Korea Government Research Articles

Stratified network mapping decision making technique based decision support framework for R&D budget allocation in South Korea

In this research work, we proposed and developed a stratified network mapping (SNM) decision making method and used it to improve the industry–university specialization in R&D in each region selected in this study. The proposed method considers the influence of criteria on and their priority in alternatives performance evaluation process. By analyzing the influence of these criteria on decision-making, we can easily improve the performance of alternatives. The SNM gives a clear understanding of each alternatives performance efficiency level. It explores possible and inefficient states and high-level influence states in inefficient states. Narrowly using multi-criteria decision-making methods to rank alternatives does not improve the performance of alternatives. The proposed method helps rank alternatives and improve the performance level of alternatives in each state. We analyzed the R&D investment of central and local governments of South Korea. It is an attempt to invigorate and facilitate R&D collaboration using a decision support model. We analyzed industry–academia research networks and enhanced the efficiency of the research.

전라남도의 에너지 개발과 정책에 관한 연구

The world adopted the Paris Agreement, in which all countries agreed to share the responsibility for responding to and adapting to climate change. However, according to the Paris Agreement, the responsibility is differentially burdened by each country in consideration of its capabilities. In this regard, Korea should also share appropriate responsibilities. Therefore, I reviewed the energy-related plans and policies of the previous and current governments in Korea. Then, it was examined whether Jeollanam-do, which has sufficient conditions for renewable energy production, systematically responded to the climate crisis, while revising laws and regulations that matched regional characteristics. Jeollanam-do is the best place for the renewable energy industry because it has superior renewable energy resources compared to other local governments, such as solar power generation with abundant sunshine, offshore wind power generation with excellent wind resources off the coast of Shinan, and tidal power generation due to strong currents in Jindo. However, due to the acceptability of local residents, renewable energy generation projects are not being carried out smoothly. Therefore, by reviewing renewable energy-related ordinances in other regions, various directions for improving renewable energy-related ordinances in Jeollanam-do were presented. In particular, in relation to the direction of amendment of the ordinance, emphasis was placed on profit sharing and ensuring procedural participation of local residents to increase the acceptance of local residents. In addition, a revision of the law was proposed to guarantee the right to participate in the actual procedural process.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE INITIAL PRESALE RATE IN HOUSING PROJECTS USING A REGIME-SWITCHING MODEL

We analyzed to identify the determinants affecting the presale rate in the housing projects and verified whether there are differences in the determinants of that by regimes. We found that the effects of determinants, such as the ratio of the new apartments’ sales price to existing apartments’ prices, educational environment, the number of unsold houses, and the interest rate of a mortgage on the initial presale rate, could have been different depending on which regime the housing market belongs to. This suggests that the government in Korea and Asian countries should consider the differentiation in effects of the determinants depending on the regime when the government tries to make housing policies.

조건부 변분오토인코더 및 협업필터링을 활용한 복지 프로그램 추천

Recently, the government of South Korea has offered a variety of welfare programs that are customized to diverse demands, such as diabetes management, alcohol addiction rehabilitation, living condition improvement, etc. These welfare programs have become too diverse to be remembered and recommended by individuals, and the government now has a list matching program recipients and programs for further studies. This research investigates such welfare program recommendation with a conditional variational autoencoder merged with collaborative filtering, a.k.a. CVAE-CF. We use a natural language description to provide the program information, or item in the context, and we utilize the demographic information from potential recipients as the user information. Our results show agreeable performance for future application to recommendation tasks showing 63% recall and 13.1% precision on average.

A study on the discretionary acts of local government and local government heads: focusing on accounting irregularity

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between allowances for bad debts in connection with tax and budget accounting irregularity. In particular, we tried to verify the relationship between the provision of distorted financial accounting information and the occurrence of budget accounting misconduct in pursuit of political benefits by theoretical discussion and empirical analysis. We collected the panel datasets for the period 2008 to 2012 from local governments in South Korea. The logistic regression confirmed the tendency in local governments of avoiding the detection of budget-related irregularity through the act of setting the allowance ratio for bad debts for tax. This can be highlighted as a problem, in that there is a discretionary portion in setting the ratio of the allowance for bad debts for tax and a lack of control of the distortion between the information on the budget accounting irregularity and the information in the financial accounting settlement.

