are taught independently, but according to the educational philosophy of STEM that teaches these subjects together in project-based lessons. STEM helps the students in his holistic development. Youth unemployment is the biggest concern due to lack of adequate skills. There is a huge skill gap behind jobless engineers and the question arises how we can prepare engineers for a better tomorrow? Now a day's Industry 4.0 is a new fourth industrial revolution which is an intelligent networking of machines and processes for industry through ICT. It is based upon the usage of cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things (IoT). Industrial revolution does not influence only production but also educational system as well. IoT in academics is a new revolution to the Internet technology, which introduced "Smartness" in the entire IT infrastructure. To improve socio-economic status of the India students must equipped with 21st century digital skills and Universities, colleges must provide individual learning kits to their students which can help them in enhancing their productivity and learning outcomes. The major goal of this paper is to present a low cost, effective learning mechanism for STEM implementation using Raspberry Pi 3+ model (Single board computer) and Node Red open source visual programming tool which is developed by IBM for wiring hardware devices together. These tools are broadly used to provide hands on experience on IoT fundamentals during teaching and learning. This paper elaborates the appropriateness and the practicality of these concepts via an example by implementing a user interface (UI) and Dashboard in Node-RED where dashboard palette is used for demonstration with switch, slider, gauge and Raspberry pi palette is used to connect with GPIO pins present on Raspberry pi board. An LED light is connected with a GPIO pin as an output pin. In this experiment, it is shown that the Node-Red dashboard is accessing on Raspberry pi and via Smartphone as well. In the final step results are shown in an elaborate manner. Conversely, inadequate Programming skills in students are the biggest challenge because without good programming skills there would be no pioneers in engineering, robotics and other areas. Coding plays an important role to increase the level of knowledge on a wide scale and to encourage the interest of students in coding. Today Python language which is Open source and most demanding languages in the industry in order to know data science and algorithms, understanding computer science would not be possible without science, technology, engineering and math. In this paper a small experiment is also done with an LED light via writing source code in python. These tiny experiments are really helpful to encourage the students and give play way to learn these advance technologies. The cost estimation is presented in tabular form for per learning kit provided to the students for Hands on experiments. Some Popular In addition, some Open source tools for experimenting with IoT Technology are described. Students can enrich their knowledge by doing lots of experiments with these freely available software's and this low cost hardware in labs or learning kits provided to them.

An Ontology Model for Public Service Export Platform (공공 서비스 수출 플랫폼을 위한 온톨로지 모형)

  • Lee, Gang-Won;Park, Sei-Kwon;Ryu, Seung-Wan;Shin, Dong-Cheon
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.149-161
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    • 2014
  • The export of domestic public services to overseas markets contains many potential obstacles, stemming from different export procedures, the target services, and socio-economic environments. In order to alleviate these problems, the business incubation platform as an open business ecosystem can be a powerful instrument to support the decisions taken by participants and stakeholders. In this paper, we propose an ontology model and its implementation processes for the business incubation platform with an open and pervasive architecture to support public service exports. For the conceptual model of platform ontology, export case studies are used for requirements analysis. The conceptual model shows the basic structure, with vocabulary and its meaning, the relationship between ontologies, and key attributes. For the implementation and test of the ontology model, the logical structure is edited using Prot$\acute{e}$g$\acute{e}$ editor. The core engine of the business incubation platform is the simulator module, where the various contexts of export businesses should be captured, defined, and shared with other modules through ontologies. It is well-known that an ontology, with which concepts and their relationships are represented using a shared vocabulary, is an efficient and effective tool for organizing meta-information to develop structural frameworks in a particular domain. The proposed model consists of five ontologies derived from a requirements survey of major stakeholders and their operational scenarios: service, requirements, environment, enterprise, and county. The service ontology contains several components that can find and categorize public services through a case analysis of the public service export. Key attributes of the service ontology are composed of categories including objective, requirements, activity, and service. The objective category, which has sub-attributes including operational body (organization) and user, acts as a reference to search and classify public services. The requirements category relates to the functional needs at a particular phase of system (service) design or operation. Sub-attributes of requirements are user, application, platform, architecture, and social overhead. The activity category represents business processes during the operation and maintenance phase. The activity category also has sub-attributes including facility, software, and project unit. The service category, with sub-attributes such as target, time, and place, acts as a reference to sort and classify the public services. The requirements ontology is derived from the basic and common components of public services and target countries. The key attributes of the requirements ontology are business, technology, and constraints. Business requirements represent the needs of processes and activities for public service export; technology represents the technological requirements for the operation of public services; and constraints represent the business law, regulations, or cultural characteristics of the target country. The environment ontology is derived from case studies of target countries for public service operation. Key attributes of the environment ontology are user, requirements, and activity. A user includes stakeholders in public services, from citizens to operators and managers; the requirements attribute represents the managerial and physical needs during operation; the activity attribute represents business processes in detail. The enterprise ontology is introduced from a previous study, and its attributes are activity, organization, strategy, marketing, and time. The country ontology is derived from the demographic and geopolitical analysis of the target country, and its key attributes are economy, social infrastructure, law, regulation, customs, population, location, and development strategies. The priority list for target services for a certain country and/or the priority list for target countries for a certain public services are generated by a matching algorithm. These lists are used as input seeds to simulate the consortium partners, and government's policies and programs. In the simulation, the environmental differences between Korea and the target country can be customized through a gap analysis and work-flow optimization process. When the process gap between Korea and the target country is too large for a single corporation to cover, a consortium is considered an alternative choice, and various alternatives are derived from the capability index of enterprises. For financial packages, a mix of various foreign aid funds can be simulated during this stage. It is expected that the proposed ontology model and the business incubation platform can be used by various participants in the public service export market. It could be especially beneficial to small and medium businesses that have relatively fewer resources and experience with public service export. We also expect that the open and pervasive service architecture in a digital business ecosystem will help stakeholders find new opportunities through information sharing and collaboration on business processes.

