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An Analysis of the Imported Consumer Goods Distribution Sector of Korea: From a Vertical Structure Viewpoint (수입소비재(輸入消費財) 유통구조(流通構造)의 효율화(效率化) 방안(方案))

  • Nam, Il-chong
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.3-33
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    • 1991
  • Since the early 1980's, the Korean government has gradually been widening the Korean market to foreign consumer goods. This, combined with the increased purchasing power of the Korean consumers resulting from the continued economic growth of the country, has sparked a spectacular influx of foreign consumer goods into Korea, ranging from BMW's to chopsticks. Import of foreign consumer goods amounted to more than 6 billion dollars in 1989 and is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. The increased import of foreign consumer goods doubtlessly improved the overall welfare of the Korean consumers by providing them with a wider range of options to choose from, by lowering the prices of some of the consumer goods domestically produced, and also by forcing the producers of some Korean goods to face competition with better foreign goods, thus giving them an incentive to raise the quality of their products. However, it is agreed by most economists that this increase in general welfare has been much smaller than what they had expected at the outset. Consumer prices of most imported consumer goods are easily double the import price, and in some cases, more than treble the import prices. Further, there has not been a noticeable drop in the prices of domestically produced consumer goods. Much of the blame has been attributed to the distribution sector of Korea. The objective of this paper is to analyze the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea, focusing on the possible sources of the poor performance of that sector, and to make policy suggestions that could potentially increase the welfare. This paper differs from all the previous research by others on this subject in that it analyzes the imported consumer goods distribution sector of Korea as a vertical structure. The distribution sector of an imported consumer good is a vertical structure since it consists of an international market, an import stage, and domestic wholesale and retail markets, in that order vertically. Our study naturally includes the analysis of the vertical restraints as well as the analysis of the industrial organization of each horizontal stage in the vertical structure. Each horizontal component of the imported consumer goods distribution sector is basically a monopolistically competitive market differentiated by characteristics of goods and by the locations and the services of firms. Further, restrictive dealership and resale price maintenance are found to be widely in use. Our main findings are the follwing; First, most consumer goods are imported monopolistically or oligopolistically through restrictive dealership contracts between foreign producers and domestic importers. Such restrictive dealership gives importers market power in the domestic market and explains many of the large discrepancies betwen the consumer prices and the import prices of many goods. Korean anti - trust law does not cover the issues arising from the market power of an importer resulting from a restrictive dealership contract. Second, some major producers of Korean goods are also importers of foreign goods that are substitutes of their products. The import of substitutes by major domestic producers is anti - competitive because it tends to raise the prices of both domestic goods and foreign goods, and also because it reduces the incentive of the domestic producers to raise the quality of their products. Third, wholesalers and retailers widely use resale price maintenance as a price fixing mechanism, and while this is against the anti- trust law, it seldom gets noticed. Fourth, the high level of rents of real estate for commercial use works as an entry barrier to the distribution sector and results in reduced competition by the firms in that sector. Finally, there are information problems. Consumers have inferior information to firms about the quality of a foreign consumer good that they have not tried before. Such information asymmetry often enables firms to raise prices. In addition, information asymmetry between importers frequently delays the import of cheaper substitutes. In order to alleviate the problems indentified above, we suggest the following policy changes. The government should strengthen the anti - trust law and its enforcement to regulate restrictive import contracts, import of competing goods by major domestic producers, and RPM by wholesalers and retailers that is aimed at price fixing. In addition, the government should loosen its tight real estate policy to encourage investment in the distribution sector. Finally, we suggest that the import price revelation policy that has been in use for some items since 1990 be expanded to most imported consumer goods that are introduced for the first time to give consumer better information and be used only for the period of time needed to inform sufficient number of consumers.

