Suchergebnisse

Quasi-governmental organizations are new types of organizations that perticipate in both the governmental and private sectors. They have emerged worldwide and served as government's policy-implementing tool, meeting higher social demands that neither government nor market players could handle appropriately in the past. As a result, the quasi-governmental organizations have taken an ever-larger role in our society. furthermore, they enjoy enhanced socio-economic status, and changes in economic and political environments require more of them in terms of both function and role. In other words, they have evolved through the process of adapting to changing environments and each structure's functional transformation, in order to maintain and expand their roles. In this study, we examine the current state of quasi-governmental organizations and their deployment process, and we consider various theoretical discussions on the changing characteristics of quasi-governmental organizations. We conclude with a theoretical discussion of the functional evolution of quasi-governmental organizations, which will provide the theoretical basis for further analysis of the deployment process of quasi-governmental organizations and the causes of changes to this process.

Using oral history sources, this article takes a bottom-up approach to explain why South Koreans volunteered to fight in the Vietnam War, comprising the largest group of foreign troops that participated after U.S. forces. Because these soldiers received pay in U.S. dollars for their military service in Vietnam, there has been considerable scholarly debate about whether they were mercenaries. This article goes beyond this question to examine how the South Korean socio-economic context and political culture pushed these men to fight in another postcolonial civil war so similar to the one they themselves recently had experienced. An obligation to provide financial support for their impoverished families and a cult of militarized valor prompted young men to choose war as a way to fulfill their masculine roles. South Korean President Pak Chŏng-hŭi [Park Chung Hee] also urged young men to see themselves as defenders of the "Free World" and inspired them to fight alongside American soldiers they had respected as children during the Korean War. Ultimately, this article explains how South Koreans found themselves fighting in a new Cold War conflict in Asia even while their own nation remained precariously divided and damaged because of a similar war.

Introduction / Gilbert Rozman, Sue Mi Terry, and Eun A Jo -- Part 1. South Korea in the Hot Seat, 2013-2015. A Trustpolitik Approach to Denuclearization and Unification -- Managing Four Great Powers -- Remaking of Conservative Narratives -- Part 2. South Korea's High Stakes Diplomacy, 2016-2019. Great Hopes, Shattered Dreams -- Gambling on Great Power Relations -- Return of Progressive Narratives -- Part 3. South Korea Sobers Up, 2020-2022. Shift to the New Missile Age: 2020-2022 -- Edging toward Bipolarity: South Korea's Regional Reorientation, 2020-2022 -- Battling Partisan Narratives.

BACKGROUND: Many studies have shown that various social integration variables represented by social capital are beneficial to communities, including collective health. However, the rapid decline in fertility rates and the breakup of familyism in developed countries require a new approach to social disintegration, but the literature is insufficient. Here, we explored the contextual effects of social integration and social disintegration on the health of individuals. METHODS: The research data consist of merged datasets of 6909 respondents who were quota-sampled by approximately 30 people from 229 local governments in Korea. The individual-level independent variable is a social integration measure consisting of 26 questions in four areas. The community-level independent variables are five integral and aggregate variables extracted from 81 indicators. The dependent variable is self-rated health status. Potential confounders are gender, age, annual income, educational attainment, district type, and the number of beds in medical institutions per 1000 people. RESULTS: The results showed that at the individual level, the higher the inclusive attitude of in- and out-of-networks, after adjusting for potential confounders, the less likely the respondent belongs to the unhealthy group (p < 0.001). At the community level, the higher the proportion of single-person households in a community after adjusting for potential confounders, the less likely the respondent belongs to the unhealthy group (p < 0.05). The effect size was 0.22. CONCLUSION: Thus far, social integration has been preferred, with the positive aspects of social capital being emphasized. However, this study shows that in some cases, social disintegration can instead positively influence an individual's health. Therefore, further studies of the various conditions of social context effects on health are necessary.

Traumatic brain injury is accompanied by glial cell activation around the site of the injury. In this study, we investigated the role of toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) in glial cell activation using a stab-wound injury (SWI) model with TLR2 knock-out mice. Penetration of a normal mouse brain with a 26-G needle using a stereotaxic instrument resulted in an 18- and 4-fold upregulation of GFAP and CD11b mRNA, respectively, along the needle track in the injury area. However, in the TLR2 knock-out mice, the induced expression of these genes was reduced by 70% and 40%, respectively. Likewise, there was a reduction in the area of activated glial cells detected by immunohistochemistry and the glial cells had a less-activated morphology in the TLR2 knock-out mice. In addition, the expression of the heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) gene, a glia-expressing wound-responsive gene, was reduced after SWI in TLR2 knock-out mice. Taken together, these data argue that TLR2 contributes to the glial cell activation and HO-1 gene expression associated with traumatic brain injury. ; This work was supported by the Neurobiology Research Program at the Korea Ministry of Science and Technology (M10412000014-07N1200-01410), the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korea government (MOST) (R01-2007-000-10243-0), and by a Korea Research Foundation grant (KRF-2005-070-C00096).