Analysis on Factors Influencing Welfare Spending of Local Authority : Implementing the Detailed Data Extracted from the Social Security Information System (지방자치단체 자체 복지사업 지출 영향요인 분석 : 사회보장정보시스템을 통한 접근)

  • Kim, Kyoung-June;Ham, Young-Jin;Lee, Ki-Dong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.141-156
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    • 2013
  • Researchers in welfare services of local government in Korea have rather been on isolated issues as disables, childcare, aging phenomenon, etc. (Kang, 2004; Jung et al., 2009). Lately, local officials, yet, realize that they need more comprehensive welfare services for all residents, not just for above-mentioned focused groups. Still cases dealt with focused group approach have been a main research stream due to various reason(Jung et al., 2009; Lee, 2009; Jang, 2011). Social Security Information System is an information system that comprehensively manages 292 welfare benefits provided by 17 ministries and 40 thousand welfare services provided by 230 local authorities in Korea. The purpose of the system is to improve efficiency of social welfare delivery process. The study of local government expenditure has been on the rise over the last few decades after the restarting the local autonomy, but these studies have limitations on data collection. Measurement of a local government's welfare efforts(spending) has been primarily on expenditures or budget for an individual, set aside for welfare. This practice of using monetary value for an individual as a "proxy value" for welfare effort(spending) is based on the assumption that expenditure is directly linked to welfare efforts(Lee et al., 2007). This expenditure/budget approach commonly uses total welfare amount or percentage figure as dependent variables (Wildavsky, 1985; Lee et al., 2007; Kang, 2000). However, current practice of using actual amount being used or percentage figure as a dependent variable may have some limitation; since budget or expenditure is greatly influenced by the total budget of a local government, relying on such monetary value may create inflate or deflate the true "welfare effort" (Jang, 2012). In addition, government budget usually contain a large amount of administrative cost, i.e., salary, for local officials, which is highly unrelated to the actual welfare expenditure (Jang, 2011). This paper used local government welfare service data from the detailed data sets linked to the Social Security Information System. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors that affect social welfare spending of 230 local authorities in 2012. The paper applied multiple regression based model to analyze the pooled financial data from the system. Based on the regression analysis, the following factors affecting self-funded welfare spending were identified. In our research model, we use the welfare budget/total budget(%) of a local government as a true measurement for a local government's welfare effort(spending). Doing so, we exclude central government subsidies or support being used for local welfare service. It is because central government welfare support does not truly reflect the welfare efforts(spending) of a local. The dependent variable of this paper is the volume of the welfare spending and the independent variables of the model are comprised of three categories, in terms of socio-demographic perspectives, the local economy and the financial capacity of local government. This paper categorized local authorities into 3 groups, districts, and cities and suburb areas. The model used a dummy variable as the control variable (local political factor). This paper demonstrated that the volume of the welfare spending for the welfare services is commonly influenced by the ratio of welfare budget to total local budget, the population of infants, self-reliance ratio and the level of unemployment factor. Interestingly, the influential factors are different by the size of local government. Analysis of determinants of local government self-welfare spending, we found a significant effect of local Gov. Finance characteristic in degree of the local government's financial independence, financial independence rate, rate of social welfare budget, and regional economic in opening-to-application ratio, and sociology of population in rate of infants. The result means that local authorities should have differentiated welfare strategies according to their conditions and circumstances. There is a meaning that this paper has successfully proven the significant factors influencing welfare spending of local government in Korea.