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Detection and Control of Bacterial Diseases of Cultured Fishes in Korea (양식어류(養殖魚類)의 세균성질병(細菌性疾病)의 진단(診斷)과 대책(對策))

  • Chun, Seh-Kyu
    • Journal of fish pathology
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.5-30
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    • 1988
  • This is a comprehensive study for considering the effective treatment and control program of bacterial disease occurring in common carp, israel carp, color carp, crucian carp, eel and tilapia by clarifying the causes, mechanism of infection and onset and the diagnostic criteria. As a first step, the authors investigated the external views, gross and histopathologic findings of diseased fish using 450 infected fishes obtained from various farmer of Korea. This infection was characterized by hyperemia, hemorrhage and swelling of body surface and fins, congestion of liver, spleen, kidney, inflammation of intestine, hemorrhagic inflammation of various tissues, and necrosis and ulcer of various tissues were accompanied in serious cases. Bacteriologically, Aeromonas hydrophila and Edwardsiella tarda were isoiated from these fishes. Particularly in the regular check on 222 eels, 177 strains were isolated as 29.94% of Aeromonas hydrophila, 48.58% of Edwardsiella tarda and 21.47% of Flexibacter columnaris. Hexibacter columnaris was isolated from corroded gill of eels. The identical disease was occurred by innoculating the isolated Aeromonas hydrophila and Edwardsiella tarda and the identical strains were isolated from infected experimental fishes. The eels which were diagnosed Aeromonas disease from Kwangju, Pusan accompanied hemorrhage, swelling of body surface and fins, inflammation of stomach and intestine containing mucous fluids mixed with the pathogens. Color carp and crucian carp which were innoculated with the isolated 5 strins of Aeromomas hydrorphil died within 3 or 4 days accompanying with the characteristics of Aeromonas disease. Edward disease was characterized by abscesses of body surface, pus formation with concentration on phagocytes. The size of absecsses increased with progression elf disease. There were also various abscesses at internal organ and white nodules appeared in kidney. Histologically, various progressive granuloma were examined without inflammation of intestine. Columnaris disease of eels showed no hemorrhage except slight white body color. In autopsy, most of internal organs appeared normal and there were no septic odors. The only character was corrosion of gills. In order to treat these bacterial diseases, infected fishes must bathe in 20ppm chloramphenicol or kanamycin solution for 1 hour. Besides, medication program in oral ingestion of 75mg/kg chloramphenicol per day continuing for 5 to 7 days. After injecting the formalin treated Aermonas hydrophila antigen into carp, relatively high agglutination titer showed between 3 weeks and 6 weeks. Though this titer decreased from that time, it was continued for 18 weeks. In the case of injecting the formalin treated Edwardsiella tarda antigen into tilapia, the titer also increased. But tilapia which were immersed in the suspension fluid of the formalin treated Edwardsiella tarda showed no increase of the titer.

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Study on the Thermal Storage Characteristics of Phase Change Materials for Greenhouse Heating (온실보온(溫室保溫)을 위한 상변화(相變化) 물질(物質)의 축열특성연구(蓄熱特性硏究))

  • Song, Hyun-Kap;Ryou, Young-Sun;Kim, Young-Bok
    • Solar Energy
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    • v.13 no.2_3
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    • pp.65-78
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    • 1993
  • An overdose of fossil fuel for greenhouse heating causes not only the high cost and low quality of agricultural products, but also the environmental pollution of farm village. To solve these problems it is desirable to maximize the solar energy utilization for the heating of greenhouse in winter season. In this study phase change materials were selected to store solar energy concentratively for heating the greenhouse and their characteristics of thermal energy storage were analyzed. The results were summarized as follows. The organic $C_{28}H_{58}$, and the inorganic $CH_3COONa{\cdot}3H_2O\;and\;Na_2SO_4{\cdot}10H_2O$ were selected as low temperature latent heat storage materials. The equation of critical radius was derived to define the generating mechanism of the maximum latent heat of phase change materials. The melting point of $C_{28}H_{58}$ was $62^{\circ}C$, and the latent heat was $50.0{\sim}52.0kcal/kg$. The specific heat of liquid and solid phase was $0.54{\sim}0.69kcal/kg^{\circ}C$ and $0.57{\sim}0.75kcal/kg^{\circ}C$ respectively. The melting point of $CH_3COONa{\cdot}3H_2O$ was $61{\sim}62^{\circ}C$, the latent heat was $64.9{\sim}65.8$ kcal/kg and the specific heat of liquid and solid phase was respectively $0.83kcal/kg^{\circ}C$ and $0.51{\sim}0.52kcal/kg^{\circ}C$. The melting point of $Na_2SO_4{\cdot}10H_2O$ was $30{\sim}30.9^{\circ}C$, the latent heat was 53.0 kcal/kg and the specific heat of liquid and solid phase was respectively $0.78{\sim}0.89kcal/kg^{\circ}C$ and $0.50{\sim}0.7kcal/kg^{\circ}C$ When the urea of 21.85% was added to control the melting point of $Na_2SO_4{\cdot}10H_2O$ and the phase change cycles were repeated from 0 to 600, the melting point was $16.7{\sim}16.0^{\circ}C$ and the latent heat was $36.0{\sim}28.0kcal/kg^{\circ}C$.

