• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.75-90
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• 2003

When we think of fundamental problems of the aquaculture industry, there are several strict conditions, and consequently the aquaculture industry is forced to change. Fish aquaculture has a structural supply surplus in production, aggravation of fishing grounds, stagnant low price due to recent recession, and drastic change of distribution circumstances. It is requested for us to initiate discussion on such issue as “how fish aquaculture establishes its status in the coastal fishery\ulcorner, will fish aquaculture grow in the future\ulcorner, and if so “how it will be restructured\ulcorner” The above issues can be observed in the mariculture of yellow tail, sea scallop and eel. But there have not been studied concerning seabream even though the production is over 30% of the total production of fish aquaculture in resent and it occupied an important status in the fish aquaculture. The objectives of this study is to forecast the future movement of sea bream aquaculture. The first goal of the study is to contribute to managerial and economic studies on the aquaculture industry. The second goal is to identify the factors influencing the competition between production areas and to identify the mechanisms involved. This study will examine the competitive power in individual producing area, its behavior, and its compulsory factors based on case study. Producing areas will be categorized according to following parameters : distance to market and availability of transportation, natural environment, the time of formation of producing areas (leaderㆍfollower), major production items, scale of business and producing areas, degree of organization in production and sales. As a factor in shaping the production area of sea bream aquaculture, natural conditions especially the water temperature is very important. Sea bream shows more active feeding and faster growth in areas located where the water temperature does not go below 13∼14$^{\circ}C$ during the winter. Also fish aquaculture is constrained by the transporting distance. Aquacultured yellowtail is a mass-produced and a mass-distributed item. It is sold a unit of cage and transported by ship. On the other hand, sea bream is sold in small amount in markets and transported by truck; so, the transportation cost is higher than yellow tail. Aquacultured sea bream has different product characteristics due to transport distance. We need to study live fish and fresh fish markets separately. Live fish was the original product form of aquacultured sea bream. Transportation of live fish has more constraints than the transportation of fresh fish. Death rate and distance are highly correlated. In addition, loading capacity of live fish is less than fresh fish. In the case of a 10 ton truck, live fish can only be loaded up to 1.5 tons. But, fresh fish which can be placed in a box can be loaded up to 5 to 6 tons. Because of this characteristics, live fish requires closer location to consumption area than fresh fish. In the consumption markets, the size of fresh fish is mainly 0.8 to 2kg.Live fish usually goes through auction, and quality is graded. Main purchaser comes from many small-sized restaurants, so a relatively small farmer and distributer can sell it. Aquacultured sea bream has been transacted as a fresh fish in GMS ,since 1993 when the price plummeted. Economies of scale works in case of fresh fish. The characteristics of fresh fish is as follows : As a large scale demander, General Merchandise Stores are the main purchasers of sea bream and the size of the fish is around 1.3kg. It mainly goes through negotiation. Aquacultured sea bream has been established as a representative food in General Merchandise Stores. GMS require stable and mass supply, consistent size, and low price. And Distribution of fresh fish is undertook by the large scale distributers, which can satisfy requirements of GMS. The market share in Tokyo Central Wholesale Market shows Mie Pref. is dominating in live fish. And Ehime Pref. is dominating in fresh fish. Ehime Pref. showed remarkable growth in 1990s. At present, the dealings of live fish is decreasing. However, the dealings of fresh fish is increasing in Tokyo Central Wholesale Market. The price of live fish is decreasing more than one of fresh fish. Even though Ehime Pref. has an ideal natural environment for sea bream aquaculture, its entry into sea bream aquaculture was late, because it was located at a further distance to consumers than the competing producing areas. However, Ehime Pref. became the number one producing areas through the sales of fresh fish in the 1990s. The production volume is almost 3 times the production volume of Mie Pref. which is the number two production area. More conversion from yellow tail aquaculture to sea bream aquaculture is taking place in Ehime Pref., because Kagosima Pref. has a better natural environment for yellow tail aquaculture. Transportation is worse than Mie Pref., but this region as a far-flung producing area makes up by increasing the business scale. Ehime Pref. increases the market share for fresh fish by creating demand from GMS. Ehime Pref. has developed market strategies such as a quick return at a small profit, a stable and mass supply and standardization in size. Ehime Pref. increases the market power by the capital of a large scale commission agent. Secondly Mie Pref. is close to markets and composed of small scale farmers. Mie Pref. switched to sea bream aquaculture early, because of the price decrease in aquacultured yellou tail and natural environmental problems. Mie Pref. had not changed until 1993 when the price of the sea bream plummeted. Because it had better natural environment and transportation. Mie Pref. has a suitable water temperature range required for sea bream aquaculture. However, the price of live sea bream continued to decline due to excessive production and economic recession. As a consequence, small scale farmers are faced with a market price below the average production cost in 1993. In such kind of situation, the small-sized and inefficient manager in Mie Pref. was obliged to withdraw from sea bream aquaculture. Kumamoto Pref. is located further from market sites and has an unsuitable nature environmental condition required for sea bream aquaculture. Although Kumamoto Pref. is trying to convert to the puffer fish aquaculture which requires different rearing techniques, aquaculture technique for puffer fish is not established yet.