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For the last several decades, people around the world have become increasingly interested in Korean economy and society. Along with this demand factor, the supply factor, that is, the eagerness of Korean scholars to actively interact with global academia, has encouraged Korean scholars to write more articles about the Korean economy in English. The combination of these two factors has over the last two to three decades resulted in the growth of English-language papers dealing with Korean subjects. However, the increase in English-language papers examining Korean subjects over the last two decades is largely explained by the overall growth of English-language papers in general, while the ratio of Korean-related subjects among those English-language publications has actually declined. More analyses should be made to understand this pattern. However, if we consider policy measures to improve the situation, it is reasonable first to think about how to enhance the availability or quality of data used for research on Korea. Even without allocating more money, the Korean government can attract scholars to study Korean subjects by making existing government data more available to scholars. Since the government is the largest data holder, a more forward-looking approach by the government can attract more scholars to study Korean subjects and to write more papers in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been sixty years since English-language journals in Korean Studies began to be published in Korea. During this time span, Korean academic circles and journals have undergone various changes, which resulted in the transformation of both the journals and their surrounding environment. With due consideration of these changes, this paper attempts to investigate the significance and agendas of English-language journals in Korean Studies. First, it investigates why Korean intellectuals felt the need to learn English during the modern transitional period by examining the case of Yu Gil-jun. It then examines the initial goals of English-language magazines and journals in Korea. In the early phase, these publications tended to deliver one-way statements, almost sounding like publicity pitches, but they gradually took on the facade of an arena of scholarly discussion and output. The now defunct Pictorial Korea began publication following national liberation to inform the world about Korea by using photographs accompanied by brief texts. Korea Journal, which began publication immediately following the May 16 Coup (1961) for the prospective readership of overseas Koreans as well as foreigners, has transformed itself multiple times over the years and acquired the characteristics of a specialized academic journal. Seoul Journal of Korean Studies, which began publication following the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, initially took the approach of transmitting to the world research outcomes in Korean Studies in Korea. English-language journals published in Korea are expected to play a role in the advancement of Korean scholarship. This is because they can serve as a sphere of symbiosis and debate between Korean Studies inside and outside Korea. It is particularly hoped the journals will contribute to complementing or overcoming the closedness of the disciplinary system of the Korean academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of post-colonial medicine in South Korea have understood a series of changes in the public health system during the Cold War era as an abrupt shift from a Japanese model to an American one. Challenging this perspective of alleged Americanization, this paper examines the continuity of a colonial medical legacy and its relationship with the newly established Americanstandard public health in the late 1940s and 1950s South Korea. Especially, this paper focuses on the intellectual aspect of public health that has been neglected in the historiography of public health, which to date has been limited to the administrative and institutional aspects of public health. By doing so, this paper aims to show how Japanese colonial medicine and American public health practices actively interacted with each other. Taking as case studies South Korea's doctors who studied public health in the United States with the support of the USAMGIK, this paper analyzes their academic activities on public health. By tracing the process of interaction between colonial medicine and American public health practices, this paper argues that the newly established American public health standards in the post-liberation era was a result of an entanglement between the Japanese colonial legacy and American public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collective memory of Korea, which has evolved through the shaping of the country's national culture and identity, has deepened Koreans' animosity toward Japan, and undermined reconciliation between Korea and Japan since the end of World War II. This paper analyzes how the collective memory of Japanese colonization of Korea has been constructed since World War II by examining the multiple narratives contained in Arirang, a popular Korean novel by Jo Jeong-rae, which has since the 1990s achieved canonical status on the basis of its nationalist perspective. For this purpose, this paper explores how Japanese colonialism is portrayed in Arirang, the pushback this portrayal has received from professional historians, and the socio-economic context in which the collective memory the novel promotes has been shaped and shared among Koreans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an overview of the history of queer activism in South Korea, paying special attention to the formation of yeondae (solidarity) and sosuja