Efforts of South Korean Local Governments to Expand the Good Landlord Movement: Focus on Property Tax Reduction and Exemption

Purpose: This study aimed to review whether local governments in Korea introduced the Good Landlord Property Tax Reduction and Exemption System (GLPTRES) in a timely and organic manner and promoted the expansion of the Good Landlord Movement by analyzing the system's problems and proposing improvements. Design/methodology/approach: To obtain data about the GLPTRES and tax reduction and exemption outcomes, this study used the Ministry of the Interior and Safety's Information Disclosure System. On January 26, 2022, the researcher requested information disclosure about 15 regional local governments and 187 basic local governments under such regional local governments. Between January 27 and February 25, 2022, the author was notified by all basic local governments of their decisions to disclose information or the non-availability of such information, which was reflected in the analysis. Findings: The timing of property tax reduction and exemption decisions for good landlords was generally late. There was a relationship between regional local governments and their basic local governments in its implementation. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the GLPTRES was found to be generally low. Research limitations/implications: The period of this study was restricted to 2020, and the analysis focused on the 123 local governments that implemented this system. The lessons learned from Korea can be applied to other countries implementing government support for small businesses during crises. Originality/value: This is the first study to analyze the timeliness of resolutions made by local governments on the GLPTRES implemented in Korea for the first time in 2020 to support small business tenants in trouble due to COVID-19, the relationship between local governments, and its effectiveness.

Optimal health system reform by the new government of Korea: Open advisory opinion in front of a new window

Optimal health system reform by the new government of Korea: Open advisory opinion in front of a new window

Cluster Analysis of Drought Damage to Local Governments Across the Country Using the National Drought Information Statistics

Recently, Korea has regularly published statistics on the current state of annual droughts that have been occurring since 2018 in the National Drought Information Statistics. For a clear categorization of drought damage, it is necessary to first establish the major factors that affect the degree of damage. In this study, damage-related data from the National Drought Information Statistics Collection (2018-2020) were examined to obtain the regional characteristics of water use resulting in regional drought damage to 161 local governments in Korea. Cluster analysis was performed, and a hierarchical clustering algorithm was used for the regional classification of drought damage. The factor composition was analyzed by dividing it into four major methods to represent the drought damage caused by general, living, and agricultural droughts. The analysis confirmed that regional clustering appeared according to the characteristics of water use and past damage history. If such clustering-based regional damage classification information and factors affecting drought damage by water are considered, it is expected that the damage sensitivity of local governments according to the drought situation and regional water use characteristics can be presented quantitatively.

2015년 이후 수도권 재집중

This paper is to analyse the reconcentration of Seoul Metropolitan Area(SMA)'s population to become clear after 2015, and trace back the background of the phenomena. SMA's population has been over 50% since December 2019, and it came from the outstanding rise of SMA – non SMA population gap in the end of 2015. The high tide of SMA in 2015 is linked directly with two things. One is the big growth of semiconductor and display products in SMA around 2015, and the other is the development of 2nd Dongtan Newtown which the first dwellers moved in 2015. The background factors of the two things are polices that allow industrial complex at Pyeontaek, a southern city of SMA, esp, acceptance of new large semiconductor campus of Samsung Electronics, and create new big city at southern SMA for stabilizing housing price. Throughout this process, our state, S. Korea government had done as if she was an civil affair clergy for giant conglomerate, so called Jaebul. This kind of state is called a neoliberalist state, or Schumpeterian workfare state, which S. Korea takes the form of after the shocks from IMF crisis in 1998. Under that kind of state, the government has become inferior to global multinational conglomerates less and less including Samsung and LG, and her policies for regional equality have been stepped back further and further.