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.141-173
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• 2007

The study examines how the environmental factors of store influence service brand personality and repurchase intention in the service environment. The service industry has been experiencing the intensified competition with the industry's continuous growth and the influence from rapid technological advancement. Under the circumstances, it has become ever more important for the brand competitiveness to be distinctively recognized against competition. A brand needs to be distinguished and differentiated from competing companies because they are all engaged in the similar environment of the service industry. The differentiation of brand achievement has become increasingly important to highlight certain brand functions to include emotional, self-expressive, and symbolic functions since the importance of such functions has been further emphasized in promoting consumption activities. That is the recent role of brand personality that has been emphasized in the service industry. In other words, customers now freely and actively express their personalities or egos in consumption activities, taking an important role in construction of a brand asset. Hence, the study suggests that it is necessary to disperse the recognition and acknowledgement that the maintenance of the existing customers contributes more to boost repurchase intention when it is compared to the efforts to create new customers, particularly in the service industry. Meanwhile, the store itself can offer a unique environment that may influence the consumer's purchase decision. Consumers interact with store environments in the process of,virtually, all household purchase they make (Sarel 1981). Thus, store environments may encourage customers to purchase. The roles that store environments play are to provide informational cues to customers about the store and goods and communicate messages to stimulate consumers' emotions. The store environments differentiate the store from competing stores and build a unique service brand personality. However, the existing studies related to brand in the service industry mostly concentrated on the relationship between the quality of service and customer satisfaction, and they are mostly generalized while the connective studies focused on brand personality. Such approaches show limitations and are insufficient to investigate on the relationship between store environment and brand personality in the service industry. Accordingly, the study intends to identify the level of contribution to the establishment of brand personality made by the store's physical environments that influence on the specific brand characteristics depending on the type of service. The study also intends to identify what kind of relationships with brand personality exists with brand personality while being influenced by store environments. In addition, the study intends to make meaningful suggestions to better direct marketing efforts by identifying whether a brand personality makes a positive influence to induce an intention for repurchase. For this study, the service industry is classified into four categories based on to the characteristics of service: experimental-emotional service, emotional -credible service, credible-functional service, and functional-experimental service. The type of business with the most frequent customer contact is determined for each service type and the enterprise with the highest brand value in each service sector based on the report made by the Korea Management Association. They are designated as the representative of each category. The selected representatives are a fast-food store (experimental-emotional service), a cinema house (emotional-credible service), a bank (credible-functional service), and discount store (functional-experimental service). The survey was conducted for the four selected brands to represent each service category among consumers who are experienced users of the designated stores in Seoul Metropolitan City and Gyeonggi province via written questionnaires in order to verify the suggested assumptions in the study. In particular, the survey adopted 15 scales, which represent each characteristic factor, among the 42 unique characteristics developed by Jennifer Aaker(1997) to assess the brand personality of each service brand. SPSS for Windows Release 12.0 and LISREL were used in the analysis of data verification. The methodology of the structural equation model was used for the study and the pivotal findings are as follows. 1) The environmental factors ware classified as design factors, ambient factors, and social factors. Therefore, the validity of measurement scale of Baker et al. (1994) was proved. 