jeongchi (minority politics) in queer politics since the 1990s. In particular, this paper engages in the ways in which queer activism has aligned and/or conflicted with broader social movements in postauthoritarian South Korea. This paper traces the radical kernel of queerness in practicing solidarity based on anti-capitalist and feminist critiques, bridging a range of forms of social marginality in South Korea. Queer activists have contested heteronormativity in mass protests and critically intervened in the democratic nation-building process of the liberal regimes of Kim Dae-jung (1998--2003), Roh Moo-hyun (2003--2008), and Moon Jae-in (2017--present) presidencies, as well as the Candlelight Protests (2016--2017) against Park Geun-hye. In curating and portraying six historical scenes of queer protests, this paper illuminates queer activist labor to imagine a new futurity based on minority politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyze significant changes in family law and their relationship to gender equality, which has emerged as one of several factors contributing to low fertility in Korea from a socio-legal perspective. Fertility changes in Korea can be categorized into two distinct periods. The first period, spanning from 1960 to the late-1990s, saw a rapid decline in the fertility rate from approximately six children per woman to slightly below the replacement level. The second period began around the early 2000s, and is characterized by a further decline in the fertility rate to an extremely low level that continues until recent times. During the first phase of low fertility, several revisions were made to the family law, including major revisions related to hojuje, along with subsequent changes. This paper analyzes the implications of some of these family law revisions, specifically, examining provisions related to son preference and gender discrimination in inheritance and the parent-child relationship in family law and their impact on fertility. Through this analysis, this study aims to establish a connection between the revisions of family law and changes in fertility, ultimately shedding light on the complex relationship between law and society in modern Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the way in which South Korean biologists developed their conservationist minds and practices through a long tradition of academic expeditions to mountains that predate the 1960s cooperation with US conservationists. By focusing on mountain expeditions carried out by Korean alpinists and scientists from the late 1920s to early 1960s, this paper illuminates how Korean biologists developed forest and natural monument conservation practices they were able to incorporate into the governmental conservation activities while taking part in the Corean Alpine Club's postwar "academic alpinism" (akademik alpinijeum). I argue that their conservation activities, and specifically their military linkages, could be well understood as a transwar product rather than a Cold War outcome. Through this case study, I suggest that this transwar approach helps both historians of Korean science and Korean environmental historians study their research subject while avoiding the widespread analytical dichotomy of Japanese colonial legacies and Cold War ruptures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 1960s, South Korean state engineers from construction agencies promoted large dam-building projects with the notion that their expertise would allow them to carve nature for the benefit of the nation. Hidden under this audacious declaration to manipulate nature was the precarious identitymaking of hydrological engineers from academia who contributed to rationalizing dam construction. This paper shows that the uncertain identity of hydrological engineers resonated with their position in a developing South Korea between the colonial legacy and the Cold War influx of Western knowledge. While working closely with state engineers, academic engineers had the distinct goal of establishing a unique Korean research program, overcoming both colonial river management and the Western methods on which it stood. This paper argues that carving nature ultimately concealed the haphazardness of the national water resources development plan as manifested in the tensions between state and academic engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates North Korean patriotism. It seeks to establish whether a state that has overwhelmingly failed to provide basic public goods can nevertheless produce and sustain the devotion and support of some or all of the population--in other words, arouse patriotic sentiment--and if so, on what terms. The paper approaches the topic using a modified version of the International Social Survey Programme's national identity survey, specifically those questions that deal with national pride. Using survey findings and selected follow-up interviews, we examine the presence or absence of patriotic sentiment among more than 650 former residents of North Korea. The paper also takes a comparative approach, comparing North Korean patriotism findings with those from former socialist countries to determine whether any patterns exist. We find evidence that, despite enormous state failures, the North Korean state has managed to generate a sense of patriotism and accomplishment for selected components of its state and society, notably in the cultural sphere (e.g., arts and sports). Data from other former socialist states produce similar findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the ways in which feminist activism has, since 2015, gained new momentum in South Korea in terms of its scope, reach, and range of agendas. Building on existing scholarly discussions of feminist movements and gender politics, I