• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.127-153
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• 2009

There is a growing concern about potential harmful effect of second-hand or environmental tobacco smoking. As a result, smoking bans in workplace become more prevalent worldwide. In Korea, workplace smoking ban policy become more restrictive in 2003 when National health enhancing law was amended. The new law requires all office buildings larger than 3,000 square meters (multi-purpose buildings larger than 2,000 square meters) should be smoke free. Therefore, a lot of indoor office became non smoking area. Previous studies in other counties often found contradicting answers for the effects of workplace smoking ban on smoking behavior. In addition, there was no study in Korea yet that examines the causal impacts of smoking ban on smoking behavior. The situation in Korea might be different from other countries. Using 2001 and 2005 Korea National Health and Nutrition surveys which are representative for population in Korea we try to examine the impacts of law change on current smoker and cigarettes smoked per day. The amended law impacted the whole country at the same time and there was a declining trend in smoking rate even before the legislation update. So, the challenge here is to tease out the true impact only. We compare indoor working occupations which are constrained by the law change with outdoor working occupations which are less impacted. Since the data has been collected before (2001) and after (2005) the law change for treated (indoor working occupations) and control (outdoor working occupations) groups we will use difference in difference method. We restrict our sample to working age (between 20 and 65) since these are the relevant population by the workplace smoking ban policy. We also restrict the sample to indoor occupations (executive or administrative and administrative support) and outdoor occupations (sales and low skilled worker) after dropping unemployed and someone working for military since it is not clear whether these occupations are treated group or control group. This classification was supported when we examined the answers for workplace smoking ban policy existing only in 2005 survey. Sixty eight percent of indoor occupations reported having an office smoking ban policy compared to forty percent of outdoor occupation answering workplace smoking ban policy. The estimated impacts on current smoker are 4.1 percentage point decline and cigarettes per day show statistically significant decline of 2.5 cigarettes per day. Taking into account consumption of average sixteen cigarettes per day among smokers it is sixteen percent decline in smoking rate which is substantial. We tested robustness using the same sample across two surveys and also using tobit model. Our results are robust against both concerns. It is possible that our measure of treated and control group have measurement error which will lead to attenuation bias. However, we are finding statistically significant impacts which might be a lower bound of the true estimates. The magnitude of our finding is not much different from previous finding of significant impacts. For cigarettes per day previous estimates varied from 1.37 to 3.9 and for current smoker it showed between 1%p and 7.8%p.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.84-91
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• 2018

Despite the government 's efforts to reduce constructional disasters, it has been pointed out that the safety management cost of the Construction Technology Promotion Act does not reflect the actual site. Therefore, it is necessary to study the proper guideline of the safety management cost which can be used as the most fundamental measure to prevent construction accidents. Moreover for the securement of the reasonable safety management costs, it is important to calculate its appropriate rate. Thus, in this study, the appropriate rate of safety management cost was proposed by the construction cost & type based on the 111 execution plans of safety management cost, and the rate is analyzed to be 1/10 of the occupational safety and health management cost. The results of this study will be a guideline in improvement to the proper schedule rating system improvement and in implement of pilot projects.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.265-272
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• 2023

Objectives: Since the material safety data sheets(MSDS) submission and non-disclosure review system was introduced in January 2021, the implementation status of MSDS for chemical manufacturing and importing workplaces being supervised for the first time. Methods: A supervisory team consisting of two labor inspectors and one from the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency directly visited the selected workplaces to check compliance with the MSDS system as a whole. Results: As a result of supervising 214 chemical substance manufacturing/importing workplaces, a total of 241 violations of the law were found in 121 workplaces, or 57% of them. In response, the Ministry of Employment and Labor took legal action on 8 cases in 6 locations, imposed a fines totaling of 249.69 million won on 120 chemical handling workplaces, and took action to correct the violations immediately. Conclusions: Major violations were in the order of non-request for warning signs, non-submission of MSDS, non-execution of MSDS training, and non-posting of MSDS. This shows the reality that employers who handle chemical substances are sufficiently communicating chemical information to workers. In the future, the government will actively implement preparation and submission support and system guidance for the implementation of the MSDS system, while making efforts to ensure that the MSDS system works well in the field through thorough on-site supervision in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.411-438
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• 2024

