• Title/Summary/Keyword: labor activities

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Enhancing Productivity through Innovation: Korea's Response to Competitiveness Challenges (경쟁력 도전에 대한 한국의 대응 - 혁신을 통한 생산성 향상 -)

  • Suh, Joonghae
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.27 no.1
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    • pp.211-238
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    • 2005
  • Korea is far behind other OECD countries in economy-wise productivity: Korea's labor productivity in terms of GDP per hour worked is the lowest among OECD countries. Against the existing productivity gap, there is a worrying sign in Korea's investment trend - rapid fall in machinery and equipment investment with slow increase in R&D investment. The challenge facing Korea is how to transform her economy from catching-up model to a knowledge-based one. The paper shows that, in tandem with the structural changes that today's Korean industries are experiencing, industry's innovation system is also changing. Innovation networks are emerging as the result of economy-wise restructuring since the financial crisis of 1997 and, though still not a dominant force, the newly emerging innovation networks will be the main threads of industry's innovation activities in the future. The changes in industrial innovation system would positively contribute in raising the productivity of the Korean economy. The paper contains a case study on Korea's automobile industry in order to highlight some of main characteristics of the structural changes, in addition to a chapter that gives an overview of the evolutionary paths of the Korea's industrial innovation. The paper assesses that changes can be considered as a positive sign of future growth perspective; but there are further challenges to make the Korea's industrial innovation system effective. The list of such challenges includes strengthening upstream sectors of currently leading industries, expanding the innovation base to SME and promoting technological co-operation between domestic firms and foreign firms.

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A Visual Methods Approach to the Formation of Class Identity and Practices of Everyday Life -A Case Study on Youths of 'Gangbuk' ('강북' 청소년들의 일상생활 문화와 계급 정체성 형성에 대한 영상방법론적 연구)

  • Lee, Sangkyu;Hong, Seok-Kyeong
    • Korean journal of communication and information
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    • v.68
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    • pp.87-129
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    • 2014
  • This paper addresses questions on the marginalized position of youths of 'Gangbuk' and elucidates how they construct their own identities in the individual trajectories of everyday life. Three years of research, including participatory observation and in-depth interviews, was conducted on nine students from Northeastern district of Seoul. The research also adopted reflexive photography interview method in order to encourage the informants to actively participate in the research. The result illustrates the diversity of the everyday life experiences. More 'marginalized' youths from middle to lower class background had to endure the burdens of their daily lives without programs. Still, they were elaborating their own cultural taste and positive self-narratives at the periphery of the mainstream culture, by practicing music, online community activities and bodily performances. They had to negotiate the crucial turn of life after their graduation, when they entered into the harsh social competition with limited resources. We observed how they gradually assimilate the identity of the 'working youth', some of them developing a positive valorization of their experiences labor. Findings underline the active role of the cultural practices in the making of class identity of the youth and the necessity of researches situating the making of class identity and the reproduction of the class for the youth in the larger geography of class culture in the contemporary Korean society. Lastly, it is argued that these youths should not be considered as determined subjects, who reproduce already established class identities, but as active agents of their lives who deserve more respects and attentions from the society.

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Community Resource Development Strategies for Facilitating North Korean Refugees' Resettlement in Local Areas : The Case of Busan Metropolitan City (북한이탈주민의 지방정착지원을 위한 지역사회 자원동원전략 : 부산지역의 사례를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Ki-Young;Yoon, Kyung-Ae
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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    • v.55
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    • pp.103-130
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    • 2003
  • This study examined resettlement and adaptation condition of North Korean(NK) refugees resettling in local areas and compared the results of the examination to the life conditions for those who are living in Seoul and its vicinities. As the result indicates, the first cohort is currently inferior to their counterpart in labor market activities, life satisfaction, and quantity and quality of resettlement assistance implemented by private voluntary agencies. The reason of selecting Busan as a specific case for this study is that: 1) Busan is the largest city in the number of NK refugees residence except for Seoul, 2) Busan has a couple of community welfare centers which are involved in the work of NK refugee resettlement as well as the reason that Busan provides convenience of conducting a survey to the researcher. The most significant contribution of this study to social work research and practice is that it applied the existing theoretical and practical approach of community resources development and networking of social supports to the field of NK refugee resettlement assistance. Based on the research findings, this study suggests that the roles and functions of Community Associations of NK Refugee Assistance should be more activating and that a community welfare center should a take critical role in organizing and activating the Community Associations. This paper also suggests specific ways of enhancing the role of community welfare centers in NK refugee assistance.

