• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.95-116
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• 2006

Traditionally, foreign labor inflow into Korea has been rare and, hence, issues on foreign workers did not draw much attention. However, changing economic conditions of the Korean economy, such as "labor-shortage" problem in SMEs in manufacturing sector, has made the Korean government open its door to the foreign workers since the early 1990s through the Industrial Trainee System. The inflow of foreign workers, on the other hand, has generated various social and economic problems, such as substantial increase of illegal over-stayers, illegal utilization of foreign unskilled workers by domestic SMEs, to name a few. Against this background, the Employment Permit System was implemented from 2004. This new system aims at supplying foreign workers to SMEs as well as protecting them as legal 'employees'. In any case, it is very important to understand how and to what extent the inflow of foreign workers have affected the Korean economy in order to establish long-term policy stance. This paper aims to empirically assess the economic impact of foreign workers on domestic workers in the manufacturing sector during 1997~20001, focusing on the Industrial Trainee System. The empirical results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, there is some evidence that male semi-skilled workers are the group that is likely to have been displaced by industrial trainees. Second, we were unable to find any strong evidence suggesting that the inflow of foreign industrial trainees decreased wages of less-skilled Korean workers.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.938-947
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• 2015

As many offshore plants are built domestically, many workers get various jobs in the offshore plants directly or indirectly. But workers(including seaman and non-seaman) still have hard time to getting the job in offshore plants because they still rely on personal contacts and limitation of adaptable positions. Now people who want to work at offshore plants have to get safety training under the regulation and request of IMO/STCW and OPITO. Recently OPITO reinforced offshore safety training and discussed the mutual agreement between IMO/STCW and OPITO. Therefore this study searched legal standards for offshore plant work and the trend of offshore safety training. Base on a survey among domestic delegates who completed BOSIET course from 2010, we now understand the actual situations in finding an effective way on how to advance domestic workers in the offshore plant industry.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.164-173
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• 2012

Objectives: Epichlorohydrin is a material that has been predicted to have high volatility and strong toxicity and is used normally in working area. Therefore, the hazardous and dangerous level and the foreign management system about epichlorohydrin should be invested at home and abroad and through hazard assessment for occupational environment measurement and exposure status of industrial workers in domestic working area. Methods: To assess risk and to suggest Development and Adoption to prevent health damage of workers owing to the epichlorohydrin exposure, the hazardousness and dangerousness of epichlorohydrin and its practical examples and regulation level for domestic and abroad health impairment are researched on the base of various references. Results: The epichlorohydrin caused skin and mucus membrane irritation, respiratory paralysis, kidney and live damage under the influence of acute toxicity and in animal study, it was confirmed as a doubtful carcinogenic substance to trigger reducement of sperm number and reproduction ability, abnormal spermatogenesis, mutagen, increase of forestomach epithelium and occurrence of papilloma and so on, as well as it induced stimulus asthma and allergic contact dermatitis for exposure workers. Conclusions: Epichlorohydrin was found to occur allergic contact dermatitis, carcinogenesis doubt and reproduction toxicity and was verified as a material which would be established reinforcement of management level to care health of handlers, such as denotement dangerousness of skin absorption.

• Culinary science and hospitality research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.268-281
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to examine the restaurant workers' understanding of food hygiene and safety regulations using SPSS. From October 10th to 31st, 2008, a survey was conducted to those who work at family restaurants in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do. This program analyzed total 149 copies of the questionnaire. 79.9 percent of the respondents have completed college education; 76.7 percent out of them were domestic company workers and 82.9 percent were foreign company workers. The total average points turned out to be 14.03 points out of 20, 3.95 out of 5 for food poisoning, 2.37 out of 3 for personal hygiene, 6.41 out of 9 for food hygiene and environment, and 1.86 out of 3 for food safety. Foreign company employees scored higher points(14.3) compared to those of domestic companies. When comparing the points between domestic company workers and foreign company workers, the score of kitchen staff(p<0.001) and the score of a restaurant assistant(p<0.05) have influenced the overall points. In conclusion, people scored low points in areas as understanding of 'dangerous temperature level', 'bacterial multiplication', 'safe defrosting methods', 'cooling methods' and 'temperature control', indicating the necessity of the training on 'time/temperature control'.

• Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
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• v.35
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• pp.29.1-29.10
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• 2023

Background: Lone workers are generally defined as individuals who work alone without supervision, including self-employed people. While lone workers are considered a vulnerable group in some countries, there is a lack of research on their health status in domestic studies. Globally, the number of lone workers has been increasing, and this trend has been further accelerated since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic with the rise of remote work. Methods: The study analyzed data from 44,281 participants, excluding unpaid family workers, soldiers, and those with missing data. Lone workers were defined as individuals who reported having no colleagues with the same job at their current workplace. Self-rated health status was categorized as "good" or "poor." Results: This study found a statistically significant higher number of lone workers among women compare to men. The largest occupational category for lone workers was service and sales workers, followed by agriculture and fisheries workers. A majority of non-lone workers reported working 40 hours or less per week, while the majority of lone workers reported working 53 hours or more per week. In addition, lone workers had significantly poorer health status evaluations compared to non-lone workers (odds ratio: 1.297; 95% confidence interval: 1.165-1.444). Conclusions: Further research is needed to investigate the causal relationship between lone work and health, using data collected after the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.119-125
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• 2008

The volume of material and number of workers mobilized has been on the rise in line with the domestic projects getting higher, larger and complex currently. Particularly for the project in downtown, delivering the resources in timely manner is very crucial in carrying out the overall project as scheduled. Inappropriate lifting plan often causes inefficiency over the entire project, resulting in increase in schedule and cost. Despite of such importance of lifting plan for architectural work, lifting plans at the most of domestic projects, except a few cases for large scale high-rise buildings, have been heavily dependent on engineer's personal experience and intuition alone. To deal with such problems, the study was intended to develop and suggest a systematic and objective process for determining the lift, categorizing the lifting equipment into the two types, one for workers and another for material.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.139-146
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• 1998

In current domestic construction field, several factors influencing the safety for field workers are various due to the size and complexity of construction works involved. Among the factors, the age is the important one, because the average age of workers is getting older due to the 3D phenomena in construction fields. The safety for workers of all ages is important, but especially safety for the old, is more important. Thus, the fundamental techniques for placement of field workers with adequate safety corresponding to complexity and hard works are investigated through analyzing fatigue and heart rate of individual worker, especially for the old.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2018.11a
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• pp.57-58
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• 2018

The number of deaths in the korean construction industry is more than three times the OECD average. Although safety management system should be improved to prevent the safety accidents, it is difficult to improve due to domestic safety conditions. Especially, in order to prevent accidents at construction sites, there is an increasing tendency to monitor the movement of workers and equipment in real time by introducing a location positioning system. Therefore, this study proposes a system that can monitor the position of workers and heavy equipments in real - time, detect danger and transmit alarms so that workers can pay attention to safety and keep safety. The system is expected to reduce safety accidents by transmitting alarms to workers so that they can pay attention.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.284-290
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• 2023

Objectives: Work environment assessments were conducted to investigate epidemiologically several cases of lung cancer and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) among workers in domestic quarries. Methods: We visited three quarries in South Korea where an epidemiological investigation was requested and measured total dust, respirable dust, and crystalline silica on rock drilling workers (4 people) and rock chipping workers (13 people). Measurement and analysis were conducted according to NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health) method 0500, NIOSH method 0600 for respirable dust, and NIOSH method 7500 for crystalline silica. Results: Among rock drilling workers the AMs (arithmetic mean) of total dust concentrations, respirable dust concentrations, and crystalline silica concentrations were 3.462 mg/m³ (range: 0.764~6.085 mg/m³), 0.613 mg/m³ (range: 0.153~1.251 mg/m³), and 0.105 mg/m³ (range: 0.012~0.228 mg/m³), respectively. Among rock chipping workers, the AMs of total dust concentrations, respirable dust concentrations, and crystalline silica concentrations were 2.446 mg/m³ (range: 0.156~8.494 mg/m³), 0.488 mg/m³ (range: 0.028~1.536 mg/m³), and 0.099 mg/m³ (range: 0.004~0.274 mg/m³), respectively. Conclusions: Although it cannot be said that the dust concentrations were high for both rock drilling workers and rock chipping workers, the concentrations of crystalline silica were found to be high. If such work is performed for a long period of time, diseases such as lung cancer and COPD may occur, so the work environment needs to be improved.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.283-293
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• 2021

To verify the employment impact of two-directional FDI, the study analyzes panel data composed of 26 OECD countries from 2006 to 2018 by using the system GMM. Furthermore, we decompose domestic employment into types of industries and skill compositions to identify the heterogeneous employment impact. The results show that inward and outward FDI at lag one period promote domestic employment at the overall level. In terms of workers' skill levels, lagged inward FDI significantly persistently promotes high-skilled workers' employment, likewise, the positive employment impact also appears with a time lag in low-skilled labor subgroups. Outward FDI, on the other hand, initially inhibits both high- and low-skilled labor demand, but then changes to a positive effect in the highskilled labor subgroups. Although there is a time difference between inward and outward FDI, it has a significant and positive impact on employment in the manufacturing and service industries. The results indicate that the relationship between manufacturing and service employment is a mutual substitute. To attract international investors, governments should promote a favorable investment climate and maintain stable economic growth. Because low-skilled labor is more susceptible to changes in FDI, policy measures are required to ensure employment stability.