• Health Policy and Management
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2012

One of the ways to achieve the principle of equal access for equal needs, availability and geographical accessibility of health care resources regardless of resident sites is important. The purpose of this paper is to measure socioeconomic inequities in distribution of health care resources among regions in the Republic of Korea (hereafter Korea). Data were extracted from regional statistics of National Health Insurance, Community Health Survey, Korea Social Science Data Archive, and Korean Statistical Information Services at the same period of 2009. The dependent variables were the number of health workforce and health care facilities in each region. The proxy indicator of regional socioeconomic status was local tax per person. To identify whether inequalities among regions, we examined the concentration index(CI) and indirectly standardized CI by controlling each region's demographics and need factors. Total observations were 232 districts in nationwide, and we analyzed separately Seoul(25 districts) and non-Seoul areas(207 districts). The standardized CI values of health care resources were positive(favoring the rich region) across the nation in almost all kinds of resources. Especially the number of specialist, dentist, dental clinics, clinics, oriental medical clinics, pharmacists, and pharmacies were statistically significantly favoring the rich region. But the CI for the number of long-term care hospitals, public health centers were negative(favoring the poor region). The tendency of CI presenting positive values were increased in Seoul area. But in the case of non-Seoul, the CI indexes were nearly zero. The results suggest that except the Seoul area, little regional socioeconomic-related inequalities were observed in the distribution of health care resources in Korea.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.23-43
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• 2011

Access to health care is complicated to define. It is a multidimensional process. In addition to the matters of quality of care, geographical accessibility and availability of the right type of care, finance, and acceptability are all involved. The purposes of this paper are to measure the geographic distances between patient residency locations and health service organizations in which the patients hadvisited, and to investigate the association between geographical distance measures and variables involved in health service utilization. The study used the first and the second wave of the 2008 Korea Health Panel Survey. The samples of analyses were patients who had visited outpatient or used ambulatory health services, and the total observations (visit numbers) analyzed were 229,128. We divided the samples into a frequent-visit illness group (Group 1) and a non-frequent visit illness group (Group 2) based on over 5,000 total visit numbers. We exploited three level analyses using xtmixed of STATA${\Box}$ 11.1 command with/without interaction terms among age, sex, and occupation. Geographical distances were measured using the Haversine method. Group 1 was tended to older and lower equivalent income than those of Group 2, but the geographic difference were not observed in terms of area deprivation index and standard mortality ratios. Amongst group 1, diabetes mellitus patients travelled far to visit health care organizations, and arthritis patients were more deprived in terms of the personal and areal characteristics. The study revealed that residents in rural areas traveled about 10 times more long distances than those whom lived in larger cities after adjusting for various variables, which we used for analyses. This study contributed to the practical understanding of health service utilizations using empirical analyses, and found that the types of diseases and socioeconomic characteristics of patients tended to define the amount of travel distance to healthcare organizations.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.126-132
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• 2010

The Housing Performance Rating System, enacted on 9 January 2006, an active measure containing provisions on improved quality and advanced performance of the Fire-Protection System for equalized ability to secure safety of life to some extent, is a desirable policy in fire-safety regard. The study of theoretical background of each performance rating section for the purpose of active and wide application of The Fire-Protection System category of the Housing Performance Rating System currently in effect internally. In accordance with the result of the study, the reform measures for the currently detailed evaluation criteria have been suggested to improve the performance of the Fire-Protection area of The Housing Performance Rating System currently being in force based on the assumption of prior settlement of the following; upward settlement of the point distribution standards on the performance ratings of each head backed up by an institutional Government policy with overriding priority; and urgently enacted Fire-Protection related laws and regulations.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.224-231
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• 2018

Background: Organizations are pursing complex and diverse aims to generate higher profits. Many workers experience high work intensity such as workload and work pressure in this organizational environment. Especially, psychological burden is a commonly used term in workplace of Republic of Korea. This study focused on defining the psychological burden from the perspective of occupational safety and health and tried to develop a scale for psychological burden. Methods: The 48 preliminary questionnaire items for psychological burden were prepared by a focus group interview with 16 workers through the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II and Mindful Awareness Attention Scale. The preliminary items were surveyed with 572 workers, and exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and correlation analysis were conducted for a new scale. Results: As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, five factors were extracted: organizational activity, human error, safety and health workload, work attitude, and negative self-management. These factors had significant correlations and reliability, and the stability of the model for validity was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis. Conclusion: The developed scale for psychological burden can measure workers' psychological burden in relation to safety and health. Despite some limitations, this study has applicability in the workplace, given the relatively small-sized questionnaire.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.421-428
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• 2019

This study developed an evaluation system of adaptation countermeasures for climate change in the water resources sector using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the assessment procedures were applied to the Second Chungcheongnam-do Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plan (Chungnam Implementation Plan). Firstly, the evaluation criteria are composed of two levels according to the hierarchical structure, and AHP gives priority to 4 evaluation criteria of the first level and 16 alternative indicators of the second level. Secondly, after the importance of the evaluation criteria or indicators has been determined, the significance of each measure was evaluated by applying it to the water-sector measures of the Chungnam Implementation Plan, and the effectiveness of the evaluation system was validated. The Chungnam case study shows that the evaluation system will be more effective and efficient when it is applied during development phase rather than after the implementation plan is finalized. It is also expected that the evaluation system will be used to evaluate and prioritize climate change adaptation policies in other regions, and then to compare the means of adaptation to climate change in various regions and to select recommendation policies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.83-89
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• 2018

