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This study examines the complex relationship between gender inequality and economic growth in South Korea over the past two decades. Despite South Korea's remarkable economic advancement, its persistent gender inequalities challenge conventional assumptions about economic development fostering gender equality. By examining labor market dynamics, the institutionalization of care labor, and the positions of women's organizations, this study reveals a crucial paradox: while statistics show improvements in women's labor participation and social spending, these changes obscure underlying structural inequalities. This finding contributes to feminist theoretical debates on the neoliberal cooptation of feminist movements, demonstrating how neoliberal reforms have created opportunities for feminist advancement while simultaneously reinforcing structural gender inequalities. Finally, this study sheds light on care workers’ collective action as a critical site for examining new political momentum. Their struggles illuminate both the contradictions within the expanding care economy and the possibilities for reimagining feminist politics and social protection in contemporary South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to develop and implement an undergraduate liberal arts education programme titled Social-Venture Planning for Creative Problem-Solving. The programme was designed based on the creative problem-solving process model and previous research on social-venture planning, with the goal of providing undergraduate students with the experience needed to address social issues in creative ways. To empirically evaluate the programme's effectiveness, the CPSPI questionnaire was administered both before and after the intervention. Multiple sets of data for a mixed-method analysis were collected. The results demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in creative problem-solving competencies among the undergraduate participants. The results of the qualitative analysis explain the context of the change by subfactors. In the concluding section, key considerations for implementing the programme and the pedagogical implications of integrating social-venture planning into the context of liberal arts education were elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Korea, the state has played a minimal role in social provisioning, and as such, care provisions have been dependent on women's unpaid labour. Women's unpaid labour, especially in terms of voluntary activities, has played an important role in the sustenance of the community. However, women's voluntary work is often devalued as a free and readily available resource in public policy. Over the last few decades, a series of innovative policies on building community and promoting social economy have been implemented in South Korea to address problems of low economic growth, an ageing population, and polarisation of the society owing to neoliberal restructuring. While Korean women played pivotal roles in these innovative community-building projects, the sociopolitical connotations of their voluntary work, including appropriate public recognition and rewards, have rarely been discussed. This paper examines Korean women's role in the government-funded neighbourhood community-building project (Maeulmandeulgi) in South Korea. Reviewing public documents and survey data, this paper identifies existing gaps between policy discourses and practices, and examines their causes and fallouts, including rising discontent among community activists over these gaps. The paper also discusses the sociopolitical meaning of women's voluntary work for community building and the kind of changes that would be necessary to recognise and reward suitably women's voluntary work in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manure-sourced methane emissions from livestock operations in California will soon be subject to new regulation, as required by Senate Bill 1383, which was signed into law in 2016. Regulations, beginning in 2024, will require reductions in methane emissions from livestock manure, with a 40% reduction target by 2030. The California dairy industry accounts for most of the manure-sourced methane emissions in the state and, in order to reduce these emissions, government experts and authorities have encouraged expansion of anaerobic digestion of dairy waste -- especially to produce transportation fuel. Renewable natural gas for vehicle fuel, produced from manure at digesters, is eligible for substantial federal and California environmental credits, which are now projected to contribute the bulk of the revenue for qualifying digesters. This article shows that investments in digesters, because they depend heavily on revenue created by government policy, rather than on market-based sales of natural gas, are highly vulnerable to the risk of policy change or even minor technical adjustments in environmental regulations. Without secure projections of revenue that will cover costs, regulations may cause increases in the shift of milk production out of California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Identifying the functional status of patients after total knee arthroplasty is important. This study aimed to examine the differences in sit-to-stand and static standing ability balance between patients who underwent total knee arthroplasty and healthy participants. METHODS: Twenty patients (mean age 70.05 years) who underwent total knee arthroplasty and 20 healthy participants (mean age 69.20 years) participated in this study. To assess the participants’ sit-to-stand, the Good Balance System (Metitur Ltd, Finland) was used to measure each participant’s mediolateral center of pressure (COP) displacement and time required to complete the sit-to-stand movement. To assess the participants’ static standing balance, the Good Balance System was used to measure each patient’s mediolateral COP displacement, anteroposterior COP displacement, and velocity moment when standing with eyes open and with eyes closed. RESULTS: A significant difference was found in the mediolateral COP displacement and the time required to complete the sit-to-stand movement in the two groups ( P < 0.05). A significant difference was also found in the mediolateral and anteroposterior COP displacement and the velocity moment when standing with eyes open and with eyes closed in the two groups ( P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Patients who had total knee arthroplasty showed decreased sit-to-stand and static standing balance ability compared with the control group in the initial period after surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article establishes quantitative relationships between the evolution of climate and cropland using daily climate data for a century and data on allocation of land across crops for six decades in a specific agro-climatic region of California. These relationships are applied to project how climate scenarios reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would drive cropland patterns into 