Virtual Social Interaction and Empathy Development in South Korea

Although the link between motor synchrony and emotional alignment has been extensively studied during face-to-face interaction, the question of whether this association also exists in virtual settings has remained unanswered. Here, we examined whether this link exists during virtual social interactions and whether pro-social effects will be induced during those interactions. To this end, two strangers shared difficulties they have experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic during a virtual social interaction that included both audio and video. The findings revealed that motor synchrony and emotional alignment can arise spontaneously during a virtual social interaction between two strangers. Moreover, this interaction yielded a decrease in negative affect and an increase in positive affect, as well as an increase in feelings of trust, liking, cohesion, self-other overlap, and similarity between the strangers. Finally, a higher level of synchrony during the virtual interaction was specifically associated with increased positive emotional alignment and liking. It can thus be presumed that virtual social interactions may share similar characteristics and social effects as face-to-face interactions. Considering the tremendous changes the COVID-19 pandemic has caused regarding social communication, these findings may provide grounds for developing new intervention protocols aimed at dealing with the consequences of social distancing.

Exposure therapy involves an exposure to feared stimuli and is considered the gold-standard treatment for anxiety disorders. While its application in Virtual Reality (VR) has been very successful for phobic disorders, effects of exposure to virtual social stimuli in Social Anxiety Disorder are heterogeneous. This difference has been linked to demands on realism and presence, particularly social presence, as a pre-requisite in evoking emotional experiences in virtual social interactions. So far, however, the influence of social presence on emotional experience in social interactions with virtual agents remains unknown. We investigated the relationship between realism and social presence and the moderating effect of social presence on the relationship between agent behavior and experienced emotions in virtual social interaction. Healthy participants faced virtual agents showing supportive and dismissive behaviors in two virtual environments (short interactions and oral presentations). At first, participants performed five blocks of short one-on-one interactions with virtual agents (two male and two female agents per block). Second, participants gave five presentations in front of an audience of 16 agents. In each scenario, agent behavior was a within subjects factor, resulting in one block of neutral, two blocks of negative, and two blocks of positive agent behavior. Ratings of agent behavior (valence and realism), experience (valence and arousal), and presence (physical and social) were collected after every block. Moderator effects were investigated using mixed linear models with random intercept, correlations were analyzed via repeated measures correlations. Ratings of valence of agent behaviors showed reliable relationships with experienced valence and less reliable relationships with experienced arousal. These relationships were moderated by social presence in the presentation scenario. Results for the interaction scenario are weaker but potentially promising for experimental studies. Variations in social presence and realism over time were correlated but social presence proved a more reliable moderator. Our findings emphasize the role of social presence for emotional experience in response to specific agent behaviors in virtual social interactions. While these findings should be replicated with experimental designs and in clinical samples, variability in social presence might account for heterogeneity in efficacy of virtual exposure to treat social anxiety disorder.

Background: Exposure therapy involves exposure to feared stimuli and is considered to be the gold-standard treatment for anxiety disorders. While its application in Virtual Reality (VR) has been very successful for phobic disorders, the effects of exposure to virtual social stimuli in Social Anxiety Disorder are heterogeneous. This difference has been linked to demands on realism and presence, particularly social presence, as a pre-requisite in evoking emotional experiences in virtual social interactions. So far, however, the influence of social presence on emotional experience in social interactions with virtual agents remains unknown.Objective: We investigated the relationship between realism and social presence and the moderating effect of social presence on the relationship between agent behavior and experienced emotions in virtual social interaction.Methods: Healthy participants (N = 51) faced virtual agents showing supportive and dismissive behaviors in two virtual environments (short interactions and oral presentations). At first, participants performed five blocks of short one-on-one interactions with virtual agents (two male and two female agents per block). Secondly, participants gave five presentations in front of an audience of 16 agents. In each scenario, agent behavior was a within subjects factor, resulting in one block of neutral, two blocks of negative, and two blocks of positive agent behavior. Ratings of agent behavior (valence and realism), experience (valence and arousal), and presence (physical and social) were collected after every block. Moderator effects were investigated using mixed linear models with random intercepts. Correlations were analyzed via repeated measures correlations.Results: Ratings of valence of agent behaviors showed reliable relationships with experienced valence and less reliable relationships with experienced arousal. These relationships were moderated by social presence in the presentation scenario. Results for the interaction scenario were weaker but potentially promising for experimental studies. Variations in social presence and realism over time were correlated but social presence proved a more reliable moderator.Conclusion: Our findings emphasize the role of social presence for emotional experience in response to specific agent behaviors in virtual social interactions. While these findings should be replicated with experimental designs and in clinical samples, variability in social presence might account for heterogeneity in efficacy of virtual exposure to treat social anxiety disorder.