북한이탈주민의 법적 지위에 관한 헌법합치적 고찰: ｢북한이탈주민의 보호 및 정착지원에 관한 법률｣ 분석을 중심으로

Recently, South Korea has continuously encountered with issues derived from legal status of the North Korea refugees. Those North Korea refugees are basically entitled with the legal status under the Constitution and legal status under the ｢North Korean Refugees Protection and Settlement Support Act｣ (hereinafter, the ‘North Korea Refugees Act’), and there are frequent confusions regarding the legal status of the North Korea refugees within the government, legal profession and academic circle in Korea due to the ambiguous legal definition of the North Korea refugee under the ｢North Korea Refugees Act｣, realistic difficulties to apply the same to the international law, and so forth.
 Therefore, under Article 2 of the ｢North Korea Refugees Act｣, a requirement of ‘a person who has applied for protection to the Republic of Korea’ should be added to the requirements of a North Korea refugee for its definition, that a North Korea resident is vested with the fundamental entitlement as a person of the Republic of Korea pursuant to Article 3 of the Constitution, but in case of such a person is in an area (North Korea or foreign country during the process of defecting from North Korea) where the effectiveness of the Constitution of Korea is not extended, the effectiveness of nationality of the Republic of Korea is suspended, and in the case of the North Korea resident clearly indicating its intent to seek for protection to an overseas office of the Republic of Korea or the like, it may render tentative conclusion to restore the legal status as a resident of the Republic of Korea.
 By revising and supplementing the definitions for the North Korea Refugees Act, a reasonable plan may be sought for enthusiastic protection for the North Korea refugees in the Republic of Korea and decrease in diplomatic controversies.

태평양전쟁 초기 중국의 팽창주의와 미국의 한반도 신탁통치 결정(1941~1943)

After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the importance of China on the Asian battlefield had greatly increased as Britain and the U.S. were on the defensive. The Kuomintang government took the opportunity of China’s rise in international status to try to dominate the issues regarding the independence of Asian colonies so as to ensure China’s leadership in Asia after the War. With regard to Korea, Chiang Kai-shek actively sought a commitment to Korean independence and recognition of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Chungking by the Great Allied Powers, with the primary purpose of preventing the development of Soviet-supported Korean group in postwar Korea. BR The U.S. policy toward Korea, in the earlier stages of the War, was gradually developed in response to these demands from China. Considering China’s active demands in Korea, the U.S. agreed to Korean independence but refused to recognize the Provisional Government of Korea. The consideration of Soviet interests was the main reason why the U.S. refused. The U.S. thought that the Soviet Union also had significant geographical and historical interests in Korea and therefore believed that the Soviet Union would not be absent from the post-war negotiation table on the Korean issue. In late 1942, Chiang took advantage of the serious crisis in the Soviet Union during the Battle of Stalingrad to make more aggressive demands to Roosevelt to exclude the Soviet Union from the Korean issue. Chiang’s positive attitude toward the Korean issue alerted the U.S. to Chiang’s territorial ambitions for postwar Korea. This concern of the U.S. over Chiang’s expansionism added urgency to the decision of international trusteeship over Korea.

Gentrification in the Command Economy: A Story of Pyongyang Metropolitan Area in North Korea

Background and objective: Gentrification generally refers to changes in residents or operators in neighborhoods by investment in capital, a phenomenon in which wealthy or young professionals replace existing residents or operators in socioeconomic terms. Although conducted mainly in capitalist cities, some studies dealt with socialist systems or state-led gentrification. We intended to demonstrate the gentrification in North Korean by examining the cases of the socialist system and state-led gentrification and looking at urban development and urban space restructuring in Pyongyang Metropolitan Area in North Korea.Methods: To build up methodological framework of the study, we reviewed previous literature that deals with gentrification in capitalist cities, socialist systems, and state-led planning. About the gentrification phenomenon in North Korea, we examined secondary data of North Korea refugee interviews with North Korea government documents and research papers about Pyongyang's building and real estate development. Then, we compared gentrification in capitalist cities, socialist systems (or state-led planning), and North Korea.Results: Gentrification in capitalist cities, socialist system and North Korea differs in their enabling conditions, gentrifying agents, gentrifiers, and processes. National and local governments, usually with the North Korea communist party, play a leading role as gentrifying agents through their public policy. In the gentrification processes, there is an increasing gap between rich and poor and spatial separation between them, especially when displaced households being pushed out of town in North Korea.Conclusion: Urban development and apartment construction in Pyongyang shows the possibility of developing into existing gentrification, and if the private sector that leads gentrification occurs and at the same time, spatial replacement by privileged or upper classes appears, it will be clear that it is a kind of gentrification under the command economy.