2) The service brand personalities were subdivided as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness, which makes the use of the brand personality scales by Jennifer Aaker(1997) appropriate in the service industry as well. 3) One-way ANOVA analysis on the scales of store environment and service brand personality showed that there exist statistically significant differences in each service category. For example, the social factors were highest in discount stores, while the ambient factors and design factors were highest in fast-food stores. The discount stores were highest in the sincerity and excitement, while the highest point for banks was in the competence and ruggedness, and the highest point for fast-food stores was in the sophistication, The consumers will make a different respond to the physical environment of stores and service brand personality that are inherent to the corresponding service interface. Hence, the customers will make a different decision-making when dealing with different service categories. In this aspect, the relationships of variables in the proposed hypothesis appear to work in a different way depending on the exposed service category. 4) The store environment factors influenced on service brand personalities differently by category of service. The factors of store's physical environment are transferred to a brand and were verified to strengthen service brand personalities. In particular, the level of influence on the service brand personality by physical environment differs depending on service category or dimension, which indicates that there is a need to apply a different style of management to a different service category or dimension. It signifies that there needs to be a brand strategy established in order to positively influence the relationship with consumers by utilizing an appropriate brand personality factor depending on different characteristics by service category or dimension. 5) The service brand personalities influenced on the repurchase intention. Especially, the largest influence was made in the sophistication dimension of service brand personality scale; the unique and characteristically appropriate arrangement of physical environment will make customers stay in the service environment for a long time and will lead to give a positive influence on the repurchase intention. 6) The store environment factors influenced on the repurchase intention. Particularly, the largest influence was made on the social factors of store environment. The most intriguing finding is that the service factor among all other environment factors gives the biggest influence to the repurchase intention in most of all service types except fast-food stores. Such result indicates that the customers pay attention to how much the employees try to provide a quality service when they make an evaluation on the service brand. At the same time, it also indicates that the personal factor is directly transmitted to the construction of brand personality. The employees' attitude and behavior are the determinants to establish a service brand personality in the process of enhancing service interface. Hence, there should be a reinforced search for a method to efficiently manage the service staff who has a direct contact with customers in order to make an affirmative improvement of the customers' brand evaluation at the service interface. The findings suggest several managerial implications. 1) Results from the empirical study indicated that store environment factors have a strong positive impact on a service brand personality. To increase customers' repurchase intention of a service brand, the management is required to effectively manage store environment factors and create a friendly brand personality based on the corresponding service environment. 2) Mangers and researchers must understand and recognize that the store environment elements are important marketing tools, and that brand personality influences on consumers' repurchase intention. Based on such result of the study, a service brand could be utilized as an efficient measure to achieve a differentiation by enforcing the elements that are most influential among all other store environments for each service category. Therefore, brand personality established involving various store environments will further reinforce the relationship with customers through the elevated brand identification of which utilization to induce repurchase decision can be used as an entry barrier. 3) The study identified the store environment as a component of service brand personality for the store's effective communication with consumers. For this, all communication channels should be maintained with consistency and an integrated marketing communication should be executed to efficiently approach to a larger number of customers. Mangers and researchers must find strategies for aligning decisions about store environment elements with the retailers' marketing and store personality objectives. All ambient, design, and social factors need to be orchestrated so that consumers can take an appropriate store personality. In this study, the induced results from the previous studies were extended to the service industry so as to identify the customers' decision making process that leads to repurchase intention and a result similar to those of the previous studies. The findings suggested several theoretical and managerial implications. However, the situation that only one service brand served as the subject of analysis for each service category, and the situation that correlations among store environment elements were not identified, as well as the problem of representation in selection of samples should be considered and supplemented in the future when further studies are conducted. In addition, various antecedents and consequences of brand personality must be looked at in the aspect of the service environment for further research.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 1970

