We examined how North Korean refugees (NKRs) residing in South Korea and South Korean natives (SKs) perceive expressive speech act with message-oriented utterances and relationship-oriented utterances. Unlike most previous literature, we focused on the pragmatic heterogeneity and illustrated possible pragmatic failures that NKRs may encounter in South Korea. The 47-SKs and 43-NKRs responded to the survey with videoclips that shows combinations of the speech acts (thanking, compliment/response, and apology) and the utterance type (message-oriented and relationship-oriented). Each video entails three survey questions asking for participant's perception of conversations and their evaluation on the speaker's personality. The analysis revealed that SKs' perception of relationship-oriented utterances is more positive than NKRs. Also, NKRs' evaluations did not change significantly over time, showing that explicit instruction on the difference may be required. These findings suggest that for successful communication between two groups with different sociocultural backgrounds, instruction in language use can be helpful.

Soybean is a crop of importance economically and nutritionally in many parts of the world. Thanks to many new genes brought from genomic research, It is possible to introduce various candidate genes through genetic transformation to see the performance of the genes in field. In our lab, soybean transformations have been tried for last 10 years to probe the possibility of traits improvement by transformation of new gene into soybean. For this purpose, three different genes were transformed into Korean soybean variety, Kwangan. First, the gene that controls early flowering of plant was transformed into Kwangan. Second, a candidate gene for soybean mosaic virus (SMV) resistance was transformed to produce transgenic plants. Third, another candidate gene for drought tolerance was transformed. All the transgenic plants from three genes transformation were produced for their gene insertion and their expression using PCR, qRT-PCR. Further analysis including harvesting seeds is currently undertaken.

Korean soybean variety Kwangan was transformed with ORE7 gene using highly efficient soybean transformation system. The gene is known to exhibit a delayed leaf senescence phenotype in Arabidopsis. To confirm phenotypic characterization of leaf senescence for non-transgenic (NT) and transgenic plants, we transplanted T1 transgenic lines 7, 9, 14 and 15 together with two negative controls (NT and EV) in greenhouse. As a result, line 15 showed dramatic phenotypic characterization of yield increase and senescence delay. In addition, to investigate the agriculture traits for transgenic plants with leaf senescence delaying, T2 transgenic lines and two negative controls were transplanted on GMO fields in Ochang and harvested T3 seeds (2010). Most transgenic lines showed higher total seed weigh than NT. Especially, total seed weight of line 15 was increased by about 180% and 120% compared with the NT and EV, respectively. Therefore, we carried out the second field experiments with T3 transgenic line 15 and NT in Ochang (2011). A total of 117 transgenic plants were divided into two groups, senescence delaying (64 out of 117 plants) and increased yield (53 out of 117 plants), by transcript level of ORE7 gene. Interestingly, among increased yield plants, total seed weight of each 7 plants were increased by more than 200% compared with NT.

The effects of the transferred green rice leafhopper (GRH) resistant gene on yield and grain quality were analyzed by using 7 near-isogenic lines (NILs) with introgressed GRH resistance gene in rice cultivar "Ilpumbyeo". The genotype analysis using SSR markers indicated that all NILs were recovered more than 95% as compared with recurrent parent "Ilpumbyeo". All NILs showed no significant differences compared to recurrent parent for grain yield. No significant differences were observed between NILs and their recurrent parent for physicochemical traits (protein content, amylose content and alkali spreading value) and eating quality. But there were significant differences for appearance of brown and milled rice and pasting properties between some NILs and their recurrent parent. It means that these grain appearance and pasting traits of NILs were very similar or more improved compared to recurrent parent "Ilpumbyeo". Thus, it could be possible to develop GRH resistant variety with high ,quality in segregating populations.