• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.23-34
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• 2019

The U-Healthcare era has evolved with the development of the Internet of things (IoT) in the early stages of being connected as a society. Already, many changes such as increased well-being and the extension of human life are becoming evident across cultures. Korea entered the growing group of aging societies in 2017, and its silver industry is expected to grow rapidly by adopting the IoT of a super-connected society. In particular, the senior shift phenomenon has resulted in increased interest in the promotion of the health and well-being of the emergent silver generation which, unlike the existing silver generation, is highly active and wields great economic power. This study conducted in-depth interviews to investigate the characteristics of the new silver generation, and to develop the design for a wearable serious game that intends to boost the interest of the elderly in exercise and fitness activities according to their personalized physical training regimes as prescribed by the U-Hospital service. The usage scenario of this wearable serious game for the 'U-silver generation' is derived from social necessity. Medical professionals can utilize this technology to conduct health examinations and to monitor the rehabilitation of senior patients. The elderly can also use this tool to request checkups or to interface with their healthcare providers. The wearable serious game is further aimed at mitigating concerns about the deterioration of the physical functions of the silver generation by applying personalized exercise prescriptions. The present investigation revealed that it is necessary to merge the on / off line community activities to meet the silver generation's daily needs for connection and friendship. Further, the sustainability of the serious game must be enhanced through the inculcation of a sense of accomplishment as a player rises through the levels of the game. The proposed wearable serious game is designed specifically for the silver generation that is inexperienced in using digital devices: simple game rules are applied to a familiar interface grounded on the gourmet travels preferred by the target players to increase usability.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.50
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• pp.235-263
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• 2002

The present study is designed to explore restructuring direction of the old-age income maintenance system and development direction of the Seniority Pension Scheme(SPS) in Korea. While the SPS is trifling scheme with tiny benefit amount and small budget, the SPS has important role that function as only public income maintenance scheme for both the low income class and the excluded from public pension and public assistance at present stage because of immature National Pension. This study starts with the research question why serious mis-matching problem between needs and resources in old-age income maintenance system occur. Thus this study explores fundamental change direction of the old-age income maintenance system which is coincide with further situation change(demography, labour market, family structure). Also this study explores desirable SPS's development direction as taking into account relation with other public old-age income maintenance system. This paper suggests basic direction of old-age income maintenance system as follows: principle of universal and individual security; principle of sustainability; principle of equity. Under general principle, this paper also proposes largely two development scenario of the SPS. The one is to maintain present transitional and provisional scheme with trying scheme's substantiality. The other is to change into permanent old-age income maintenance scheme for the excluded public pension and public assistance. At this point it is the public pension's role that the SPS's development direction is determined. If the public pension keep one pension per one earner as present system, non-contribution pension as present SPS should maintain continuously. However, if the public pension reorganize into basic pension of one pension per one person and earning-related pension, the SPS should be managed temporarily until mature of public pension. Therefore whether the public pension play basic security role for all elderly or not will determine the SPS development direction.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.39-51
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• 2003

Objectives: The oriental medical care has been getting popular in community health centers because of uniqueness, changing of disease patterns, and increasing of elderly population. From 1998, oriental medical doctors has been working in several rural community health centers for their military obligations. At this point of time, it is necessary to evaluate the oriental public health doctors system. This study was performed to investigate the utilization patterns, the degree of satisfactions, needs of oriental medical care service provided by community health center in a designated Gun area. This study focused on the need for extending over Myun area of community health center's oriental medical care services. Methods: Person-to-person interview survey method through a structured questionnaire was done by a personnel at a oriental medical care service room in a Gun community health center. The major statistical method used for the analysis were the t-test, ANOVA, and logistic analysis. Results: The total number of responded subjects in this study was 163 residents. Among these 65.0% were aged 61 or over, and only 13.5% recognized themselves were healthy. 73.7% of the respondents demanded establishment of more oriental medical care services provided by community health center to other Myun area. Factors affecting the need for enlargement of oriental medical care service room were education level, subjective awareness of access to community health center, and cost satisfaction of oriental medical service provided by community health center. Thus, a resident who had graduation of middle school achievement or above(OR=3.35), had a long way to center(OR=2.47), satisfied with oriental medical service cost(OR=2.78) had demonstrated increased chance of need by logistic regression analysis.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.103-110
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• 1998