「여성 감성공학」 교과목 개발과 효과성 분석

Women in the predominantly male oriented college of engineering which is afflicted by the high dropout rate and the low employment rate of coeds in their majoring fields because of the gender sensitivity differences. In order to resolve the related problems Korea government made a WISET(Women in Science Engineering and Technology) program since 2006. And P University has been actively engaged in a movement to raise the gender sensitivity Engineering and to train women engineers for highly qualified work force. As part of the movement a subject called ｢Women sensitive Engineering｣ or ｢Women Sensitivity Ergonomics in daily life｣ that focuses on the gender sensitivity are effective to reduce the dropout rate and to land a job inside their fields. The title of established subject in P university was ｢Women Sensitivity Ergonomics in our Daily Life｣ as well. This study was conducted a survey of the coeds who have completed the ｢Women sensitive Engineering｣ or ｢Women sensitive Ergonomics｣ course to evaluate the degree of satisfaction ergonomics not taken the course. The results showed statistically significant responses indicating that both groups of coeds aware the gender sensitivity differences to Engineering and learned the optimization skill of gender sensitivity ergonomics by this ｢Women sensitive Engineering｣ subject. Also factor analysis for student’s enrollment this new subject was conducted in order to search the student’s satisfaction. This may lay the foundation to offer other major engineering courses for juniors and seniors that emphasize the gender sensitivity differences and ergonomics in Engineering. And we could be expected the decreasing the women students dropout rate from Engineering related fields by studying this subject we develope

A Comparative Analysis of Four Countries: The Challenges to Effective Prevention and Response to Prison Sexual Assault

Rape and other forms of sexual violence against prisoners are recognized as forms of torture that are prohibited by international conventions. Despite this, prisoners are at heightened risk of sexual assault by other inmates or corrections officials across the globe. The current study conducts a comparative analysis on the data collection practices and the relevant laws and policies on prison sexual assault across four countries including South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Results indicate that currently, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia collect data and publish official statistics on the prevalence and occurrences of prison sexual assault. In addition, only the United States has a mandate such as the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 legislation, which requires all confinement facilities to implement specialized laws and legal standards stipulating practical strategies for effective prevention, detection, and response to prison sexual violence. The findings suggest that the Ministry of Justice and the Korea Correctional Service should make efforts to collect, record, and publish more reliable official data on all forms of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault occurred within correctional facilities. Moreover, the governments of South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Australia should consider legislating specialized laws and policies to effectively prevent and respond to sexual violence within correctional facilities. To support rape victims and ensure their recovery, specialized responses such as medical and legal services should be implemented. Furthermore, it is critical to establish legal standards and administrative policies of staff training and education aimed at increasing the accountability of corrections officials.

Weights analysis for CNN models in MRI classification

AbstractBackgroundIn deep neural network learnable parameters like weights and bias of convolution kernel, normalization layer or fully connected layers (FCLs) are the one responsible for giving prediction score. Though one parameter or parameters in a layer has not decisive role, however when whole network prediction is to be done, each one has role to generate prediction value. Hence, they are important for the network performance.MethodWe modeled a CNN for classification and trained it using 50% of total MRI scans for 3 classes. After training the network for 50 epochs, the network reaches convergences with 100% training accuracy and around 70% validation accuracy. Then, the trained models’ parameters i.e., weights and bias of FCL layers were analyzed class wise for any correlation with its parent class.ResultThe weights of final FCL are plotted as in Figure 1. The correlation matrix for weights on sample MRIs with trained weights are shown in Tables 1 and 2. Here, two activation functions were used for final test results were ReLU and Leaky ReLU with final test accuracy around 67.3% and 70.9% respectively.ConclusionWe attempted to study the weights pattern in FCL layer for a trained CNN model along with its correlation value for each class.[Acknowledgement]This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. NRF‐2021R1I1A3050703). And this research was supported by the BrainKorea21Four Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (4299990114316).