In the SW industry, the diversification of global markets and technology trends are changing due to the emergence of new services, and IT companies are in need of strategic change different from the previous one. In this study, SWOT analysis was performed by extracting the internal environmental factors and external environmental factors through the previous studies to improve the project performance competence of small IT companies, and the SWOT Matrix was reconstructed through the pairwise comparison. Based on this, the purpose of this research was to propose the project performance competency improvement plans for small IT companies based on importance and priority, and the following four strategies were derived from the result of SWOT-AHP analysis. SO strategy was drawn in direction to invest R & D in new SW industry to enhance technology competitiveness of SMEs in order to develop SMEs, and in order to secure competitiveness of SW industry, WO strategy is drawn the cultivation of professional technical manpower through SW policy. ST Strategy presented technical management through SW system improvement policy to improve SW environment, and WT Strategy presented awareness training on the construction and necessity of project management system construction. Using the strategies presented in this study, it is expected that the managers of small IT firms will be presented as references to measure the performance competence factors of current organizations and company organizations.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.31-54
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• 1985

The mutual credit of Fisheries Cooperatives is reciprocal financing bring overs and shorts to settlement themselves by filling each other's needs among feeble fishermen economically. The spread of mutual credit through Fisheries Cooperatives reduces private loan dependence and private loan interest rate at fishery village, and that fills up policy financing being restricted by working scale. And seeing movement side of Fisheries Cooperatives, it has done an under board to settle self-supporting foundation of primary fisheries cooperatives early. The mutual credit deposit shows about 53 times increase past an interval of a ten years. This increase rate is an epoch-making record being unparalleled in other banking facilities except Fisheries Cooperatives. Then being unparalleled increase rate, time and savings deposits increase has been contributed a great deal than demand deposits. Thinking important function factors as mutual credit growth, we can classify interior and exterior factors. The exterior factor is income of fishery household in some measure, interior factors are the high deposits interest rate and the enlargement of facilities organization. As these, they have been in a better factors, also have been a restriction factors. The restriction factors are conflict cancellation between mutual credit and them bring into existence a village vault, mutual savings and finance companies, private finance. For the sake of continuance growth rate in mutual credit as past, we should eliminate restricted factors in growth. On the other hand the better factors in growth should be act upon affirmation side continually. Consequently under circumstances not to an amicable settlement bring the fisheries fund demand as policy financing, we should do continuous and sound development of fisheries financing by means of putting in good order of fisheries cooperatives mutual credit. Surveying a problem from these viewpoints, when we study more deep and a full into a subject about growth project of mutual credit, we think to expect continuous growth in mutual credit of Fisheries Cooperatives.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.179-196
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• 2011

This study aims to measure the relative importance of trade insurance using AHP developed by Thomas Saaty of Pennsylvania in early 1970s. Moreover, it provides help in the development of a comprehensive strategy of trade insurance. To obtain priority of trade insurance in its functions, this study discovered significance and relative importance of two evaluation standards and four individual evaluation items. Of the two evaluation standards, importance of credit exposure was 63%. It was discovered that it was more important than political means (37%). Of the four individual evaluation items, importance of banking supplementation was 60%. It was more important than credit investigation of overseas traders (40%). Importance of trade promotion policy was 69%, which was more important than removal of anxiety in trade (31%). As a result of comparing priorities of the f tire evaluation items, priority of banking supplementation was 38% followed by trade promotion policy means (26%), credit investigation of overseas traders (25%) and removal of anxiety in trade (12%).

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.369-387
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• 2012

Throughout intensive negotiations on the KORUS FTA and even after its ratification on March 15, 2012, ISD (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) has been at the center of many controversies within the FTA. Although the original function of the ISD is intended to be a protectional measure for foreign investors, there have been many foreign investors who tried to use the ISD as a tool to attack a government and nullify the public policy demanding tremendous amount of compensation. Many of the NAFTA ISD cases including Ehtyl v. Canada and UPS v. Canada demonstrate such a behavior by foreign investors. It is the right time for Korean government to conduct in depth studies on NAFTA ISD cases because the precedents provide invaluable insights including the legal reasoning by the decision making authorities including ICSID and UNCITRAL. The lessons we would learn from those cases would prepare Korean government for expected ISD claims by foreign investors and enable the government to maximize its efficiency in policy making process under a new international trade environment, the KORUS FTA.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.19-33
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• 2017

In this paper, we suggest proper policy directions through an analysis onthe impact of changes in self-employment on the national economy. In other words, we intend to identify the current status of self-employment jobs and present policy directions for supporting self-employed workers. In order to grasp the dynamic relationship of variables, we used a VAR model to measure the impact of self-employment job fluctuations and macroeconomic variables on each other. The analysis results demonstrate that an exogenous shock to the ratio of self-employed workers does not show a significant impact on the nominal growth ratio. However, when the analysis was done separately on an exogenous shock to the ratio of self-employed workers with employees and without employees, an increase in the ratio of self-employed workers with employees showed a positive impact on nominal growth. On the other hand, an increase in the ratio of self-employed workers without employees showeda negative impact on nominal growth. In future studies, it will be necessary to do additional analysis on quarterly data to estimate the short-term impact of macroeconomic variables on changes in the ratio of self-employed workers.