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Development of Performance Indicators Based on Balanced Score Card for School Food Service Facilities (균형성과표(BSC)개념을 적응한 학교급식 운영성과 측정지표 개발)

  • Kwak, Tong-Kyung;Chang, Hye-Ja;Song, Ji-Yong
    • Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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    • v.10 no.6
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    • pp.905-919
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    • 2005
  • This study raised the necessity of developing performance indicators for measuring the management efficiency and effectiveness of school food service, and as a means of helping its implementation, a balanced score card (BSC) approach developed by Norton and Kaplan was adopted. This study established BSC in seven phases through literature: Phase 1 Defining a school food service and the scope of working activities, Phase 2 Establishing the vision of a school food service, Phase 3 Setting strategic goals, Phase 4 Identifying critical success factors (CSFs), Phase 5 Developing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Phase 6 Extracting cause and effect relationship, and Phase 7 Completing a preliminary BSC. The preliminary BSC was fumed into a survey, which was administered to food service related people working at the Office of Education and School Food Service including 16 offices,209 dietitians, 48 school administrators both from self-operated and contract-managed, and 9 experts in areas related to school food service. They were asked questions about strategies from 4 different perspectives,12 CSFs, 39 KPls, and the cause and effect relationships among them. As a result, among the CSFs based on 4 different perspectives, all factors other than ' zero sum on profit/loss ' from the financial perspective turned out to be valid. In terms of KPIs, manufacturing cost percentages, casualty loss count/reduction rates, school foodervice participation rates, and sales goal achievement rates were found to be valid from the financial perspective, while student satisfaction index, faculty satisfaction index, leftover ratio, nutrition educational performance count, index of evaluating nutrition education, customer claim count/reduction rate, handling customer claim count/reduction rate, and parent satisfaction index were found to be valid from the customers' perspective. Besides, nutritional requirement sufficient ratio, nutritional management score, food poisoning outbreak count, employee safety accident count, sanitary inspection assessment index, meals per labor hour (productivity index), computerization ratio, operational management index, and purchase management assessment index were also found to be valid from the perspective of internal business processes. From the perspective of innovation and learning, employee turnover ratio/rate of absenteeism, annual education and training count, employee satisfaction index, human resource management assessment index, annual menu-related customer feedback, food service information index for employees and parents/schools were also found to be valid. The significance of this study is to present indices for measuring overall performance of school lunch food service operations without putting any limitation on types of school food service management, and to help correctly assess the contribution of the current types of school food service management to schools and students. (Korean J Community Nutrition 10(6) : $905\∼919$, 2005)

A Study on Mental Health of Single Aged Persons in Home Perceived by Daughter-in-law (재가 독신노인을 부양하는 주부가 인지하는 노인의 정신건강에 관한 연구)

  • Yun Suk-Rye
    • Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.31-48
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    • 1993
  • Nowaday, there have a lot of changes in the demands of the aged persons. Their problems also came to the fore with diverse forms under the influences of industrialization, urbanization and nuclear family. To make the matter worse, the aged population is mounting rapidly. Also, such structure as nuclear family is widely disseminating uncomfortable to the aged. People is mainly being guided by self interest above everything else. Indeed, they had, all together, bad effects on our traditional value system regarding 'respect for the aged and devotion to patients'. It seems unfortunately obvious that the family responsibility is gradually weakening to support the old who is a dependent family. The result is that the aged must have suffered all sorts of hardships in lightenning psychological, physical and economical difficulties. First, to grasp the situations and conditions supporting for single aged persons from each view of psychological, emotional, family-relational, healthy, social and economical standpoints, and second, to analyze their own recognition levels thinking of their health conditions and the relationships between the supporting environments of old family dependants and their psychological healths and then finally, to propose suggestions being able to be helpful for living comfortably in an old age and thereby, building up good family relation. The statistical techniques used to analyze 115 respondents living in Puchun city are frequency, $x^2$ test, t-Jest, ANOVA, Pearson's Correlation Coefficiency and Regression analysis (SPSS package), pertnent to prove the hypothesis suggested in this paper. Of course, it is needless to say that more data are needed on this point. However, several main research findings can be summarized as follows: First, the better single aged persons may be in the habit of eating a meal and the higher they may think of their physical health conditions and movement, the more they want to participate in economic activities to be free from economical dependence upon their children and to overcome lonliness. Second, single aged women appear to have had higher ability to take care their health for themself than single aged men do. It is why signle aged women do not, in general, have big problems to manage their health. But, as shown in this paper, single aged person"s were more liable to the diseases of the aged and, thereby, requiring special medical treatment badly to be healthy. Third. single aged persons revealed potential desires to free themself from socio economic dependence upon their children even in simple labor Job which can draw a monthly salary of about W200, 000. Fourth, they are generally satisfied with their children's filial piety toward them. Nonethless, most of them appear to be reluctantly dependent upon their children and live lonly lives very much. Fifth, they seem to have some hesitation in expressing their candid opinions as that then are some others along with family environmental factors for psychological and emotiona stability. Accordingly, it is safe to conclude by saying that much attention should' be paid no only to socio-economic supports and better medical services for the aged but also to political supports of the society and towards their children for the aged's emotiona support, for improving the quality of their lives in old age and promoting efficiency in suporting for old family dependants.

