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The goal of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program is to provide high quality educational experiences for small groups of U.S. students through active research participation in collaboration with foreign researchers at an international site and provide students with international collaborative research training and a personal network on which to build future collaborations. Interdisciplinary Research in Korea on Applied smart systems (IRiKA) is an NSF IRES Track I program that commenced in 2019. During each year of the three-year program (2019 - 2021), a cohort of 5 students selected from three participating U.S. institutions are sent to South Korea for 8 weeks to work on their own research project at their assigned laboratories. In Summer 2019, the first cohort of five students completed their 8-week immersive research internship at a topranked Korean university. COVID-19 affected most, if not all, in-bound and out-bound international programs. IRiKA was no exception. In late February 2020, the program was canceled altogether because no viable alternative could be offered for Summer 2020, as institutions world-wide were grappling with disruptive challenges the pandemic brought on. In Fall 2020, with contingency plans in place and an additional Korean host site aboard, the project team solicited applications. However, in early 2021, before the final selection of the 2021 cohort was complete, two of the three U.S. participating institutions announced that international travel would not be permitted for their faculty and students. The project team went on to select a cohort from one U.S. institution only and continued to monitor the travel health notice level for Korea. While some modifications were made to the in-country program to comply with the COVID-19 regulations in Korea, the 8-week research experience was in-person and remained largely uncompromised for the 2021 cohort. In this Work-in-Progress paper, the three US-based lead investigators compare the two versions of the IRiKA program - before and during the pandemic - and share the lessons learned. The nocost-extension will allow IRiKA to continue until Summer 2022. Selection of the Summer 2022 cohort will be complete by early March of 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the first nuclear power was engaged in Korean electricity grid in 1978, intensive research and development has been focused on localization and standardization of large pressurized water reactors (PWRs) aiming at providing Korean peninsula and beyond with economical and safe power source. With increased priority placed on the safety since Chernobyl accident, Korean nuclear power R&D activity has been diversified into advanced PWR, small modular PWR and generation IV reactors. After the outbreak of Fukushima accident, inherently safe small modular reactor (SMR) receives growing interest in Korea and Europe. In this paper, we will describe recent status of evolving designs of SMR, their advantages and challenges. In particular, the conceptual design of lead-bismuth cooled SMR in Korea, URANUS with 40~70 MWe is examined in detail. This paper will cover a framework of the program and a strategy for the successful deployment of small modular reactor how the goals would entail and the approach to collaboration with other entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines contributing factors to Korean immigrants' decisions to take medical tours to Korea, which has emerged as a field of study in immigrant medical transnationalism. This paper finds that social transnational ties with the home country was the most deeply related to Korean immigrants' medical tours to the home country. Their political and cultural transnational ties were also related to the likelihood of engaging in medical tourism, but not as much as social transnational ties. Surprisingly, Korean immigrants' health insurance status itself, which was assumed to be significant, was not significantly associated with medical tourism. Rather, it played a role as a mediating factor between temporary resident status and medical tourism. This paper contributes to the literature of immigrant transnationalism by investigating medical transnationalism, an under-researched area of transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we applied electrical resistivity monitoring method to evaluate the cement grouting effect. There are a lot of ways to evaluate cement grouting effect. In order to do this evaluation in a great safety, high efficiency, and lower cost, resistivity monitoring is found to be the most appropriate technique. In this paper we have selected a dam site from Korea to acquire resistivity monitoring data and compare the results of inversion to estimate the cement grouting effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stable income flow from renewable energy certificate (REC) sales is crucial for ongoing business in renewable energy companies. This paper examines the relationship between REC price uncertainty and renewable energy investment. Using a REC market data in Korea, I find that a high level of uncertainty about REC prices discourages renewable energy investment. Given that the decision to invest in renewable projects is highly irreversible, it is optimal to postpone new renewable energy installations until REC price uncertainty is resolved. Solar photovoltaic (PV) is a prime example. Solar project developers significantly reduce new capacity investment in the periods with highly volatile REC prices, while they increase investment when the prices are expected to be stable. I further show that renewable energy firms require more debt and equity financing to proceed a project in the presence of severe uncertainty about REC revenues. This finding suggests that increased dependence on external financing contributes to deter investments in new capacity installations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a survey of Korean Physical Society members at the spring 2014 meeting and compares them to the results of earlier studies in 2005 and 2010. In addition to basic demographic and career data, the 2014 survey focused on issues of career development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Korean government continuously increases R&D investment in order to pursue an economic growth through technological innovation. Among them, R&D investment for SMEs is 15% of the total. Since innovation of SMEs is driving force of the national economy, the efficiency of R&D investment of SMEs is very important. In addition, since the budget could not be infinitely increased, many researchers have studied the R&D efficiency in Korea since last 10 years. In order to increase R&D efficiency, the technological evaluation is not only important, but the selection of companies that perform R&D is also important. Hence, we analyzed the characteristics of the R&D efficiency by the SMEs. In this study, we used DEA for the efficiency analysis of R&D impact and ANOVA methodology for the analysis of characteristics of the R&D impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insight to a study conducted for examining of transmedia storytelling of webtoons in Korean cinema. It informs that Korean cultural industries, including film and broadcasting, have attempted to adapt webtoons into films and television programs. It also mentions about movies such as "Misaeng," "26 Years," and "Inside Men."

This study compares and contrasts student, teacher, and school factors associated with student mathematics achievement in Korea and the United States, using data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011. We examine factors linked to teachers who deliver quality instruction with high self-efficacy the association between teachers with highquality instruction and high self-efficacy and 8th graders' math achievement. Years of teaching experience and several student background characteristics such as parent's level of education and the number of books at home were associated with achievement in both countries. In addition, teacher's perceived academic emphasis was associated with teachers who claimed to provide highquality math instruction with high self-efficacy. However, the two countries' results differed in the effect of teacher's opportunities to learn in professional development programs on teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's comments on the issues focused on cultural discourse, globalization and flow of content. It offers information on the Ateneo Initiative for Korean Studies (AIKS), focused on the significance of Korean scholarship in academia. It focuses on the discussions on Korean television or film, music, or food.

The purpose of this study is to examine distinctive patterns of gender inequality in the internal and external labor markets in Korea. Previous studies analyzing multiple disadvantages in the labor market tend to focus on comparing the amount of gender wage gap between groups, however their not differentiating the gender gap from discrimination often results in a misleading conclusion underestimating the severe within-job discrimination that women in minority position experience. Using wage gap decomposition method, this study analyzes the gender wage gap among regular workers and non-regular workers separately. The result shows that the size of the gender wage gap is greater in the regular sector, but the sizable amount of the gap can be explained by the compositional difference between male and female workers. On the other hand, among non-regular workers, the gender wage gap is relatively small but most of the gap turns out to be caused by the within-job wage discrimination against women. Such divergent pattern of gender inequality between regular and non-regular workers shows a variation by firm size, and the pattern of 'larger gap-smaller discrimination' seems to be most prevalent among the regular workforce in large firms (>300 workers). The result shows how the segmented labor market provides a structural condition to create the complexity of gender inequality, in which women experience different forms of disadvantage depending on their locations in the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]