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Abundance of Harmful Algae, Cochlodinium polykrikoides, Gyrodinium impudicum and Gymnodinium catenatum in the Coastal Area of South Sea of Korea and Their Effects of Temperature, Salinity, Irradiance and Nutrient on the Growth in Culture (남해안 연안에서 적조생물, Cochlodinium polykikoides, Gyrodinium impudicum, Gymnodinium catenatum의 출현상황과 온도, 염분, 조도 및 영양염류에 따른 성장특성)

  • LEE Chang Kyu;KIM Hyung Chul;LEE Sam-Geun;JUNG Chang Su;KIM Hak Gyoon;LIM Wol Ae
    • Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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    • v.34 no.5
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    • pp.536-544
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    • 2001
  • Three harmful algal bloom species with similar morphology, Cochlodinium polykrikoides, Gyodinium impudicum and Gymodinium catenatum have damaged to aquatic animals or human health by either making massive blooms or intoxication of shellfishes in a food chain. Eco-physiological and hydrodynamic studies on the harmful algae offer useful informations in the understanding their bloom mechanism by giving promising data for the prediction and modelling of harmful algal blooms event. Thus, we studied the abundance of these species in the coastal area of South Sea of Korea and their effects of temperature, salinity, irradiance and nutrient on the growth for the isolates. The timing for initial appearance of the three species around the coastal area of Namhaedo, Narodo and Wando was between Bate July and late August in 1999 when water temperature ranged from $22.8^{\circ}C\;to\;26.5^{\circ}C$ Vegetative cells of C. polykrikoides and G. impudicum were abundant until late September when water temperature had been dropped to less than $23^{\circ}C$. By contrast, vegetative cell of G. catenatum disappeared before early September, showing shorter period of abundance than the other two species in the South Sea. Both G. impudicum and G. catenatum revealed comparatively low density with a maximal cell density of 3,460 cells/L and 440 cells/L, respectively without making any bloom, while C. polykrikoides made massive blooms with a maximal cell density more than $40\times10^6$cells/L, The three species showed a better growth at the relatively higher water temperature ranging from 22 to $28^{\circ}C$ with their maximal growth rate at $25^{\circ}C$ in culture, which almost corresponded with the water temperature during the outbreak of C. polykrikoides in the coastal area of South Sea. Also, they all showed a relatively higher growth at the salinity from 30 to $35\%$. Specially, G. impudicum showed the euryhalic characteristics among the species, On the other hand, growth rate of G. catenatum decreased sharply with the increase of water temperature at the experimental ranges more than $35\%$. The higher of light intensities showed the better growth rates for the three species, Moreover, C. polykrikoides and G. impudirum continued their exponential growth even at 7,500 lux, the highest level of light intensity in the experiment, Therefore, It is assumed that C. polykrikoides has a physiological capability to adapt and utilize higher irradiance resulting in the higher growth rate without any photo inhibition response at the sea surface where there is usually strong irradiance during its blooming season. Although C. poiykikoides and G. impudicum continued their linear growth with the increase of nitrate ($NO_3^-$) and ammonium ($NH_4^-$) concentrations at less than the $40{\mu}M$, they didn't show any significant differences in growth rates with the increase of nitrate and ammonium concentrations at more than $40{\mu}M$, signifying that the nitrogen critical point for the growth of the two species stands between 13.5 and $40{\mu}M$. Also, even though both of the two species continued their linear growth with the increase of phosphate ($PO_4^{2-}$) concentrations at less than the $4.05{\mu}M$, there were no any significant differences in growth rates with the increase of phosphate concentrations at more than $4.05{\mu}M$, signifying that the phosphate critical point for the growth of the two species stands between 1.35 and $4.05{\mu}M$. On the other hand, C. polykrikoides has made blooms at the oligotrophic environment near Narodo and Namhaedo where the concentration of DIN and DIP are less than 1.2 and $0.3{\mu}M$, respectively. We attributed this phenomenon to its own ecological characteristics of diel vertical migration through which C. polykrikoides could uptake enough nutrients from the deep sea water near bottom during the night time irrespective of the lower nutrient pools in the surface water.