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The Plans for Core Personnel Management to Prevent Industrial Technology Leakage (산업기술 유출방지를 위한 핵심인력 관리방안에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Soon-Seok;Shin, Jae-Chul
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.25
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    • pp.109-130
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    • 2010
  • As many countries in the world including the Republic of Korea have used all their national resources in the accelerating economic information warfare, illegal leakage of industrial technologies and information has increased rapidly. The costs required for damage prevention from 2007 to 2008 are estimated at approximately KRW 180 trillion which is expected to increase gradually in future. Because the tricks of leaking key technologies are also getting increasingly systematized, sophisticated and bigger, e.g., simple theft at the individual level or the conspiracy of all the staff taking part in the research activities, we should pay special attention to technology security in addition to technology development. While there are several factors affecting such the brain drain, they usually include personal, social, political and cultural factors, for instance, very heavy educational expenditure of children compared to relatively low pay, the speedy labor market circulation for experienced personnel, or political restrictions on researches. In this context, as part of efforts made to prevent the outflow of core personnel, individual companies and research institutes should establish systematically appropriate core personnel management systems for their own organizational or business goals and principles which are intented to ensure to give better treatment and benefit to core personnel and to exercise closer supervision over them. Furthermore, the conventional personnel management system should be radically and flexibly improved in the manner of encouraging the core personnel returning to the organization to combine their external experiences with practices, instead of penalizing them. At the same time, it is necessary to train and educate core personnel through mutual collaboration and in-house training facilities as well as external academic programs operated jointly at the level of the industry. Finally, as the issues concerning the outflow of core personnel are not just problems of relevant companies and other advanced countries have devoted their best efforts to secure their own key technologies at the national level, it is urgent for the industry and the competent authorities to cooperate closely.

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A Prospect and Tasks for Regional Development of Youngnam Area: (1) Development Process and the Quality of Life (영남지역 발전의 전망과 과제: (1) 발전과정과 삶의 질)

  • Choi, Byung-Doo
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.23-43
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    • 1995
  • This paper is the first part of a research which looks into the regional development process and the quality of life of Youngnam area, and which suggests a prospect and tasks for the future development of the region. Youngnam region has grown rapidly on the basis of labor-intensive light industries and standardized Fordist lage-scale heavy industries through the industrialization and urbanization of South Korea from the 1960s; but recently it has shown a relatively downward trend. The recent economic stagnation of Youngnam region can be seen as a result of uneven regional development in the national scale, which has brought out the increasing subcontracting relation within the region, the geographically excessive concentration of firms, the lack of growth potentiality of high-tech industries, the weakness of producer service, and the shortage of financial activities for capital flows. In addition, construction of physical and social infrastructures and management of urban central functions could not meet properly the rapid economic and urban growth of the region. Because of these problematics inherent in the economy of Yougnam region, the occupational status of regional dwellers is more or less unstable, and the wage level of employee as a whole in Youngnam region is lower than those of Seoul, although the wage level of labourers in manufacturing is relatively high. Moreover, the quality of life of dwellers in the region has some difficulties in the use of resources and ecological environment as well as the unequal provision of means of living and welfare facilities, even though it has been improved materially.

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Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of School Foodservice Systems in Kyonggi-do (경기도 초등학교 급식의 단독과 공동조리 시스템 비용/효과분석)