Objectives : High co-morbidity of periodic limb movements during sleep(PLMS) and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome(OSAS) is well known and their incidences tend to increase in the elderly. Previous studies have inconsistently rep0l1ed increase or no change of periodic limb movement index(PLMI) by nasal continuous positive airway pressure(CPAP) in OSAS without analyzing possible variables affecting PLMI. We attempted to examine PLMI change evoked during CPAP titration and also factors affecting it in OSAS. Methods : Twenty-nine OSAS patients(M:F=26:3, mean age: $51.6{\pm}10.6\;yrs$) without other sleep disorders except for PLMS were selected, based on the nocturnal (baseline) polysomnograhy. Another night of noctumal polysomnography was performed for CPAP pressure titration. We compared between those two nights PLMI, mean and lowest $SaO_2$, and sleep variables. We also calculated PLMI differences between baseline and CPAP nights, named as delta PLMI (value of CPAP night PLMI minus value of baseline night PLMI). Correlations were calculated between delta PLMI and factors such as age, body mass index, applied CPAP pressure, baseline night values of respiratory disturbance index, mean and lowest $SaO_2$, and sleep parameter differences between baseline and CPAP nights. Results : Decrease of RDI(p<.01) and increase in mean and lowest $SaO_2$ (p<.05, p<.01) were observed during CPAP night. No sleep parameters showed significant change except for the decrease of total stage 1 sleep%(p<.01) during CPAP night. Ten out of 29 patients showed PLMI increase, while the other 19 patients showed either no change(n=14) or even PLMI decrease(n=5) during CPAP night. The 10 patients showing PLMI increase during CPAP night showed a significant positive correlation between delta PLMI and baseline night RDI(p<.05), which meant that PLMI increase was found to be more prominent in higher RDI patients than in lower RDI ones. There were no significant correlations between delta PLMI and other factors in the other 19 patients. Conclusions : We suggest that during the baseline night PLMS would have been underscored and/or masked due to the overlapping of PLMS and apneas/hypopneas or the arousals induced by apneas/hypopneas. Despite its still unknown mechanism, the CPAP application may unmask PLMS and increase PLMI in a subgroup of OSAS patients. It needs to be evaluated further whether the chronic CPAP use sustains the above finding.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.31-65
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• 2012

We study the sustainability of the current fiscal policy of Korea, and the effects of the social welfare policy expansion, which has been recently discussed among the political circles, on the government budget and the generational equity, using generational accounting. We follow the generational accounting approach, considering the fact that most of the social welfare policies are the entitlement programs, which imposes the limitation of the policy maker's discretion to control the cost of their provision. The social welfare expenditure will change due to the change in the policy environments of the future, such as population aging. Therefore, we need to take into account the government cash flow of the future as well as of the present to investigate its effects on the fiscal sustainability, which implies that the national debt or the budget balance is not a proper index for the investigation. Our findings are as follows. The current fiscal policies are not sustainable, and the long-term budgetary imbalance is shown very serious. The required tax adjustment, which is defined as the percentage change of tax burden required to attain the long-term budgetary balance, is very large. Unless the level of the government expenditure is properly controlled, the tax burden and the social contribution level will rise to the untolerable level. Moreover, the expansion of the social welfare policies, which has been discussed among the political circles, will substantially increase the fiscal burden of the future generations. Even though the provision of the free lunch to the primary and the secondary school students, the free child care, and the discounted college tuition do not increase the fiscal burden much, because their magnitude at present is not large and will decrease due to the decrease in the number of the newborns and the students resulting from the fall in the fertility rate, that of the free health care service will increase tax burden of the future generations very much, because the magnitude of the government expenditure needed at present is very large and the population aging will further increase the magnitude of the health care expenditure. The findings indicate that the structural reforms, to prevent the explosive increase in the social welfare expenditure in the future, are necessary before the implementation of the welfare policy expansion. In particular, the cost control of the social transfers to the elderly needs to be made, because the speed of the population aging of Korea is among the highest in the world. The findings also indicate that the budget balance or the national debt can cause the fiscal illusion, which makes the Korean government budget look sound, even though the fiscal policy will rapidly increase the social welfare expenditure in the future, as the population ages. The generational accounting, which takes into account the cash flow of the future as well as of the present, unlike the budgetary balance and the national debt, which shows the results of the government financial activities of the past and the present, is a useful method to overcome the fiscal illusion.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.135-154
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• 2020

This paper analyzes the 5,521 samples of the small and medium-sized businesses(SMBs) obtained from the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund. From January 2014 to September 2019, 85% of the SMBs have 5 or fewer full-time employees. The proportion of SMBs is overwhelmed by the elderly men, and most founders are the CEO. Also, about 87% of the workplace types are rented, while 64% of the CEO's residence types are owner-occupation. 47% of the financial grade score is less than 10 points out of 100 and 80% of SMBs have less than 200 million won of the loan guarantee. In particular, the total guarantee loan amount or the days of net guarantee have significantly positive relations with the working period of the CEO in the same industry, the number of employees, the operation period of SMBs, and the corporate business type. In the case of the financial grading score which has the highest weight in overall credit rating gets higher with the higher number of employees, the longer the operation period, and the corporate business type. However, the quantified non-financial grading score has no significant relationship with other explanatory variables, except for the corporate business type. This implies that a non-financial grade score is measured by other determinants that are not observed by the Korea credit guarantee fund. The pure non-financial grade score has positive relations with the working period of the CEO. Overall, this paper would help Korean SMBs upgrade their credit ratings and expand the money supply when there is no standardized credit rating model or no publicly available evaluation criteria for SMBs. We expect this paper provides important insights for further research and policy-makers for SMBs. In particular, to address the financial needs of thin-filers such as SMBs, technology-based financial services (TechFin) would use alternative data to evaluate the financial capabilities of thin-filers and to develop new financial services.