Qualitative Research on Korean Baby-Boomer Generation Middle-Aged Women's Attitude Toward Their Lives - Based on Middle-Class Seoul Residents - (한국의 베이비부머세대 중년여성이 삶에서 추구하는 가치에 대한 질적연구 - 서울 거주 중산층을 중심으로 -)

  • Lee, Ji Hyun;Kim, Sun Woo
    • Asia Marketing Journal
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    • v.14 no.2
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    • pp.127-156
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    • 2012
  • A lot of interest in the baby-boomer generation, those who were born after World War II, has emerged since their retirement has been accelerated. The retirement of baby-boomers has caused many health, public welfare, social policy and family relationship problems. However, their increased purchasing power has made them more attractive consumers than any other generation, and they have become a fascinating niche market in the depressed economy. This research selected middle-class women of the baby-boomer generation who have had powerful effects on society and have emerged as an attractive niche market, and attempted to understand their lives intensively. Based on research activities, the purpose of this research is to identify baby-boomer generation middle-aged women's life values. Qualitative research methodology was used to achieve research objectives, and this research aimed to suggest marketing implications to connected industries based on the research results. The research objectives are as follows. 1. understanding the lives of baby-boomer middle-class women who have powerful effects on socio-economic phenomena 2. identifying the life values of baby-boomer middle-class women 3. generating marketing implications based on an understanding of baby-boomer middle-class women's lives and life values This research conducted FGIs(focus group interviews), one of the qualitative research methodologies, to figure out baby-boomer middle-class women's life values intensively and selected 10 women living in Seoul for data collection. The qualitative data of collected FGIs were analyzed with spiral data analysis methodology proposed by Creswell(2007). The most effective factors to influence these middle-class women's lives powerfully were 'time' and 'independence'. Their consciousness of the importance of using time affects their life pattern generally, and their independence also impacts greatly on the way they exploit time and on their diverse relationships. They maximized their self-realization and showed long-term partnership with their surrounding circumstances because of those effective factors. Baby-boomer middle-class women's self-realization was divided into two areas. One was their outside activities and another was perfect management of their physical appearance and home interior. Like the results of this research, their need for social entrance will be reinforced more strongly since their internal and external activities aim for the achievement of self-realization. In addition, this research suggests that baby-boomer middle-class women's activities are connected with their management of their physical appearance and home interior decorations, and that such management is caused not only by a simple interest in fashion and beauty but also a profound desire for self-realization. On account of their consciousness, which is different from other generations, Korean baby-boomer middle-class women are able to maintain positive partnerships with their surrounding circumstances; however, they also show ambivalent emotions to retain effective partnerships. To overcome those stressful situations, they make greater efforts to keep up their health and youth, and also engage in diverse activities to maintain their mental health. Finally, they generate positive attitudes toward their economic situation and extra time to develop self-realization and pursue happy, youthful and healthy lives. Based on those results, this study suggests the following implications. First, industries targeting the baby-boomer generation should develop innovative products and services which help the baby-boomer generation maximize their efficiency of time since time is one of the most important factors powerfully impacting the baby-boomer generation. They will engage in various activities to fill up their extra time and consume helpful products and services. Second, such industries should supply the baby-boomer generation with opportunities which propose new ways of self-realization since this generation shows a great desire for self-realization because of their self-efficacy. With customized strategies of satisfying their needs, the baby-boomer generation would discover opportunities to utilize their abilities, relationships and aesthetic senses, and industries would develop a niche market. Third, market segmentations which target the baby-boomer generation's desire to maintain their physical appearance and home interior should be executed since such activities are the main strategies to develop this generation's self-realization. The baby-boomer generation's desire to study those areas would be expanded, and those education systems should produce innovative products and services targeting the baby-boomer generation. This implication also offers to government officials new policies related with the baby-boomer generation. This exploratory study utilized qualitative research methodology to understand baby-boomer middle-class women's lives, and proposed propositions and limitations for further researches. As for the limitations, first, it is hard to generalize the research results so that they may apply to all areas and economic classes of the baby-boomer generation since this research selected only 10 women living in Seoul for the data collection process. To overcome this limitation, extended data collections of subjects from diverse regions and economic classes should be designed. Second, quantitative research should be conducted to supplement the findings with validities. Third, this research focused on only general ideas of the baby-boomer generation's lives since the range of this study was focused on their overall lives. Therefore, intensive research related to specific areas of their lives should be conducted.

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