first situate the resurgence of feminism within the broader historical and socio-political context of Korean society, including the diversification of social movements generally in post-authoritarian Korea, women's precarious status, and the rise of misogyny. I then discuss the main characteristics of feminist activism on digital media and their implications, in particular, the broad range of feminist subjects, the extension of sites for and methods of struggle, and the emergence and centering of gendered issues within digital environments. Lastly, I assess the limitations of the term "young young feminist" and the diverse politics and controversies associated with contemporary feminist activism, with a focus on the critiques of raetpem (self-identified 'radical feminists'). The paper concludes with an argument for intersectional and transnational feminism and suggestions for future research into feminist activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the permutations of ethical norms within the “good” mother- figure in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (2009) in relation to South Korea’s historical relationship with redemption. As a symptom of anxiety that stems from a particularly oppressive modern history of political subordination, civil division, and economic struggle, South Korea has exhibited a pattern of retrospection—repetitions of communal overcoming and remembering— to combat national “failures” and redeem national sovereignty. Similarly, the “good” mother’s condition of possibility is maintained by a recurrent loop of responsibility that obligates not only perpetual selflessness, but also neverending guilt. Considering the “good” mother’s entrenchment in the parameters of nationhood, the film becomes an ideal site to interrogate the formation and viability of her sacrificial and redemptive moral framework. Looking beyond defining maternal identity within the scope of the national and historical, the film offers an opportunity to investigate how, reversely, this “retrospective” identity may also work to outline, or limit, the conditions of her ethical conscience. Bringing to the fore the “good” mother’s affective dependency within guilt and the subsequent moral twists, the paper presents the possibility of breaking from the totalizing nature of her self-sacrifice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the eruption and growth of the candlelight rallies that resulted in such a dramatic but peaceful regime change in South Korea during 2016-2017 by focusing on the construction of a political reform agenda. While the rigged and dysfunctional administration led by President Park Geun-hye was undeniably the immediate cause of the massive uprising, this paper suggests that there were two underlying processes that transformed citizen reaction to the eccentric corruption scandal into a broad and fundamental critique of Korean society. Before the eruption of the popular protest, civil society has been actively problematizing the soaring inequalities and a democratic reversal taking place during the reigns of successive conservative governments. Following the ignition of the candlelight rallies, the protests turned into a political arena where diverse imaginings about to-be-restored-democracy were articulated and where addressing socioeconomic inequalities was part of the political reform agenda. Informed by a social movement approach that highlights the interactive process of meaning-construction by movement actors, this paper maintains that it is crucial to uncover the processes through which civil society and political elites articulate issues of inequality to turn them into a central public discourse and a democratic agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abdürreşid İbrahim, a leading Muslim scholar originally from Russia, embarked on his journey to Japan in 1908 to meet with his contacts from Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon Society). On his way back, he spent around ten days in the Korean Empire. İbrahim, who was convinced of the "barbarism" of the West, found quite a few examples in Korea to build upon his theory of "Eastern civility," just as he had found during his time in Japan. He met with a range of people, from porters to the Korean Empire's Interior Minister, and wrote about them in his travelogue titled Âlem-i İslam [The World of Islam]. This paper argues that İbrahim was particularly sympathetic to Koreans because he saw their position in a world of imperial hierarchies as analogous to that of Muslims in the Russian Empire. In Korea, İbrahim's anti-Westernism is coupled with his vision of a Pan-Asian world order led by Imperial Japan. Âlem-i İslam is significant because it is the only account of the Korean Empire's final years written by a Muslim intellectual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on in-depth interviews, this paper shows how study abroad men with upper-class backgrounds manage their image as enviable others, particularly in the context of their military experiences and understanding of military service. They view military service as a useful way to secure militarized masculine citizenship and launder their contaminated image as enviable others in order to live and work in South Korea. This understanding of military service as an individualized benefit deviates from the dominant construction of military service as a patriotic duty expected of all male citizens; at the same time, the meanings and values study abroad men attach to militarized masculine citizenship reveal the powerful workings of the triangular relationship between men, military service, and citizenship in Korea. The findings here complicate the commonly understood association between Korean men, military service, and citizenship, revealing the