This study aims to identify and comprehensively view health information-related research trends using a bibliometric analysis. To this end, 1,193 papers from 2002 to 2023 related to "health information" were collected through the Korea Citation Index (KCI) database and analyzed in diverse aspects: research trends by period, academic fields, intellectual structure, and keyword changes. Results indicated that the number of papers related to health information continued to increase and has been decreasing since 2021. The main academic fields of health information-related research included "biomedical engineering," "preventive medicine/occupational environmental medicine," "law," "nursing," "library and information science," and "interdisciplinary research." Moreover, a co-word analysis was performed to understand the intellectual structure of research related to health information. As a result of applying the parallel nearest neighbor clustering (PNNC) algorithm to identify the structure and cluster of the derived network, four clusters and 17 subgroups belonging to them could be identified, centering on two conglomerates: "medical engineering perspective on health information" and "social science perspective on health information." An inflection point analysis was attempted to track the timing of change in the academic field and keywords, and common changes were observed between 2010 and 2011. Finally, a strategy diagram was derived through the average publication year and word frequency, and high-frequency keywords were presented by dividing them into "promising," "growth," and "mature." Unlike previous studies that mainly focused on content analysis, this study is meaningful in that it viewed the research area related to health information from an integrated perspective using various bibliometric methods.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.36-50
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• 2012

This study was carried out to find contradiction factors on laws for children's activity spaces and facilities and to suggest the rational options to control and manage those spaces and facilities by environmental and landscape planning methods. The results of this study are as follows: 1. The major laws related to the environmental safety for children's activity spaces are "Environmental Health Act (ERA)" for managing the environmental safety of children's activity spaces; "Safety Supervision Law of Children's Play Facilities(SSLCPF)" for the inspection and management for safety of children's play facilities; "Quality Management and Industrial Products Safety Management Law(QMIPSML)" for managing safety certification on children's play equipments. 2. The interior space such as "living room" by the Children's Welfare Law(CWL), "Children Park" by the Act on Urban Parks and Green Spaces(AUPGS), "classroom" on private educational institutes by the Act on Establishment and Operation Private Lesson and Training(AEOPLT) and "nursing room" of child care center smaller than $430m^2$ are needed to be managed as an activity space. 3. In order to reduce industrial burden in the production, establishment, construction, and operation and to minimize unwilling extra burden in the administration effort due to legally double regulate, it is necessary to mitigate the inspections on the equipment certificate from QMIPSML and overlapped or different factors and standards must be unified. With this study, the landscape domain could he enlarged from producing, import of play equipment and establishment, construction and operation of play facilities for a comprehensive range of activity spaces, and the landscape industry such as engineering industry, academic research, management, etc.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.56-68
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• 2003

The objects of this study are to find out (1) real situation of the food supply in prison under Imperial Government of Japan more cleary (historical meaning) and (2) which might help in understanding wrong present food consumption patterns in Korea which causes environmental as well as health problems. It is generally known that the length of the Japanese occupation for Korea is 36 years. However, it is concluded in this study that it was longer (70 years ; from 1875 to 1945 from when Japanese Army attacked and occupied Yungjongdo and Kanghwado island to e time when they were defeated on World War II.) Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 then the Imperial Government of Japan dismissed the Korea Army, controlled the Office of Justice and the management of prison by force. Since then about 50% of all land was fell into Japanese Government ownership and 80% of Korean farmers became as tenant. After this change, Korea farmers were forced to pay extremely high rent (up to 80% of its harvest). Forced immigration, low price procurement of grain by Japanese government up to more than 30%of their production, was practiced. Accordingly, the food situation of Korean farmers became miserable, which may caused more violations of Imperial Japanese Law. Malnutrition, epidemic diseases, mortality rate of infants soared and average life expectancy shortened to 20-30 years old. This was the period of World Economic Crises and Food Crises in Japan. It was said then that if one Japanese comes to Korea then 200 Koreans will starved to death. Meanwhile, Proconsul Bureau of Chosun requested to the Department of Medicine, the Imperial University of Kyungsung to survey food supply situation of Koreans in prison throughout Korea. Objectives of the survey then was not only to find out scientifically whether it is agreeable in maintaining prisoner's health and also find out the possibility to save food during food crisis. Survey was started from 1923 and ended in 1945, and it focussed on prisoners in the Seodaemoon Prison. This report is the outcome of the first survey. They concluded that the food supplied was nutritionally (had) no problem, in compare with those of workers in the factory, students in the dormitory in Japan and with those of prisoners in Taiwan, France and Germany. Amount of grain supplied were different according to their work lord and was divided into 9 different levels. Total grain was consisted of 50% millet, 30% soybean and 20% indica rice(variety). However, there were no difference in the amount of supply of side dishes between work groups. For the highest working group, 3280g of boiled grain per day was supplied to make stomach full but as a side dishes, salty fermented bean paste, fermented fish and salty soups, etc. was supplied. Deficiency of animal protein were observed, however, high intake of soybean may possibly caused animal protein deficiency problem. On the contrary, the intake of water soluble vitamins were insufficient but the level of calcium and iron intake seems to be sufficient, however, imbalance of intake of nutrition may caused low absorbtion rate which might caused malnutrition. High intake of dietary fiber and low intake of cholesterol may possibly prohibited them from so called modem disease but may caused the defect in disease resistancy againist epidemics and other traditional disease. Over intake of salt(20-30g per day) was observed. Surveyors who attended in this survey, mentioned that the amount of food intake may nutritionally be sufficient enough but the quality of food(and possibly, the taste of food) were like that of animal feed. For the officials who received this report might consider that considering the war situation and food crisis, the supply situation of food in the prison may considered to be good enough(because they are not starving). But as a Korean who studied this report, one feel extremely pity about those situation because (situation of) those period were very harsh under the Imperial Law and keeping the Law by Koreans were almost impossible, therefore, about one third adult violated the Law and were put into jail. And they were treated like animals.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.393-408
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• 2004