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Analysis of Childhood Rapidly Progressive Glomerulonephritis (소아 급속 진행성 사구체신염의 임상적 고찰)

  • Uhm Ji Hyun;Kim Mi Jin;Lee Young-Mock;Kim Ji Hong;Lee Jae Seung;Kim Pyung-Kil;Hong Soon Won;Jeung Hyeun Joo
    • Childhood Kidney Diseases
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    • v.5 no.2
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    • pp.78-86
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    • 2001
  • Purpose: Rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis (RPGN) is characterized by the rapid increase in serum creatitnin and crescents formation involving more than $50\%$ of glomeruli. 10 patients who had been treated for RPGN were studied retrospectively for thier underlying diseases and clinical features Method: Cilinical review was performed on 10 children who were diagnosed with RPGN by clinical features and renal biopsy and followed up at department of pediatrics during tile last 10 years, from May 1990 to May 2000. Result: There were 6 males and 4 females between the ages of 2.1 and 14.3 years (mean $10.9{\pm}3.8$). 3 had Henoch-$Sch{\ddot{o}}nlein$ purpura nephritis; 2, idiopathic rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis; 2, lupus nephritis; 1, hemolytic uremic syndrome; 1, membranous glomerulonephritis and 1, microscopic polyangiitis. The most common chief complaints were gross hematuria and oliguria. Initial clinical features included proteinuria, edema, hypertension, nausea and arthralgia. Mean serum BUN was $74.2{\pm}39.1\;mg/dL$ mean serum creatinin, $3.2{\pm}1.8\;mg/dL$ and mean creatinin clearance, $26.5{\pm}13.2\;mL/min/1.73m^2$. Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody was positive only in microscopic polyangiitis. ANA and Anti-DNA antibody were positive in two lupus nephritis patients. Serum complements were decreased in 4 patients. All patients except Hemolytic uremic syndrome received steroid pulse therapy and immunosupressive agents. 3 patients were performed acute peritoneal dialysis and 2 patients were given plasmapheresis. At the last follow up, 1 patient was dead, 4 patients had elevated serum creatinin, 2 of these 4 patients were on chronic ambulatory peritoneal dialysis and 6 patients had normal renal function. Conclusion: Rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis is a medical emergency that requires very rapid diagnosis, classification, and therapy. Appropriate therapy selected on the basis of underlying disease mechanism can substantially improve renal survival. (J. Korean Soc Pediatr Nephrol 2001 ; 5 : 78-86)

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A Sasang Theoretical1) Study about the Morph & Image of Sasang Constitutional Medicine (사상의학(四象醫學) 형상관(形象觀)에 대한 사심신물적(事心身物的) 고찰(考察))

  • Kim, Jeong-ho;Song, Jeong-mo
    • Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.295-310
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    • 1999
  • Nowadays there are a lot of attempts and approaches in the Study of Oriental Medicine. The Morph&Image is one of them, and its importance is more and more increasing. Likewise, in the Sasang Consitutional Medicine, the Morph&Image is one of the important part too. And it is presented in the ${\ll}$Dorgyi SooseBowon(東醫壽世保元)${\gg}$. But that Discourse shows us only the concept and conclusion of Morph&Image, based on classification of Sasang Constitution, without explaining how it is derived. So the author studied the basic theory parts of ${\ll}$Dorgyi Soose Bowon${\gg}$-those are the , , , and - and wanted to find out the mechanism of Morph&Image concept in the Sasang Constitutional Medicine. The results were as follows. 1. Every portion of human body, can be considered as Morph&Image, in ${\ll}$Dorgyi Soose Bowon${\gg}$ could be explained in the line with the Sasang theory. Morph&Image in ${\ll}$Dorgyi Soose Bowon${\gg}$ contents not only the shape itself but also image, operation, mind condition, nature, emotion and so on. 2. The traditional Oriental Medicine has the Morph&Image categorized by Five elements(五行). And it is used for Oriental medical Diagnosis. But in the Sasang Constitution, Morph&Image is used for Sasang Constitutional classification. 3. The Morph&Image in Sasang could be classified into four groups. Affairs(事)- group(ears, eyes, nose, mouth(耳目鼻口) and so on), object(物)-group(lung, spleen, liver, kidney(肺脾肝腎)and soon), Mind(心)-group(jaw, chest navel, abdomen and so on) and Body(身)-group(head, shoulders, waist hips(頭肩腰臀) and so on) are those. Event and Object groups reflect the congenital conditions of Sasang-Classified human body, and Mind and Body groups reflect mind state, nature, emotion etc..