highly classed as well as gendered nature of military service and the meanings/values of militarized masculine citizenship. Furthermore, the role of American education and English skills within the military and beyond also reveals the ongoing effects of US imperialism and the American military presence in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether gender-matching school environments can foster girls' interest and motivation in science. Using the 2015 PISA data for South Korea, the findings show that single-sex schooling and female teachers have positive effects on high-performing girls' attitudes in science studies. By attending an all-girls school and being taught by female science teachers, girls who are ranked in the highest quartile of the science test become as motivated and interested in pursuing studies and careers in STEM fields as boys in the same rank. In addition, female teachers also enhance competitive attitudes of average- and low-performing girls. But single-sex schooling has no positive effect on them. These heterogeneous results propose gender-matching schooling as a useful policy instrument to recruit female talent among high-performing girls into STEM fields. Yet, this effect is not universal and therefore cannot be generalized to everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper probes the ways in which Baek Yun-shik's film persona, produced during the early to mid-2000s, reflects an encounter with the legacy of the authoritarian Park Chung-hee regime in the wake of the IMF Crisis. One noteworthy cultural phenomenon following the IMF bailout in Korea was the rise of discourse concerning Park, marked by a desire to reflect on our unnoticed embeddedness in developmentalism, even during the postauthoritarian period. By centering the intergenerational pairing of Baek's characters, all of which reference the authoritarian era, with young protagonists ignorant of the historical implications of their struggles, Baek's films simultaneously envision the state of epistemological blindness in the postauthoritarian period and our confrontation with the legacy of Park's developmentalism in the wake of the IMF crisis. It is only after cinematically reconstructing what was missed under the epochal marker of "postauthoritarian," up until the IMF crisis, that the films delve into describing the unprecedented nature of the crisis itself. Hence, I redefine the modifier of "post-IMF" to designate a modality grappling with a series of epistemological shifts provoked by the IMF crisis, and suggest that Baek's film persona has "post-IMF" traits which facilitate a collective reckoning with Park's surviving legacy, problematized retroactively during the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qiu Jun of Ming China, with the aim of "rendering the Zhuzi jiali both accessible and practicable for ordinary folks," compiled the Jiali yijie. Among the annotations of Jiali in the Ming dynasty, Jiali yijie gained the widest popularity and greatest influence, and was regarded as a new classic, on par with the Jiali itself. In the 16th century, Jiali yijie was also introduced to Joseon Korea, where it was regarded as "an important supplement to the Zhuzi jiali" by Korean scholars, attaining a high level of popularity. This paper draws on 23 versions of the Jiali yijie from the Ming dynasty and 33 from the Qing. Historically, the Jiali yijie was introduced to the Joseon dynasty from China by Kim Anguk in 1518. Through the comparison of these four Joseon print versions and their Chinese counterparts, we are led to the conclusion that it was the Yingtian prefecture's print, dated the twelfth year of the Zhengde Era, that Kim Anguk brought back to Joseon from Ming China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power of social movements depends on their autonomy to formulate agendas free from the control of powerful actors and challenge the status quo through sustained collective action. It was with this power of social movement that political challengers in South Korea were able to force authoritarian rulers to concede democracy and to expand democratic rights in the postauthoritarian period. However, the political relations between challengers and the government have shown significant change since the advent of the new millennium. At the core of this shift has been the institutionalization of co-governance, or hyeopchi, that celebrated cooperative partnership between government and civil society. An abundance of research has been done on co-governance with the intent of promoting this partnership from a public policy point of view. Critical analyses concerning how co-governance may have affected the ability of social movements to challenge existing power relations or the autonomous capacity of civil society have been conspicuous for their absence. This paper fills this lacuna by tracing the trajectory of the environmental movement with a focus on the introduction of co-governance mechanisms in the mid-2000s that significantly altered the political relationship between potential challengers and the powers that be. What emerges out of this analysis is a picture of the South Korean environmental movement that set out as an independent political movement gradually losing its autonomy and becoming part of the status quo. While co-governance may have expanded the scope of citizen participation and animated local communities, it has been inimical to the power of social movements to effect meaningful change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 21st century, conservative evangelicals in South Korea have actively engaged in contentious politics, playing a central role in organizing the right-wing social movement in civil society. At first, such politicized evangelicals, who may be dubbed as the Korean