There exists a clear need to monitor the performance of civil structures over their operational lives. Current commercial monitoring systems suffer from various technological and economic limitations that prevent their widespread adoption. The wires used to route measurements from system sensors to the centralized data server represent one of the greatest limitations since they are physically vulnerable and expensive from an installation and maintenance standpoint. In lieu of cables, the introduction of low-cost wireless communications is proposed. The result is the design of a prototype wireless sensing unit that can serve as the fundamental building block of wireless modular monitoring systems (WiMMS). An additional feature of the wireless sensing unit is the incorporation of computational power in the form of state-of-art microcontrollers. The prototype unit is validated with a series of laboratory and field tests. The Alamosa Canyon Bridge is employed to serve as a full-scale benchmark structure to validate the performance of the wireless sensing unit in the field. A traditional cable-based monitoring system is installed in parallel with the wireless sensing units for performance comparison.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.719-728
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• 2007

Recently the assurance of railroad safety is very important issue in KOREA because there are lots of changes in the railroad industries. The Railway Safety Act was established in order to cope with these changes effectively and prevent the railroad transportation accidents. According to this law, Korea Transportation Safety Authority (KOTSA) has been entrusted with 'Integrated Railroad Safety Audit (IRSA)' and has implemented the safety audit to the railroad operation agencies such as Korea Railroad (KORAIL) and the railroad facility management organization such as the Korea Rail Network Authority (KR Network). The target of IRSA is to establish the effective rail safety management system and to raise the safety level of the railroad operation and facility agencies by checking synthetically their performance of safety duties with sincerity according to the Railway Safety Act. The purpose of this paper is to improve the efficiency of IRSA by the comparative research between IRSA and other similar safety audit system. To study the efficiency of IRSA, we investigated the rail safety audit systems of EU system specially France, England where the big changes have happened for the rail operation concepts and Japan where government entity control the railroad safety. The international standards of Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS 18001), Quality Management System (ISO 9001) and Guidelines for Quality and/or Environmental Management Systems Auditing (ISO 19011) are investigated.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.345-349
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• 2003

The quantity, process and kinetics of di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) migration in the 30/70 and 40/60 poly(vinylchloride) (PVC)/DEHP blends were investigated using gas chromatograph. A thin and flexible PVC sheet was soaked in surrounding medium (SM) of water/ethanol mixture and acetonitrile with constant stirring to release DEHP. By observed concentration of DEHP in the SM, it is found that acetonitrile is more intense in DEHP migration than water/ethanol mixture. In addition the amount of extracted DEHP is proportional to the leaching temperature and added ratio of DEHP. The behavior of DEHP migration from flexible PVC sheets was described by the Ficks's law with $2.72-10.1\;{times}\;10^{-10}$ cm²/s of the diffusion coefficients.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.222-248
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• 1996

This study was designed to survey misused expression in 37 KS (Korean Industrial standards) related to personal protective equipment. The results were as follows: 1. One hundred and twenty five misused expressions were found - 44 expressions were used illogically (35.2 %). 80 expressions were wrongly described (64.0 %) The types of illogically misused are: 10 illogical cases, 4 cases of a wrongly designated provision when cited, 12 cases of the lack of provisons for KS, 7 cases of a inappropriate uses of units, 8 cases of an overlapped sizes between standards. - The types of expressions wrongly described are: 30 cases of confusion in using an terms, 4 case of making an error when proofreading, and 29 cases of choosing words not appropriate to describe technical standard, 18 cases of unclear provisons due to missing phrases and terms, and 11 cases of provisons described differently from original intended purposes. 2. There is one case, where the same standard is categorized as two different names. There are three major causes of the misused expressions as seen from the following summary: - Imitated the developed countries' standards without filtering them by considering domestic law and ocher KS standards. - Tended to create each definition for each standard instead use of the basic standard. - Insufficiency of synthetic examination to the correlation between standards.