Background: Stroke often leads to persistent gait impairments that significantly reduce mobility and quality of life. Conventional rehabilitation has demonstrated therapeutic value but is limited by insufficient personalization and low patient engagement. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of a realtime Kinect-based motion analysis and AI-driven virtual reality (VR) gait training system for stroke rehabilitation. Design: Randomized controlled trial with parallel-group assignment. Methods: Thirty stroke patients were randomly assigned to a VR-based gait training group (n=15) or a conventional physical therapy group (n=15) for 8 weeks. The VR system integrated Kinect-based markerless motion capture, a 14-layer artificial neural network for gait parameter prediction, and immersive VR feedback to provide personalized gait retraining. Spatiotemporal gait parameters—including gait velocity, step length, cadence, and step width— were assessed before and after the intervention. Results: The VR group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in gait velocity (0.52 to 0.73 m/s, +40.4%), step length (78.3 to 95.7 cm, +22.2%), and cadence (100.2 to 110.4 steps/min, +10.2%) than the control group, while step width decreased (12.3 to 9.8 cm, −20.3%), indicating enhanced balance and stability. The artificial neural network accurately predicted movement patterns and supported adaptive training with real-time feedback. Conclusion: The real-time VR gait rehabilitation system effectively enhanced gait performance and motor coordination among stroke patients, outperforming conventional physical therapy. The integration of Kinect-based motion capture and AI-driven personalization provides a promising platform for scalable and clinically meaningful stroke rehabilitation.

Background: Emotional labor, the management of feelings to create organizationally desired emotional displays, has been consistently associated with adverse health outcomes in Western populations. However, cultural context may fundamentally alter these relationships in Asian service economies. Objectives: To examine temporal trends in emotional labor prevalence and investigate associations between emotional labor and health outcomes among Korean service workers over a 17-year period. Design: Repeated cross-sectional study. Methods: We analyzed data from seven waves of the Korean Working Conditions Survey (2006-2023), comprising 271,039 observations. Emotional labor was assessed using validated items measuring frequency of hiding feelings and managing customer emotions. Health outcomes included psychological symptoms (depression, anxiety, fatigue) and physical symptoms (musculoskeletal disorders, headaches, gastrointestinal problems). We employed multivariable logistic regression, fixed-effects models, and mediation analyses, adjusting for sociodemographic and occupational factors. Results: Emotional labor exposure remained stable at approximately 3.0 (5- point scale) from 2014-2023. Health problem prevalence was consistently around 60% across all survey years. Contrary to hypotheses, emotional labor showed no significant association with health problems (OR=0.999, 95% CI: 0.993-1.005, P=0.735). These null findings persisted in fixed-effects analyses (β=-0.0003, P=0.736), gender-stratified models, and interaction tests. The Cochran-Armitage trend test revealed no temporal trends (P=0.865). Mediation analysis found no indirect effects through psychological hazards. Notably, this finding represents a paradoxical discovery that challenges Western-centric assumptions about the universality of emotional labor's health effects. Conclusion: Despite high statistical power and comprehensive methodology, we found no evidence linking emotional labor to health problems in Korean workers. These unexpected findings challenge the assumed universality of emotional labor's health effects and suggest cultural factors may fundamentally modify occupational stress pathways. Western-derived theoretical models may require substantial adaptation for Asian contexts where emotional regulation represents normative social behavior rather than occupational burden.