version of the Evangelical Right, conjured up the old specter of the Korean War and stood against those who, in their minds, went against the Cold War dogmata of anticommunism and pro-Americanism. Over the last two decades, however, the Korean Evangelical Right has expanded its battle line to confront other types of perceived enemies on the Culture War front, especially Islam and LGBTQ persons. By tracing the genealogy of their social movement, this paper explores the ways in which the Korean Evangelical Right finds itself in the predicament of wavering between the geopolitics of the Cold War and the global politics of the Culture War, insofar as these two wars operate on different sets of the friend-foe distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Seoul Pride Parades of 2016 and 2017 to understand how Pride organizers and participants negotiate nationalism, developmentalism, and global human rights discourses to reconstruct citizenship and queerness in Korea. In particular, I focus on how self-affirmations of LGBTQ inadvertently intersect with, collude with, and traverse international liberal politics and Korean developmentalism in LGBTQ Koreans' interactions with Euro-American embassies, antigay protesters, and the Korean government. Euro-American embassies have engaged with Korean LGBTQ movements by participating in recent celebrations of Seoul Pride. By contrast, antigay protesters have interrupted the parades by arguing that homosexuality ruins national development. For its part, the government has been reluctant to support LGBTQ rights. In this context, by relying on "proud of myself as LGBTQ" and using the embassies' support, organizers not only oppose heteronormative nationalism but also produce what I call queer developmental citizenship. Through this form of citizenship, LGBTQ Koreans seek to cultivate the self and others to catch up with and align with Euro-American citizenship models, but they are less critical of liberal politics and developmental hierarchies between Korea and Western countries. I also consider how LGBTQ Koreans can nevertheless disrupt liberal developmental hierarchies by creating social relationalities and coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of age in the elderly population on electoral politics in a rapidly aging Korean society by using the results of a survey conducted after the 21st general elections. In particular, we empirically analyze the perception of senior voters on policy salience as well as on the expansion of government spending on senior welfare programs as part of a debate on silver democracy, which forecasts a senior-dominated representative democracy as the impact of senior citizens on elections increases concomitant with their growing numbers. Our results demonstrate that voter age is not an important factor affecting policy preference, and that support for the expansion of government spending on welfare policies for the elderly does not exhibit a statistically significant correlation with age. Yet, according to a cluster analysis of senior voters, four clusters we identified could be clearly divided along the income and ideology dimensions. Finally, this paper provides five possible explanations for why age seems to have no impact on voters' reaction to the expansion of government spending on welfare programs or senior welfare policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on localism in the form of the friends and neighbors effect (FNE) over the past 70 years has been focused on Western democracies, but has largely overlooked political contexts in other regions. This article examines the prevalence of the FNE in presidential elections in the Republic of Korea to partially fill this gap. The particular significance of this contextual electoral effect is due to the specific phenomenon of Korean regionalism, largely created by politicians. The results of the study confirm the main assumptions about the importance of geographical proximity between the candidate and the electorate for the spatial distribution of candidate support. Most candidates’ electoral support levels are higher near their birthplaces. Differences in the effect’s expression are observed among urban and provincial, left-wing and all other, major and minor candidates. The gradual decrease in the influence of the effect over time is consistent with the assumption of a link between the FNE and regionalism in Korea. Regionalism, created by politicians who mobilized their regional strongholds, becomes weaker due to the increasing orientation of young voters towards institutions and structures rather than personalities. Another factor mitigating regionalism is the FNE within major party strongholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time around 1990 was an important turning point for the Korean Protestant Church. The church, which had undergone rapid growth in previous years, began declining at this time. In this period, while Korean society saw the system of growth-oriented statist mobilization cease and launched into the era of democratization and the difficult processes of overcoming remnants of the past, the Korean Protestant Church became ever more focused on growth. This paper refers to such a phenomenon as "anachronistic growth" to encompass the fact that the church came to be situated in conflict and tension with civil society. The growth crisis and civil society affect each other in a vicious cycle, which reinforces the negative relationship between the two. This paper examines this vicious cycle by looking at the trajectory of the destructive effect of the church on the notion of "social publicness," with a focus on the political empowerment of the church. The political empowerment of the church interferes with the institutionalization of a social publicness