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Gene Expression Profiles in Cervical Cancer with Radiation Therapy Alone and Chemo-radiation Therapy (자궁경부암의 방사선치료 및 방사선항암화학 병용치료에 따른 유전자발현 조절양상)

  • Lee Kyu Chan;Kim Meyoung-kon;Kim Jooyoung;Hwang You Jin;Choi Myung Sun;Kim Chul Yong
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.21 no.1
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    • pp.54-65
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    • 2003
  • Purpose : To analyze the gene expression Profiles of uterine ceulcal cancer, and its variation after radiation therapy, with or without concurrent chemotherapy, using a CDNA microarray. Materials and Methods :Sixteen patients, 8 with squamous ceil carcinomas of the uterine cervix, who were treated with radiation alone, and the other 8 treated w14h concurrent chemo-radiation, were Included in the study. Before the starling of the treatment, tumor biopsies were carried out, and the second time biopsies were peformed after a radiation dose of 16.2$\~$27 Gy. Three normal cervix tissues were used as a control group. The microarray experiments were peformed with 5 groups of the total RNAs extracted individually and then admixed as control, pre-radiation therapy alone, during-radiation therapy alone, pre-chemoradiation therapy, and during-chemoradlation therapy. The 33P-iabeled CDNAS were synthesized from the total RNAs of each group, by reverse transcription, and then they were hybridized to the CDNA microarray membrane. The gene expression of each microarrays was captured by the intensity of each spot produced by the radioactive isotopes. The pixels per spot were counted with an Arrayguage, and were exported to Microsoft Excel The data were normalized by the Z transformation, and the comparisons were peformed on the Z-ratio values calculated. Results : The expressions of 15 genes, including integrin linked kinase (ILK), CDC28 protein kinase 2, Spry 2, and ERK 3, were increased with the Z-ratio values of over 2.0 for the cervix cancer tissues compared to those for the normal controls. Those genes were involved In cell growth and proliferation, cell cycle control, or signal transduction. The expressions of the other 6 genes, Including G protein coupled receptor kinase 5, were decreased with the Z-ratio values of below -2.0. After the radiation thorapy, most of the genes, with a previously Increase expressions, represented the decreased expression profiles, and the genes, with the Z-ratio values of over 2.0, were cyclic nucleotlde gated channel and 3 Expressed sequence tags (EST). In the concurrent chemo-radiation group, the genes involved in cell growth and proliferation, cell cycle control, and signal transduction were shown to have increased expressions compared to the radiation therapy alone group. The expressions of genes involved in anglogenesis (angiopoietln-2), immune reactions (formyl peptide receptor-iike 1), and DNA repair (CAMP phosphodiesterase) were increased, however, the expression of gene involved In apoptosls (death associated protein kinase) was decreased. Conclusion : The different kinds of genes involved in the development and progression of cervical cancer were identified with the CDNA microarray, and the proposed theory is that the proliferation signal stalls with ILK, and is amplified with Spry 2 and MAPK signaling, and the cellular mitoses are Increased with the increased expression oi Cdc 2 and cell division kinases. After the radiation therapy, the expression profiles demonstrated 4he evidence of the decreased cancer cell proliferation. There was no sigificant difference in the morphological findings of cell death between the radiation therapy aione and the chemo-radiation groups In the second time biopsy specimen, however, the gene expression profiles were markedly different, and the mechanism at the molecular level needs further study.