2050. Projections of warmer winters, particularly from 2035 to 2050, cause lower wheat area and more alfalfa and tomato area. Only marginal changes in area were projected for tree and vine crops, in part because although lower, chill hours remain above critical values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to link commercially arranged cross-border marriages to the discussion of the commodification of intimacy and to explore how a transnational phenomenon is contextualized in national politics. The question of commodification – what can or cannot be assigned economic value – has been a contentious area of intersection between economics and ethics, and intimacy has often been at the heart of the recent debate on commodification. Yet, commercially arranged cross-border marriages are perceived differently in Vietnam, a country that sends brides, and in Korea, a country that receives brides. In Vietnam, cross-border marriage has been portrayed negatively and is often associated with trafficking in women. Although a similar discourse exists in Korea, the official discourse on cross-border marriage has focused on supporting multicultural families. The difference in discourse with respect to the same phenomenon suggests that the tension around commodification is not necessarily shaped uniformly across the national border. In this article, I juxtapose the contrasted discourses and policies on commercially arranged cross-border marriages in both countries and discuss the contexts that may have contributed to the difference in discourse. By doing this, I show that the global trend of commodification of intimacy and the cultural meaning of this phenomenon cannot be divorced from national politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution situates the recent increase in cross-border marriages in Korea in the context of feminist debates on social reproduction. Drawing on surveys, policy documents, media responses, and interviews, the study explores how the phenomenon of cross-border marriage in Korea coincides with changing demographic trends and policies in the domains of the family, population, and welfare. Beginning as a solution to the “rural bachelor's marriage problem” – visible in the late 1980s – marriage between Korean men and women of foreign origin became increasingly common in the 2000s, in parallel with the emergence of national policy issues such as low fertility and a care deficit. The study suggests that current trends in cross-border marriage and policies on multicultural families reflect the need for changes in the organization of social reproduction that has resulted from the economic development that began in the 1960s and the political-economic restructuring since the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper develops a simulation of Korean dairy policy that is tailored to the data, institutions, and policies in South Korea. It compares potential effects of changes in trade and domestic policy to baseline projections to 2015. Beverage milk continues to be supplied from domestic sources, implying imports compete in the manufacture of tradable products. We model manufactured dairy product supply, demand, and trade on a milk fat and non-fat-solid component basis reflecting product fungibility over the 10-year horizon used for our trade policy analysis. We find that if the domestic price support is removed with no change in trade policy, the market price of raw milk falls by about 2% and raw milk production declines by 4.5%. Under substantial tariff cuts of 30–40% with no effective change in domestic dairy policy, Korean fat and non-fat-solid prices fall by 7% and 11%, fat and non-fat-solid imports rise by 9% and 7% and Korea raw milk production falls by about 2% relative to the baseline. Prices of Korean farmer-owned dairy inputs, labor, and capital fall by about 1%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The diversifying impacts of global disasters such as climate change and COVID-19 call for systematic consideration of how disasters can be addressed in different school subjects. In this paper, we discuss how the relationship between disaster and science education has been codified and framed in South Korea through an analysis of national curriculum and policy documents from the 2010s, a period marked by several human-caused disasters with lingering social impacts. A genealogical reading of policy documents reveals how disaster emerged as a curricular theme at the intersection of two policy discourses: the discourse of safety and the discourse of integration. Further analysis of the documents points to three tensions about science education that underlay this process, as disaster, a non-traditional topic, was introduced into the science curriculum. Our findings provide insights into the tensions and conflicting ideas about what should be learned in school science. We contend that a stronger theoretical and empirical base is needed when introducing new curriculum topics such as disaster into the curriculum. More effort is needed to justify the new topic against the existing aims and structures of school subjects, to consider the unique social and political context, and to bridge the gap between curriculum policy and classroom practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We examine the crop insurance choices of specialty crop growers. • Lower expected returns from Buy-up products lead to more CAT participation. • Due to the self-selection, CAT tends to have greater underwriting gains. Catastrophic coverage, fully-subsidized insurance that provides indemnities when yields fall below 50% of historical averages, has been the most widely used crop insurance product among specialty crop growers in the United States. Patterns in catastrophic coverage across a variety of fruit, vegetable, tree nut and horticultural crops and indicate that expected returns to "investing" in subsidized crop insurance affect the use of insurance. Our simple model shows that smaller net returns from higher coverages, imply more catastrophic and free coverage participations. Our econometric estimation uses observations of insured acreage, liabilities, indemnities, and premiums across 20 major crops and more than one thousand counties, over all the 23 years since catastrophic coverage became available. We find that a 10% reduction in the ratio of the indemnities to the premiums of non-catastrophic coverages, which implies a 4% reduction in expected returns to growers, leads to larger catastrophic coverage shares by almost one percent. Panel quantile regressions show that the result is robust to distributional assumptions. Estimation using subsamples and alternative specifications further confirm the robustness of our results. The conceptual and empirical results demonstrate the degree to which farms self-select into crop insurance products that provide greater expected payouts. Our empirical results also indicate that catastrophic coverage generates greater underwriting gains, which affects the reinsurance fund allocation of private insurers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]