  • 양일선
    • Journal of Nutrition and Health
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    • v.30 no.10
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    • pp.1229-1243
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    • 1997
  • The purpose of this study were to :(a) investigate meal costs, plate waste costs, and advantages/disadvantages of conventional /commissary foodservices and (b) compare the effectiveness of commissary foodservice systems with that of conventional systems. Questionnaires were developed and mailed to 136 schools in Kyonggi-do. A total of 106 questionnaires were usable, resulting in a 77.9% response rate. Teacher's teaching of good food habits and students satisfaction with school foodservices were surveyed in three schools from each system. Moreover, plate waste was measured to express cost and benefit in currency. Data were analyzed using the SAS package for description analysis, t-test, $\chi$$^2$ test, ANOVA, and the Vilcoxon rank sum test. Approximately seventy percent of 294schools in Kyonggi-do were operating commissary systems and most of them were of the rural (reduced paid) type. The number of meals served varied significantly between types of foodservice. The results of this study indicated that average food , labor utility , and supply costs were saved in the commissary system and that the total meal cost/person for a day was 1218.7 won compared to 1452.4 won in the conventional system. Though total meal costs were saved in the commissary system, dietitians had difficulties cooperating with school foodservice committees and supporters associations, especially in satellites of the commissary system. In addition, dietitians and teachers in the commissary system did not carry out teaching activities on good food habits to students as often as in the conventional system. Other problems that dietitians recognized in the commissary system were difficulties in training employees and parents for portion control and serving relatively simple menus. Students, as customers of school foodservices, are very important for system evaluation . Students in the commissary system scored of food itself , cleanliness of tableware, waiting time, quantity of meal and food temperature significantly lower than students in the conventional system. Moreover , the rate of plate waste was 20.5% in the commissary system as compared to 3.3% in the conventional system. Cost-effectiveness (saving 233.7won/person/day) is the main benefit of the commissary system. However , because of lower satisfaction scores and a highest plate waste rate, 201.9won/ person were wasted in the commissary system. The results of this study suggest that increasing the number of meals served within a commissary system might maximize the efficiency of the system, but increasing the number of satellites is not recommended because it might be out of dietitians control in many aspects.

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R&D Activities, Imperfect Competition and Economic Growth (R&D 및 불완전경쟁과 경제성장)

  • Kim, Byung-Woo
    • Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.47-72
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    • 2007
  • Ideas do not become exhausted, and there are no diminishing returns in the creation of knowledge. Nonetheless, growth ultimately ceases in this simplest model of endogeneous innovation. The reasons are similar to those that are discussed in the context of the neoclassical model of capital accumulation. Even if the resource cost of creating new goods does not rise, the economic return to invention may decline as the number of available products increases. When the rate of return to R&D falls to the level of the discount rate, private agents cease to be willing to defer consumption in order to invest in product development. But, if we treat knowledge capital as a public capital considering of its non-appropriable benefits, economic growth can be sustained in the economy. Romer(1986) has pointed out that growth might be sustainable if the accumulation of knowledge is not subject to long-run diminishing returns. Actually Romer assumed diminishing returns in the production of private knowledge from available resources, but increasing returns in the production of output from labor and total (public and private) knowledge. His condition for the sustainability of long-run growth amounts to an assumption that the diminishing returns in the former activity do not outweigh the increasing returns in the latter. The Johansen(1988) cointegration test method is used for finding long-run equilibrium relationship between R&D input and the product innovation. Test results indicate the existence of cointegrating equation between each pair of regression variables including dependent variable in the knowledge production function. And, the signs of cointegrating vectors are well accord to the prediction of sustainable growth. In the empirical analysis, from all cases of the form for the knowledge production function, we could not reject the null hypothesis that R&D spillover effect is significant($H_{0}:\;{\gamma}=1$). In summary, we showed that considering goodness of fit of regression model, we can see that the empirical evidence is strongly in favor of the character of knowledge as the public knowledge capital. So, we can expect that by product innovation, economic growth can be sustained in the Korean economy.

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Digital Creative Labour -A Perspective of the Ethics of Labour and Subjectivity of the Younger Generation in Korea (디지털 창의노동 -젊은 세대의 노동 윤리와 주체성에 관한 한 시각)

  • Kim, Yeran
    • Korean journal of communication and information
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    • v.69
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    • pp.71-110
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    • 2015
  • Beyond the technological behaviorism-oriented notion of prosumers, the current study explores the question of digital creative labour of the youth in the interrelated context of post-capitalist crisis and neoliberal ethos of selfhood. This analysis is situated particularly in the social conflicts and struggles in Korea, where the problems related to the precarization of the younger generation have been increasingly aggravated (in the realm of embodied reality) whereas their digital activities have been highly expressive (in the realm of mediated reality). The contradictions embedded in the question of the labour of the youth are delineated in the respect of the subjectivities of young free labour, or 'digital creative labour' in proposed terms: the precarious young free labour in Korea is the compound of social fragmentation, economic polarization, expansion of cognitive and emotion labour, boom of hedonistic consumerism, economic-cultural celebration of creativity and self-entrepreneurship, technological saturation of digital media, subjective/collective affects around excitement and ambition but also of anxiety and fear. The ambivalence and complexity of the young free labour is converged at the emergence of homo-economicus (Michel Foucault) through the subjectivation of the social (con)fusion of post-capitalist crisis and neoliberal governmentality of selfhood.

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