The Effects of a Fermentation Product by Aspergillus oryzae on the in vitro Digestibilities of Dry Matter, Fiber and Protein and pH in the Fermentation Fluid of Diets for Dairy Cows (착유우 사료에 대한 Aspergillus oryzae 발효물질 첨가가 in vitro 건물, 섬유소 및 단백질 소화율과 발효액의 pH에 미치는 영향)

  • Myung, Yoon-Ah;Park, Duk-Sub;Lee, Soo-Kee;Park, Jong-Soo;Kim, Yong-Kook
    • Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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    • v.29 no.2
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    • pp.20-34
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    • 2002
  • This study was conducted to examine the effects of an Aspergillus oryzae fermentation culture on the in vitro digestibilities of dry matter, crude fiber, acid detergent fiber (ADF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), crude protein, and pH in in vitro experiment of diets for dairy cows. A fungal species, Aspergillus oryzae was supplied by Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Daejeon, Korea (KCTC 1229). The experimental diets were commercial compound feed (concentrate) and total mixed ration (TMR) for lactating cows, of which chemical analyses were determined at Research and Development Institute, Woosung Feed Co., Ltd., while the digestibilities were done at the laboratory of Chungnam National University. Aspergillus oryzae culture products were added to compound feed and TMR at the rate of 0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0% respectively. The experimental diet with the rumen fluid sampled from Holstein fresian milking cows were used and digested for 24 hrs, 48hrs and 72hrs in the shaking incubator. The residues of the digesta were digested for 48hrs in the incubator in which put 30ml of 0.1N HCl with 0.2% pepsin at $39^{\circ}C$. The final precipitates were dried for 48hrs in the drier at $60^{\circ}C$. These experimental procedures were triplicated to determine the in vitro digestibility of dry matter, crude fiber, ADF, NDF, crude protein and pH. Compared to control diet, not added Aspergillus oryzae, the DM digestibility of fungal diets were improved 2.1%(63.1%), 9.7%(68.5%) and 9.0%(68.0%) for 24 hour fermentation in compound feed while 4.8%(60.0%), 6.4%(61.1%) and 2.9%(58.8%) in TMR. On the contrary, for 48 hour and 72 hour digestibilities, the effects of Aspergillus oryzae culture on the digestibility of dry matter were relatively lowered compared to 24 hour digestibility. Referring to the digestibility of dietary fiber, Aspergillus oryzae was believed to significantly improve digestibilities of crude fiber, ADF and NDF. Those were increased up to 13.3%(53.3%) for 24 hour fermentation, while 2.4%(54.6%) for 3.0% added for 72 hour fermentation in compound feed. However, there were no significant differences among the treatments for the inclusion rate of Aspergillus oryzae, even though the more inclusion rate, the better digestibility. The protein digestibilities were significantly improved from 0.4%(79.7%) to 9.4%(71.8%) by adding Aspergillus oryzae into compound feed. However, there were no significant differences between the two experimental diets, 2.0% and 3.0% Aspergillus oryzae included diets. In case of TMR, the protein digestibilities were significantly improved from 4.0%(70.4%) to 6.3%(65.1%) by adding Aspergillus oryzae. However, there were no significant differences between the two experimental diets, 2.0% and 3.0% Aspergillus oryzae included diets. In this study, there were no significant differences among the treatments in pH. On the contrary, there were slightly decrease in pH by adding Aspergillus oryzae into experimental diets but not significant. Summarizing the results of this examination, Aspergillus oryzae fermentation culture is believed to improve the digestibilities of dry matter, fiber and crude protein in cattle diets. However, more detailed research for the mechanism of the fungal culture is required to improve ruminal environment.

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The Concentration of Economic Power in Korea (경제력집중(經濟力集中) : 기본시각(基本視角)과 정책방향(政策方向))