The present status of control measures for public health important helminthic infections in Korea was surveyed in 1969 and the following results were obtained. The activities of parasitic examination and Ascaris treatment for the positives which were done during 1966 to 1969 were brought in poor result and could not decrease the infection rate. It is needed to improve or strengthen the activities. The mass treatment activities for paragonimiasis and clonorchiasis in the areas which were designated by the Ministry of Health were carried out during 1965 to 1968 with no good results in decrease of estimated number of the patients. There were too many pharmaceutical companies where many kinds of anthelmintics were produced. It may be better to reduce the number of anthelmintics produced and control the quality. The human feces, the most important source of helminthic infections, was generally not treated in sanitary ways because of the poor sewerage system and no sewage treatment plant in urban areas and insanitary latrines in rural areas. The field soils of 170 specimens were collected from 34 areas out of 55 urban and tourist areas where night soil has been prohibited by a regulation to be used as a fertilizer, and examined for parasites contamination with the result of Ascaris egg detection in 44%. Some kinds of vegetables of 64 specimens each from the supply agents of parasite free vegetables and general markets were collected and examined for parasites contamination with the results of Ascaris egg detection in 25% and 36% respectively. The parasite control activities and the ability of parasitological examination techniques in the health centers of the country were not satisfactory. The budget of the Ministry of Health for the parasite control was very poor. The actual expenditure needed for cellophane thick smear technique was 8 Won per a specimen. As a principle the control of helminthic infections might be led toward breaking the chain of events in the life cycle of the prasites and eliminating environmental and host factors concerned with the infections, and the following methods nay be pointed out. 1) Mass treatment might be done to eliminate human reservoirs of an infection. 2) Animal reservoirs which are related with human infections night be eliminated. 3) The excretes of reservoirs, particularly human feces, should be treated in sanitary ways by the means of sanitary sewerage system and sewage treatment plant in urban areas and sanitary latrines such as waterborne latrine, aqua privy and pit latrine in rural areas. The increase of national economical development and prohibition of the habit of using night soils as a fertilizer might be very important factors to achieve the purpose. 4) The control of vehicles and intermediate hosts might be done by the means of prohibition of soil contamination with parasites, food sanitation, insect control and snail control. 5) The improvement of insanitary attitudes and bad habits which are related with parasitic infections night be done by the means of prohibition of habit of using night soils as a fertilizer, and improving eating habits and personal hygiene. 6) Chemoprophylactic measure and vaccination may be effective to prevent the infections or the development of a parasite to adult in the bodies when the bodies were invaded by parasites. Further studies and development of this kind of measures are needed.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.158-167
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• 2006

The object of this study is to detect of land-cover change in western DMZ and vicinity. This was performed as a basic study to construct a decision support system for the conservation or a sustainable development of the DMZ and Vicinity near future. DMZ is an is 4km wide and 250km long and it's one of the most highly fortified boundaries in the world and also a unique thin green line. Environmentalists want to declare the DMZ as a natural reserve and a biodiversity zone, but nowadays through the strengthening of the inter-Korean economic cooperation, some developers are trying to construct a new-town or an industrial complex inside of the DMZ. This study investigates the current environmental conditions, especially deforestation of the western DMZ adopting remote sensing and GIS techniques. The Land-covers were identified through the linear spectvral mixture analysis(LSMA) which was used to handle the spectral mixture problem of low spatial resolution imagery of Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery. To analyze quantitative and spatial change of vegetation-cover in western DMZ, GIS overlay method was used. In LSMA, to develop high-quality fraction images, three endmembers of green vegetation(GV), soil, water were driven from pure features in the imagery. Through 15 years, from 1987 to 2002, forest of western DMZ and vicinity was devastated and changed to urban, farmland or barren land. Northern part of western DMZ and vicinity was more deforested than that of southern part. ($52.37km^2$ of North Korean forest and $39.04km^2$ of South Korean were change to other land-covers.) In case of North Korean part, forest changed to barren land and farmland and in South Korean part, forest changed to farmland and urban area. Especially, In North Korean part of DMZ and vicinity, $56.15km^2$ of farmland changed to barren land through 15 years, which showed the failure of the 'Darakbat' (terrace filed) project which is one of food increase projects in North Korea.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.21-34
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• 2014