that is being newly constructed in the post-democratization era. This paper also attempts to conceptualize a notion of "social spirituality" in order to discuss the theology that goes beyond the faith antagonistic to social publicness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss the relationship between the form of knowledge and the rime consciousness that hove been reified through Changjak-gwa bipyeong, a quarterly literary magazine that has been published continuously since its first issue in 1966. Changjak-gwa bipyeoiig adopted a form of histori- cal writing that attempted to recover the colonialist perception of historyadiiancin.g the theory of internal development as its main theme. This paper calls its historical consciousness "time of a nation"—a consciousness that meaningful capitalist development or modernization must be by a nation not by a ruling political power or specific class. In the 970s, the key writers of Changjak-gwa bipyeong took a stand against the trend that sup- ported the urban- and elites-centered literature and advanced the"theory of peasant literature" (nougmin munhangnon) arid contributed to forming the framework of “the people and the intellectuaL” iiie intellectual movements led by Charigjak-gwa bipyeong in this period highlighted critics and historians with adequate historical consciousness us the most awakened citizens and, titus. emphasized the need for persistent critical writing as a vital practice for intellectuals [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the mobility regulation and discipline that persisted amid the currents of internationalization and opening during the 1980s through the case of security education films for overseas travelers--an essential component of the education program for South Koreans going abroad. With the liberalization in the policy for overseas travel, attending this educational session before departure became a prerequisite for South Koreans traveling overseas. By analyzing the content and production process of two films produced by the National Film Production Center in the early 1980s, this study argues that the securitization of imagination regarding foreign spaces, overseas travel, and new mobile subjects was implemented by the authoritarian nationstate, facing a transition from immobility to global mobility. This project of regulation and discipline, rooted in the Cold War imagination, persisted as a shadow of internationalization. The conceptual framework suggested by this study, the securitization of imagination, facilitates an understanding of a conjuncture in which Cold War social-cultural history and the history of globalization overlapped in South Korea in the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The May 1980 Gwangju Democracy Movement was a seminal event in the democratization process of South Korea. However, it was also a critical event in the development of anti-Americanism in the country. The US government recognized this and towards the end of the 1980s began to engage in public diplomacy to explain the US role in the events of May 1980 to the Korean public to dampen anti-American sentiment. These efforts culminated in the release of the "United States Government Statement on the Events in Kwangju, Republic of Korea, in May 1980" on June 19, 1989. This article reviews US motivations for producing the 1989 statement and argues misinformation provided by the Chun government to the Korean people and rising anti-Americanism were the two main factors. Next, the US public diplomacy effort to explain US actions during May 1980 is analyzed before showing that Korean reactions to these US efforts were on the whole negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a plethora of studies on the authoritarian regime, scholars have paid less attention to how an authoritarian regime not only maintains but also legitimizes its power. Contra both political economists emphasizing the regime's economic performance and social constructionists focusing on the "economy of power," this study illuminates a constitutive dimension of the authoritarian rule in which citizens are morally reformed, civil society is fundamentally reconstituted, and nation is newly imagined by investigating South Korea's Yushin regime (1972-1979) under Park Chung-hee's leadership. By examining how bansanghoe, a monthly neighborhood meeting, buttressed the Yushin regime, this study analyzes and problematizes a complex process in which the extraordinary came to define the ordinariness, further blurring the line between the two. This paper concludes by exploring the possibility of the democratic transformation of bansanghoe, from its authoritarian legacy into a Tocquevillian grassroots organization in postdemocratic Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will explain the Zhonghua community strategy and its impact on the formation of the self-identity of Joseon's political elites, and the resulting change in the Ming court's attitude toward the Joseon dynasty. The architect of the institutions of the early Joseon dynasty, Jeong Dojeon, insisted the Joseon dynasty should internalize Confucian moral values and become the model tributary in this world order. His plan was materialized by kings of the early Joseon dynasty. Among various policies, the establishment of new rituals was the key project of the Zhonghua community strategy. The political elites of the early Joseon dynasty prided themselves on representing the country of courtesy. In the mid-Ming period, the Ming court accepted Joseon's claim, and began treating it as a civilized country distinctive from other barbarian nations. Far from being a purely anachronistic policy of a distant period, this "Zhonghua community strategy" of the early Joseon dynasty can be taken as a reference point