  • Lee, Kyu-uck
    • KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.31-68
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    • 1990
  • The concentration of economic power takes the form of one or a few firms controlling a substantial portion of the economic resources and means in a certain economic area. At the same time, to the extent that these firms are owned by a few individuals, resource allocation can be manipulated by them rather than by the impersonal market mechanism. This will impair allocative efficiency, run counter to a decentralized market system and hamper the equitable distribution of wealth. Viewed from the historical evolution of Western capitalism in general, the concentration of economic power is a paradox in that it is a product of the free market system itself. The economic principle of natural discrimination works so that a few big firms preempt scarce resources and market opportunities. Prominent historical examples include trusts in America, Konzern in Germany and Zaibatsu in Japan in the early twentieth century. In other words, the concentration of economic power is the outcome as well as the antithesis of free competition. As long as judgment of the economic system at large depends upon the value systems of individuals, therefore, the issue of how to evaluate the concentration of economic power will inevitably be tinged with ideology. We have witnessed several different approaches to this problem such as communism, fascism and revised capitalism, and the last one seems to be the only surviving alternative. The concentration of economic power in Korea can be summarily represented by the "jaebol," namely, the conglomerate business group, the majority of whose member firms are monopolistic or oligopolistic in their respective markets and are owned by particular individuals. The jaebol has many dimensions in its size, but to sketch its magnitude, the share of the jaebol in the manufacturing sector reached 37.3% in shipment and 17.6% in employment as of 1989. The concentration of economic power can be ascribed to a number of causes. In the early stages of economic development, when the market system is immature, entrepreneurship must fill the gap inherent in the market in addition to performing its customary managerial function. Entrepreneurship of this sort is a scarce resource and becomes even more valuable as the target rate of economic growth gets higher. Entrepreneurship can neither be readily obtained in the market nor exhausted despite repeated use. Because of these peculiarities, economic power is bound to be concentrated in the hands of a few entrepreneurs and their business groups. It goes without saying, however, that the issue of whether the full exercise of money-making entrepreneurship is compatible with social mores is a different matter entirely. The rapidity of the concentration of economic power can also be traced to the diversification of business groups. The transplantation of advanced technology oriented toward mass production tends to saturate the small domestic market quite early and allows a firm to expand into new markets by making use of excess capacity and of monopoly profits. One of the reasons why the jaebol issue has become so acute in Korea lies in the nature of the government-business relationship. The Korean government has set economic development as its foremost national goal and, since then, has intervened profoundly in the private sector. Since most strategic industries promoted by the government required a huge capacity in technology, capital and manpower, big firms were favored over smaller firms, and the benefits of industrial policy naturally accrued to large business groups. The concentration of economic power which occured along the way was, therefore, not necessarily a product of the market system. At the same time, the concentration of ownership in business groups has been left largely intact as they have customarily met capital requirements by means of debt. The real advantage enjoyed by large business groups lies in synergy due to multiplant and multiproduct production. Even these effects, however, cannot always be considered socially optimal, as they offer disadvantages to other independent firms-for example, by foreclosing their markets. Moreover their fictitious or artificial advantages only aggravate the popular perception that most business groups have accumulated their wealth at the expense of the general public and under the behest of the government. Since Korea stands now at the threshold of establishing a full-fledged market economy along with political democracy, the phenomenon called the concentration of economic power must be correctly understood and the roles of business groups must be accordingly redefined. In doing so, we would do better to take a closer look at Japan which has experienced a demise of family-controlled Zaibatsu and a success with business groups(Kigyoshudan) whose ownership is dispersed among many firms and ultimately among the general public. The Japanese case cannot be an ideal model, but at least it gives us a good point of departure in that the issue of ownership is at the heart of the matter. In setting the basic direction of public policy aimed at controlling the concentration of economic power, one must harmonize efficiency and equity. Firm size in itself is not a problem, if it is dictated by efficiency considerations and if the firm behaves competitively in the market. As long as entrepreneurship is required for continuous economic growth and there is a discrepancy in entrepreneurial capacity among individuals, a concentration of economic power is bound to take place to some degree. Hence, the most effective way of reducing the inefficiency of business groups may be to impose competitive pressure on their activities. Concurrently, unless the concentration of ownership in business groups is scaled down, the seed of social discontent will still remain. Nevertheless, the dispersion of ownership requires a number of preconditions and, consequently, we must make consistent, long-term efforts on many fronts. We can suggest a long list of policy measures specifically designed to control the concentration of economic power. Whatever the policy may be, however, its intended effects will not be fully realized unless business groups abide by the moral code expected of socially responsible entrepreneurs. This is especially true, since the root of the problem of the excessive concentration of economic power lies outside the issue of efficiency, in problems concerning distribution, equity, and social justice.