This study examined the levels of recognition, knowledge, and intake behavior of foods containing caffeine and analyzed the factors affecting amount of caffeine intake to get basic materials for development of educational program for proper intake behavior of foods containing caffeine of high school students in Gyeongbuk region. Of 300 questionnaires that were distributed on December 27, 2013 to February 14, 2014, 255 responses were used for analysis. Frequency distributions, Cronbach's ${\alpha}$, t tests, one-way ANOVA, Pearson's correlation analysis, and regression analysis were conducted by SPSS Windows V.21.0. The mean of the level of concern about foods containing caffeine was 2.76/5.00 points; male and second and third grade students showed lower concern level than female and first grade students. The respondents answered that intake of foods containing caffeine had somewhat harmful effect on health, but it did not much help to refresh and increase concentration. The mean for the percentage of correct answers about knowledge of caffeine was 54.3. Small number of the respondents were advised to reduce intake of caffeine from school teachers or parents. The average of caffeine intake amount was 71.67mg/day; the average for male was 78.98mg/day, whereas for female 61.23mg/day. Almost thirteen percentage of the respondents took caffeine over RDA(Recommended Daily Allowance). According to the result of regression analysis for amount of caffeine intake, grade, BMI, concern about health, perception of whether foods containing caffeine help with refreshment and increase of concentration or not, and experiences of having advice from school teachers to decrease caffeine intake were significant. These results imply that it is necessary for high school students to educate how to take caffeine properly.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.371-377
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• 2013

The government has been carrying out a project for supporting the rain shelter for hot pepper as part of measures stabilizing the demand and supply of hot pepper since 2012. However, the eaves height of single-span plastic greenhouses extensively used in farms is low, which are inappropriate for the rainproof cultivation of hot pepper. This study attempted to develop single-span plastic greenhouses which are structurally safe and have the dimensions suitable for the rainproof cultivation of hot pepper as well. The structure status of plastic greenhouses and restructuring wishes of 56 rainproof cultivation farms nationwide were investigated to set up the width and height of the plastic greenhouses. 53% of the plastic greenhouses currently in operation had a width of under 7 m and 64% of their eaves had a height of 1.5 m or less, which accounted for the highest rate. Mostly the width of 7.0 m was desired for the greenhouses and the height of 2.0 m for their eaves, so these values were chosen as the dimensions for the singlespan plastic greenhouses. After an analysis of their structural safety while changing the specifications of the rafter pipe in various ways, 5 kinds of models were suggested considering the frame ratio and installation costs. The 12-Pepper-1 model is a developed single-span plastic greenhouse for hot pepper in which a ${\emptyset}42.2{\times}2.1t$ rafter pipe is installed at an interval of 90cm and the models of 12-Pepper-2 through 5 are the other developed ones in which a ${\emptyset}31.8{\times}1.5t$ rafter pipe is installed at intervals of 60 cm, 70 cm, 80 cm and 90 cm, respectively. As a result of an analysis of economic feasibility of 12-Pepper-2 compared to 10-Single-3 in the notification of the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, it turned out that there would be an increase in profits by about 1.2 million won based on one building of a greenhouse sized 672 $m^2$.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.115-122
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• 2014

In order to select the raspberry cultivars that have high contents of bioactive constituents and high antioxidant activities, 7 cultivated and 2 wild raspberries which were selected and cultivated in the Bokbunja Institute were evaluated for their physicochemical characteristics, bioactive constituents, and antioxidant activities. The wild raspberry of Asan was the smallest among the sample raspberries but it had the highest sugar and lowest acid contents among the raspberries. Another wild raspberry of Ulleungdo had the highest total phenolic compound and ellagic acid contents, 182.97, $55.25mg{\cdot}100g^{-1}FW$, respectively, although it was small and had low sugar and high acid contents. Among the widely cultivated raspberry cultivars in Kimhae, 'Wangttal' cultivar was a big raspberry with 12.80% sugar content, and another unknown raspberry cultivar was as small as the wild raspberry with 14.60% sugar content. Although 'Wangttal' and the unknown raspberry cultivars cultivated in Kimhae possess lower contents of total phenolic compound (159.62, $165.94mg{\cdot}100g^{-1}$) and ellagic acid (45.7, $52.1mg{\cdot}100g^{-1}$ ) than the wild raspberry of Ulleungdo, the contents of total flavonoids (14.28, $14.90mg{\cdot}100g^{-1}$) and total anthocyanins (28.69, $30.48mg{\cdot}100g^{-1}$) were higher. Also the wild raspberry of Ulleungdo, 'Wangttal', and the unknown raspberry cultivar of Kimhae had higher antioxidant activities measured by FRAP (Ferric reducing antioxidant power), DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl), and ABTS (2,2' azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) assays. The present study shows that three raspberry cultivars could be potent resources for raspberry breeding and functional material development.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.5_2