차별금지법의 입법적 고려사항에 대한 일고찰

This article aims at figuring out the key issues of legislation through the analysis of the bills of Equality Act or Anti-discrimination Act proposed to the National Assembly, based on the preliminary overview of legislative movement for the enactment of Anti-discrimination Act and the short history of legislation over the fifteen years since Ro Moo-hyun government in Korea. Key issues are picked out as follows through examining four bills proposed to the the National Assembly(Hye-young Jang’s Bill under the name of the Anti-discrimination Act and Sang-min Lee’s Bill, Joo-min Park’s Bill, and In-sook Kwon’s Bill under the name of the Equality Act) : the appropriate name of anti-discrimination law, types of discrimination, areas(scopes) and grounds of discrimination, exceptions of discrimination, instrument of remedy of discrimination, adoption of the compensatory and punitive damages. All the Bills agreed that ‘gender identity’ and ‘status of employment’ should be added to the current nineteen grounds of discrimination stipulated in the National Human Rights Commission Act as the protected characteristics of grounds of discrimination. Hye-young Jang’s Bill includes two more grounds of discrimination such as language and nationality. Furthermore, this study is suggesting to add three more characteristics of grounds of discrimination such as academic background, occupation, and engagement in labor union because those characteristics are very influential in Korean culture. Four bills are commonly suggesting to expand the scopes of discrimination by adding ‘the supply or use of administrative services et. al’ to the current three scopes (employment, the supply or use of goods and services, education) under the National Human Rights Commission Act. They also accepted the broad conception of discrimination which includes indirect discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment and the discriminatory advertisement or expression as well as direct discrimination. Consequently the equality act need to extend the conception and types of discrimination beyond the National Human Rights Commission Act. According to all of the Bills, not only the affirmative action but genuine occupational qualification(BFOQ) in employment should be accepted as the exception of discrimination. In order for the effective enforcement of the equality act, all the Bills are adopting the new instruments of remedy such as the corrective order, the support of litigation of the National Human Rights Commission, provisional or positive measures by the court decision, and the compensatory and punitive damages for the harmful discrimination. These key issues should be considered in the legislation of the anti-discrimination act or the equality act in the near future.

예관(睨觀) 신규식(申圭植) 연구의 동향과 과제

The purpose of this study is to review existing academic research and present future research tasks about the life and ideology of Shin Kyusik, an anti-Japanese activist. We find this is a fitting way to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death.
 Around 38 research theses about Shin Kyusik have been published to date. Among these theses, the majority focus on Shin’s independence struggles, while four studies are related to Daejonggyo religion, and five studies are about his book, 『Korean Spirit』 as well as the various poems he also authored. The impacts of these theses may seem minor when compared to his accomplishments, which left a large footprint in the Korean independence activists, however they are still valuable to inform us of his views and achievements.
 In this study, the historical facts about Shin’s acts are first introduced by classifying the results of previous studies according to their subject. Second, this study then examines some generally misunderstood facts about Shin’s life and his anti-Japanese activists, but those that were corrected through follow-up studies were also summarized. The views of the researchers on the contents of the issues are also expressed in this study.
 While previous studies have contributed to illuminating Shin Kyusik’s accomplishments to further Korean independence, researchers have not sufficiently delved into Shin’s ideology and his life as an independence activist. Errors concerning the date of Shin’s birth and the time of his exile to Shanghai have also been corrected through the follow-up studies, but his historic roles in establishing the Provisional Government of Korea still remains controversial.
 In the future, when conducting in-depth research on Shin Kyusik, it will also be necessary to focus on his ideology, his historic role and ideas in Daejonggyo Religion, and his solidarity with Chinese revolutionaries. It will also be worthwhile analyzing and discussing his poems to have a complete body of research about his life and ideology.