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Sentiment Analysis of Korean Reviews Using CNN: Focusing on Morpheme Embedding (CNN을 적용한 한국어 상품평 감성분석: 형태소 임베딩을 중심으로)

  • Park, Hyun-jung;Song, Min-chae;Shin, Kyung-shik
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.59-83
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    • 2018
  • With the increasing importance of sentiment analysis to grasp the needs of customers and the public, various types of deep learning models have been actively applied to English texts. In the sentiment analysis of English texts by deep learning, natural language sentences included in training and test datasets are usually converted into sequences of word vectors before being entered into the deep learning models. In this case, word vectors generally refer to vector representations of words obtained through splitting a sentence by space characters. There are several ways to derive word vectors, one of which is Word2Vec used for producing the 300 dimensional Google word vectors from about 100 billion words of Google News data. They have been widely used in the studies of sentiment analysis of reviews from various fields such as restaurants, movies, laptops, cameras, etc. Unlike English, morpheme plays an essential role in sentiment analysis and sentence structure analysis in Korean, which is a typical agglutinative language with developed postpositions and endings. A morpheme can be defined as the smallest meaningful unit of a language, and a word consists of one or more morphemes. For example, for a word '예쁘고', the morphemes are '예쁘(= adjective)' and '고(=connective ending)'. Reflecting the significance of Korean morphemes, it seems reasonable to adopt the morphemes as a basic unit in Korean sentiment analysis. Therefore, in this study, we use 'morpheme vector' as an input to a deep learning model rather than 'word vector' which is mainly used in English text. The morpheme vector refers to a vector representation for the morpheme and can be derived by applying an existent word vector derivation mechanism to the sentences divided into constituent morphemes. By the way, here come some questions as follows. What is the desirable range of POS(Part-Of-Speech) tags when deriving morpheme vectors for improving the classification accuracy of a deep learning model? Is it proper to apply a typical word vector model which primarily relies on the form of words to Korean with a high homonym ratio? Will the text preprocessing such as correcting spelling or spacing errors affect the classification accuracy, especially when drawing morpheme vectors from Korean product reviews with a lot of grammatical mistakes and variations? We seek to find empirical answers to these fundamental issues, which may be encountered first when applying various deep learning models to Korean texts. As a starting point, we summarized these issues as three central research questions as follows. First, which is better effective, to use morpheme vectors from grammatically correct texts of other domain than the analysis target, or to use morpheme vectors from considerably ungrammatical texts of the same domain, as the initial input of a deep learning model? Second, what is an appropriate morpheme vector derivation method for Korean regarding the range of POS tags, homonym, text preprocessing, minimum frequency? Third, can we get a satisfactory level of classification accuracy when applying deep learning to Korean sentiment analysis? As an approach to these research questions, we generate various types of morpheme vectors reflecting the research questions and then compare the classification accuracy through a non-static CNN(Convolutional Neural Network) model taking in the morpheme vectors. As for training and test datasets, Naver Shopping's 17,260 cosmetics product reviews are used. To derive morpheme vectors, we use data from the same domain as the target one and data from other domain; Naver shopping's about 2 million cosmetics product reviews and 520,000 Naver News data arguably corresponding to Google's News data. The six primary sets of morpheme vectors constructed in this study differ in terms of the following three criteria. First, they come from two types of data source; Naver news of high grammatical correctness and Naver shopping's cosmetics product reviews of low grammatical correctness. Second, they are distinguished in the degree of data preprocessing, namely, only splitting sentences or up to additional spelling and spacing corrections after sentence separation. Third, they vary concerning the form of input fed into a word vector model; whether the morphemes themselves are entered into a word vector model or with their POS tags attached. The morpheme vectors further vary depending on the consideration range of POS tags, the minimum frequency of morphemes included, and the random initialization range. All morpheme vectors are derived through CBOW(Continuous Bag-Of-Words) model with the context window 5 and the vector dimension 300. It seems that utilizing the same domain text even with a lower degree of grammatical correctness, performing spelling and spacing corrections as well as sentence splitting, and incorporating morphemes of any POS tags including incomprehensible category lead to the better classification accuracy. The POS tag attachment, which is devised for the high proportion of homonyms in Korean, and the minimum frequency standard for the morpheme to be included seem not to have any definite influence on the classification accuracy.