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• pp.721-732
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• 2017

With the increasing socio-economic importance of rice as a global staple food, several models have been developed for rice yield estimation by combining remote sensing data with carbon cycle modelling. In this study, we aimed to estimate rice yield in Korea using such an integrative model using satellite remote sensing data in combination with a biophysical crop growth model. Specifically, daily meteorological inputs derived from MODIS (Moderate Resolution imaging Spectroradiometer) and radar satellite products were used to run a light use efficiency based crop growth model, which is based on the MODIS gross primary production (GPP) algorithm. The modelled biomass was converted to rice yield using a harvest index model. We estimated rice yield from 2003 to 2014 at the county level and evaluated the modelled yield using the official rice yield and rice straw biomass statistics of Statistics Korea (KOSTAT). The estimated rice biomass, yield, and harvest index and their spatial distributions were investigated. Annual mean rice yield at the national level showed a good agreement with the yield statistics with the yield statistics, a mean error (ME) of +0.56% and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 5.73%. The estimated county level yield resulted in small ME (+0.10~+2.00%) and MAE (2.10~11.62%),respectively. Compared to the county-level yield statistics, the rice yield was over estimated in the counties in Gangwon province and under estimated in the urban and coastal counties in the south of Chungcheong province. Compared to the rice straw statistics, the estimated rice biomass showed similar error patterns with the yield estimates. The subpixel heterogeneity of the 1 km MODIS FPAR(Fraction of absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation) may have attributed to these errors. In addition, the growth and harvest index models can be further developed to take account of annually varying growth conditions and growth timings.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.201-210
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• 2017

BACKGROUND: The current study was to monitor of 9 veterinary antibiotics (ceftiofur, clopidol, florfenicol, sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxazole, sulfathiazole, tetracycline, tiamulin, and tylosin) in manure using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in positive and negative electrospray ionization mode. METHODS AND RESULTS: Sample preparation was carried out using Mcllvaine buffer and citrate salts to adjust the pH of the sample followed by purification with dispersive solid phase extraction (d-SPE). Separation of analytes during LC-MS/MS analysis was conducted using an Eclipse Plus $C_{18}$ column and the mobile phase was in gradient mode with, 0.1% formic acid and 5 mM ammonium formate in methanol (A) and 0.1% formic acid and 5 mM ammonium formate in distilled water (B). The linearity of the matrix-matched calibrations of all tested antibiotics was good, with $R^2$ determination coefficients ${\geq}0.9920$. The limit of detection (LOD) and quantifications (LOQ) were $0.1-67.0{\mu}g/kg$ and $0.4-200.0{\mu}g/kg$, respectively. Analysis of 13 solid and liquid manure samples taken from the Republic of Korea revealed concentrations less than $0.7{\mu}g/kg$ for tiamulin, $1497.6{\mu}g/kg$ for sulfamethazine. CONCLUSION: To monitor 9 veterinary antibiotics from manure samples in 13 provincial areas throughout the Republic of Korea, an analytical method was developed. The developed method was fully validated and successfully applied for monitoring various veterinary antibiotics in manure samples.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.207-215
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• 2018

Inflammatory response and oxidative stress play critical roles in the development and progression of many human diseases. Therefore, a great deal of attention has been focused on finding functional materials that can control inflammation and oxidative stress simultaneously. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Socheongja and Socheong 2, Korean black seed coat soybean varieties, on the inflammatory and oxidative stress induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in RAW 264.7 macrophages. Our data indicated that the extracts of Socheongja (SCJ) and Socheong 2 (SC2) significantly suppressed LPS-induced production of nitrite oxide (NO) and prostaglandin $E_2$, key pro-inflammatory mediators, by suppressing the expression of inducible NO synthase and cyclooxygenase-2. It was also found that SCJ and SC2 reduced the LPS-induced secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis $factor-{\alpha}$ and $interleukin-1{\beta}$, which was concomitant with a decrease in the protein levels. In addition, SCJ and SC2 markedly diminished LPS-stimulated intracellular reactive oxygen species accumulation, and effectively enhanced nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) and heme oxygenase (HO)-1 expression. Furthermore, LPS-induced activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) was abrogated by SCJ and SC2. Taken together, these data suggest that SCJ and SC2 may offer protective roles against LPS-induced inflammatory and oxidative responses in RAW 264.7 macrophages through attenuating MAPKs pathway, and these effects are mediated, at least in part, through activating Nrf2/HO-1 pathway. Given these results, we propose that SCJ and SC2 have therapeutic potential in the treatment of inflammatory and oxidative disorders caused by over-activation of macrophages.