The COVID-19 pandemic compromised psychological wellbeing, especially given public health guidance that restricted social contact. Engaging in daily social interactions is especially important for maintaining wellbeing, and virtual interactions may be a surrogate for face-to-face interactions when in-person contact is not possible. Embracing the idea that virtual communication may facilitate social connectedness, this project seeks to better understand the potential of virtual social interactions for supporting wellbeing. Using repeated-daily-life-assessments from an adult lifespan sample (N=164, Mage=42.53 years), we examined how number of virtual and face-to-face social interactions were associated with positive affect in individuals’ daily lives. We expected that face-to-face interactions would have a stronger relationship with positive affect than virtual social interactions, but that engaging in virtual interactions would be positively related to affect during these unprecedented times. In line with our hypotheses, number of daily in-person (r(812)=0.14, p<.001) and total number of social interactions (r(812)=0.14, p<.001) were associated with higher positive affect at the bivariate level; number of daily virtual social interactions showed a positive trend with affect (r(812)=0.06, p=.07). Multilevel models including quantity of face-to-face and virtual interactions indicate that only face-to-face interactions were associated with concurrent elevations in positive affect (b=0.58, p=.03) and overall higher positive affect (b=0.72, p<.001). Future analyses will examine whether social interactions involving close ties are more powerful drivers of positive affect than distal ties, whether everyday closeness to others mediates the relationship between social interaction modality and positive affect, and we will unpack age as a moderator in these relationships.

Background: South Korea or the Republic of Korea has an area of 100,412.6 km2, and population of 52 million (51,781,000). Methods: Besides our lifetime experiences in receiving training, teaching, and practicing psychiatry, the authors collected information from the literature pertinent to the mental health care in South Korea. This review is intended to familiarize the readers of the Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry with the information of mental health-care service as well as research and development (R and D) in South Korea. Results: Despite consistent improvement in the overall health status in Korea, the mental health status of the population is low compared with other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). For example, Korea has the highest suicide-related mortality and more years of life lost due to mental/behavioral diseases, compared to those of the average and a longer-than-average duration of hospital stay, respectively, of the OECD. Conversely, the government has made efforts to overhaul the mental health system. Several remarkable changes have been made in the areas of community-based service, involuntary admission, and unequal treatment. Conclusion: The mental health status is closely associated with the mental health service system, prevalence of mental disorders, health insurance system, admission system, and R and D budget for mental health. To change attitudes related to mental health, strong leadership among mental health professionals is urgently needed.

Much scholarship on East Asian development has sidelined the crucial role of geopolitics by insisting that wars such as the Vietnam War had limited effects on industrial development and economic growth patterns. We find such arguments unpersuasive, and also unduly reductionist. The Vietnam War, in particular, had unambiguously powerful effects on industrial development in South Korea; but even in cases where the direct effects of war were somewhat less spectacular, such as Taiwan, the reasons for the differences were themselves deeply geopolitical and expressive of decision-making processes centered on the Vietnam War. In this paper, we explore the differential effects of such geopolitical decision-making by contrasting the development trajectories of the Ulsan and Kaohsiung industrial zones during the war period. We show, in addition, that the subsequent development of industrial projects in South Korea and Taiwan has continued to bear some of the marks of Vietnam War-era geopolitical economy.

With an increase in life expectancy, rising healthcare costs have burdened public finances. While some illnesses progress rapidly, others can be controlled by improving the quality of daily life. This chapter outlines an analysis of digital healthcare development in South Korea. Given the aging population, the healthcare industry has been expanding to support people in the pre-patient stage. Notable among them is the mHealth industry that involves the use of mobile devices. The present discussion of social issues, policies, regulations, and case studies facilitates an understanding of the industry’s formation and potential. A case study examines the utilization of the mobile healthcare services provided by public health centers in South Korea as the base model and the use of mHealth during COVID-19. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the potential of the government’s mHealth model.KeywordsmHealthRegulationPolicyPublic private partnershipHealthcare

This paper is a brief account of ‘miraculous’ economic development in postwar South Korea. The paper provides a short appraisal of existing perspectives regarding Korean economic development and discusses how three recent military regimes utilized current opportunities in relation to the international political economy situation and Korean society including its Confucian culture. Focus is given to the ways in which military regimes have constantly pursued development as a way of justifying their regimes. While pursuing growth and exported-oriented policies, the regimes in South Korea adopted a tight control over industrial relations and a low wage policy towards its work force.

