KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study examines the role of housing finance arrangements in shaping homeownership outcomes among newly married households and identifies the key structural factors underlying their housing trajectories. Drawing on the general household sample of the 2024 Korea Housing Survey, the analysis estimates the associations between different sources of housing finance and the likelihood of homeownership, while controlling for household characteristics and regional contexts. The results show that, in addition to personal savings, mortgage borrowing from financial institutions and financial assistance from parents or other family members are significantly associated with a higher likelihood of homeownership. The composition of housing finance also emerges as an important factor, with greater reliance on mortgage borrowing and intergenerational family support associated with increased access to homeownership. By contrast, newly married households residing in the Seoul Metropolitan Area are significantly less likely to own a home, highlighting substantial regional disparities in housing affordability and opportunities for asset accumulation. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that homeownership outcomes are shaped not only by individual socioeconomic characteristics but also by broader structural conditions, including access to housing finance, intergenerational wealth transfers, and regional housing market constraints. The findings have important implications for housing and social welfare policies aimed at improving housing affordability and promoting stable housing pathways for young and newly formed households.

Recently, food-tech has attracted increasing attention as an innovative strategy in the food service industry. However, previous studies have mainly focused on the effects of specific technologies while overlooking the role of location and spatial value. This study examines the impact of food-tech adoption on restaurant sales and analyzes how these effects vary with rent levels, a proxy for location and spatial value. Food-tech was classified into internal efficiency-driven and external efficiency-driven based on functional characteristics, and the analysis was conducted across different regions. The results show that internal efficiency-driven food-tech has a significant positive effect on sales only in non-metropolitan areas, suggesting that it helps mitigate labor constraints. In contrast, external efficiency-driven food-tech has a positive effect on sales across all regions and shows a stronger direct effect than internal technologies. The moderating analysis further indicates that the positive effect of external efficiency-driven food-tech is greater in areas with lower rent levels, while the effect weakens as rent increases. This suggests that food-tech complements but does not replace locational advantages. These findings imply that commercial district revitalization policies should incorporate digital-based operational support while tailoring food-tech strategies to regional characteristics and rent levels.

This study analyzes the age structure of employees and settlement environments of industrial complexes in Korea and proposes directions for all generation friendly settlement environments. Using Korea Credit Bureau 250-meter workplace-based grid data and industrial complex boundary data, location quotients were calculated for young and middle-aged employees, and settlement environment indices were constructed from housing and living SOC supply and accessibility. K-means clustering was used to classify industrial complexes into four types. The results show that industrial complexes characterized by middle-aged employee specialization were prevalent, but their settlement environments varied across clusters. The young-specialized cluster showed average settlement environment conditions, whereas the cluster without pronounced age specialization showed the most favorable conditions. These findings indicate that the level of settlement environments cannot be explained solely by specialization in a particular age group. Therefore, policies for industrial complexes should consider both the age structure of employees and settlement environment conditions and pursue differentiated approaches to creating all generation friendly settlement environments tailored to the characteristics of each industrial complex type.