유엔 지속가능발전목표(SDGs)의 관점에서 본 북한개발협력법제

This paper analyzes the legal tasks to facilitate development cooperation in North Korea through UN ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs). UN SDGs, established in 2015, is composed of 17 Goals and 169 Targets, and it includes comprehensive agenda such as economy, social, and environment. North Korea government, with the cooperation with UN branch of North Korea, established ‘UN Strategic Plan (2016-2021)’ in 2016, and furthermore published the ‘Voluntary National Review (VNR)’ in 2021. In particular, it is noticeable that ‘UN Strategic Plan (2016-2021)’ adopted the ‘human rights-oriented approach’ to which North Korea was negative in the past. This paper deals with North Korean Law in relation to “health and wellbeing (SDG3)” and “partnership for SDGs (SDG17)”, which is prioritized by North Korea Government in ‘UN Strategic Plan (2016-2021).’ In relation to “health and wellbeing (SDG3)”, ｢Act on People’s Health｣ & ｢Emergency Quarantine Act｣ in North Korea is analyzed. In relation to “partnership for SDGs (SDG17)”, ｢Foreign Investment Act｣ & ｢Statistics Act｣ is dealt with. When we review the above SDGs related Acts in North Korea, we can find lack of legal ground which can facilitate non-economic international development cooperation in North Korea. To address this issue, it is necessary for North Korea to adopt law which covers the international development cooperation comprehensively. North Korean ｢Statistics Act｣ stipulates that confidentiality in statistics is the norm, hence this Act hampers the use of statistics which is indispensable in monitoring SDGs implementation. To facilitate SDGs, it is necessary to introduce legal ground for opening the SDGs’ related statistics. UN SDGs is a international norm which applies both developing & developed countries. Therefore, UN SDGs implementation is a task not only to North but also to South Korea. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the relationship between ｢Framework Act on Sustainable Development Act｣ & ｢Framework Act on International Development Cooperation｣, and ｢Framework Act on International Development Cooperation｣ & ｢Inter-Korean Exchange & Cooperation Act｣. In SDGs’ implementation, South & North Korea should make effort to improve each law and strengthen the cooperation in relation to this law. It will be meaningful to lay the foundation for peaceful unification of South & North Korea. In this process, we should see 1) South-North Korea cooperation law and 2) international development cooperation law comprehensively.

Tilting the playing field: government strategies to bolster control over policy paths in Japan and South Korea

Following the financial crises in the late 1990s, governments in Japan and South Korea embraced institutional change that corresponded with Western neoliberal norms. These changes prompted some observers to expect a similar adjustment of monetary and financial policy to Western standards. Others anticipated that historical legacies would preserve developmental policy continuity. Curiously, neither of the two perspectives can fully explain the ensuing monetary and financial policy paths in both countries, which have exhibited differences in both conduct and objectives. To explain the puzzling policy paths, this article focuses on the role of government objectives in shaping institutional change and policy paths. It finds that in the 1990s, governments in Japan and South Korea sought to expand their control over monetary and financial policy vis-à-vis the bureaucracy. They used international pressure and expert commissions to bring about institutional change when the financial crises hit. This enabled them to instigate new monetarist (Japan) and financial stability-directed (South Korea) policy paths they preferred. The findings indicate that accounts by institutionalist and state capacity scholars should pay more attention to government objectives when explaining the timing of institutional change and the emergence of subsequent policy paths.

Fish Diversity and Ichthyofauna of Areas Adjacent to the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea

The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was established in 1953 during the cessation of the Korean War, which divided the Korean Peninsula into North and South Korea. The DMZ is a representative biodiversity resource because it limits human activities. The current status of faunal diversity in adjacent areas of the DMZ was investigated in five regions at 91 sites from 2015 to 2019. A total of 19,562 individuals were collected and identified, including 81 species, 19 families, and 11 orders. Zacco koreanus was the most abundant fish species (relative abundance of 21.9%), while other key species were Zacco platypus (18.2%), Rhynchocypris oxycephalus (5.2%), Rhynchocypris steindachneri (4.9%), and Pungtungia herzi (3.7%). Notably, twenty-nige endemic and seven Red Data Book species were recorded, and three exotic species, Carassius cuvieri, Micropterus salmoides, and Lepomis macrochirus were found at five sites. Human activities and disturbances were found at 34.0% of all sampling sites, and the highest disturbance factors were river dredging and agricultural use (seven sites), sewage (five sites), and fisheries and development (two sites). We recommend that the governments of South and North Korea collaboratively manage the DMZ to protect ecological diversity and maintain its status as a symbol of peace.