This paper aims to analyze South Korea's development efforts by looking at the two differences between the state-centered and social-centered approaches. Both have different views from each other, but this is what the author tries to use to describe the process of South Korea's economic development during the Park Cung-Hee administration amidst the intervention of capitalist groups. Development is divided into three important phases; preconstruction, stabilization, and rapid development with a development strategy within a certain period of time and industrialization in many sectors. In the process, South Korea emphasizes the role of the government and other stakeholders who have a major role in the country's economic development, although in the midst of its development there are internal obstacles experienced by South Korea, South Korea actually shows its economic success today.

In this paper we explore the feasibility and design challenges in supporting co-located and virtual social interactions in residential care by building on the practice of reminiscence. Motivated by the challenges of social interaction in this context, we first explore the feasibility of a reminiscence-based social interaction tool designed to stimulate conversation in residential care with different stakeholders. Then, we explore the design challenges in supporting an assisting role in co-located reminiscence sessions, by running pilot studies with a technology probe. Our findings point to the feasibility of the tool and the willingness of stakeholders to contribute in the process, although with some skepticism about virtual interactions. The reminiscence sessions showed that compromises are needed when designing for both story collection and conversation stimulation, evidencing specific design areas where further exploration is needed.

Patient safety is an important issue in health systems worldwide. A systematic review of previous studies on patient safety culture in Southeast Asian countries is necessary for South Korea's partnership with these countries, especially given South Korea's assistance in strengthening the health systems of these developing countries. Studies on patient safety culture in Southeast Asian countries, published in English and Thai languages, were retrieved from computerized databases using keywords through a manual search. Data extraction, quality assessment, and analyses were performed using several tools. The review included 21 studies conducted in Indonesia (n = 8), Thailand (n = 5), Malaysia (n = 3), Vietnam (n = 2), Singapore (n = 1), and the Philippines (n = 1). They were analyzed and categorized into 12 dimensions of safety culture, and differences in response rate or scores were identified compared to the mean of the dimensions. The heterogeneous of safety culture's situation among Southeast Asian countries, both in practice and in research, can be explained since patient safety policy and its application are not prioritized as much as they are in developed countries in the priority compared to the developed countries. However, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos are the priority countries for South Korea's official healthcare development assistance in the Southeast Asia region. Vietnam, for instance, is an economically transitioning country; therefore, consolidated patient safety improvement by inducing patient safety culture in the provincial and central health system as well as strengthening project formulation to contribute to health policy formation are needed for sustainable development of the partner countries' health systems. It is recommended that more evidence-based proactive project planning and implementation be conducted to integrate patient safety culture into the health systems of developing countries, toward health policy on patient safety and quality service for the attainment of sustainable development goals in South Korea's development cooperation.

Objective: This is research about R&amp;D productivity improvement for sustainable development in South Korea. Recently, there are increasing the considerable importance of R&amp;D productivity for industry and corporation. Theoretical Framework: The R&amp;D productivity index has become an essential factor for sustainable development estimation. For processing, research capital must be estimated firstly. At this time, the research capital is determined basically by the R&amp;D investment and R&amp;D depreciation rate made at each point or year. Therefore, in order to estimate the amount of research capital, firstly the R&amp;D depreciation rate should be estimated that is fitted in proper phase of technology. Method: We can find a depreciation of R&amp;D manufacture industry. The research data used the Korea Evaluation Data (KODATA) in collaboration with the Korea Productivity Center to reflect the technical factors of Korean companies as much as possible. The possibility of using the depreciation rate in this income-maximizing model can be confirmed that use sample of 1,233 and period in 2015-2019 of pre-COVID-19. Results and Discussion: South Korea should consider the fact that investment in the IT and ICT sectors accounts for a high proportion and that the proportion of leading industries is higher than that of the entire industry. In addition, considering that the share of the manufacturing industry is the highest among OECD countries, a separate consideration of the difference from 43.85% will be necessary Research Implication: Skill-intensified counties should consider proper R&amp;D depreciation index that can affect the R&amp;D productivity result. Value: For sustainable development, it is need to take exact R&amp;D depreciation that raise R&amp;D productivity. and this is associated with economic development.

Social belongingness satisfaction as a function of interaction medium: Face-to-face interactions facilitate greater social belonging and interaction enjoyment compared to instant messaging

The use of public resources and powers for particularistic purposes and interests serves as a useful (though not all encompassing) starting point for the definition of corruption.1 This definition ...

Economic development in South Korea and Taiwan has received considerable scholarly attention, as they are two of the most successful cases since the 1960s. For all their similarities, differences also exist. Thus, we revisited economic development in South Korea and Taiwan to draw lessons for other developing countries. Our analysis indicates that no single development model will work in every country. Countries may learn from the successful cases but need to adjust the development model according to their political and economic conditions.