for understanding the policy-making of modern Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an attempt to rethink from a social and cultural point of view the historical and cultural importance of Anseong Catholic Church, South Korea, in the local community. Anseong Catholic Church was established in 1901 when Father Antoine Gombert (1875-1950) arrived in Anseong and officially began his missionary work. Anseong Catholic Church has played an important role in local society by working with the residents of Anseong during tumultuous periods, including the opening of ports, the Japanese occupation, and the modern periods. For more than a century, Anseong Catholic Church has served as the parish center of the Anseong and Pyeongtaek Catholic Churches while helping Catholicism become established in Anseong. This study reexamines the value and historical significance of Anseong Catholic Church, from four perspectives: religion, education, social work, and the March First Movement. Specifically, the study examines first, the value of Anseong Catholic Church in introducing Catholicism to southern Gyeonggi-do province; second, the historical value of Anseong Catholic Church in laying the foundation for modern education in Anseong; third, the value of Anseong Catholic Church as the center of social and charity work in Anseong; and fourth, the role of the Anseong Catholic Church in germinating democracy after the March First Movement during the Japanese occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated within the context of the rise of right-wing populism, this study aims to explore the enigmatic emergence of the idaenam movement and the prevailing gender polarization witnessed during the recent 19th and 20th presidential elections in South Korea. Among idaenam activists, feminism holds significant hegemonic influence, and their perception of reverse discrimination serves as a critical lens through which they interpret gender dynamics in Korean society. Additionally, the perceived structural injustices and unfulfilled promise of meritocracy, along with the fiercely competitive nature of contemporary society, compounded by the influence of neoliberalism and the overarching context of modernity, contribute to feelings of ontological insecurity among young men in their twenties. This sense of uncertainty and anxiety compels them to rally around a perceived shared objective, aligning themselves with right-wing populism, which espouses the restoration of stability by upholding certain traditional gender norms. By unraveling the complexities of these interconnected factors, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of the idaenam phenomenon and its implications for gender equality and identity politics in modern Korean society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study argues that, from the standpoint of social suffering, the perspective that sees refugees in terms of their "bare life" (Agamben) over-represents the legal-political system and treats them as apolitical subjects. This study posits that when seen not only in the legal-political but also in personal-relationalsocial dimensions, refugees can be understood as political subjects during their transnational journeys from North to South Korea. In-depth interviews with North Korean refugees who have settled in South Korea are used to support this point. Other Asian states approach North Korean refugee migrations according to their own particular social and political circumstances and the refugees describe their experiences of exploitation and social dislocation as "bearable pain" or "temporary pain" in light of the hoped-for survival and legal asylum. While helpful in adapting psychologically or emotionally to adverse circumstances, such perceptions support the continuation of inhumane relationships and unjust practices in the formal and informal socio-economic arena made up of North Korean refugees and the local subjects who interact with them. The lived experiences and storytelling of refugees, however, expose contradictions in the social structure and demonstrate they are political subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the apology strategies used by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak during the U.S. beef import negotiation upheaval in South Korea in 2008 and to investigate how these apologies were perceived by the South Korean public. The role of party identification as an audience-related variable in the perception of political apologies in the South Korean context was also examined. A content analysis of President Lee's speeches and related daily newspaper coverage was conducted to identify the main apology strategies employed by the president and conveyed to the public through the media during the crisis. Experimental work was then carried out to examine the level of acceptance of these strategies, with further research evaluating the effect of party identification on the overall results. According to the results of the experimental work, President Lee's apology strategies were generally ineffective, with the exception of the clear corrective action strategy. in addition the impact of party identification on the level of acceptance of the major apology strategies was confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the features, causes, and consequences of issues that Korean Catholicism faced in and since the 1990s. Along with a rapid, continuous increase in the size of its congregation since the 1990s, the number of parish churches, priests, and religious also have grown rapidly. Even in the social welfare sector, Korean Catholicism has experienced the sharpest quantitative expansion among Korean religions. Catholicism's pronouncements and engagement in social issues, on the other hand, have decreased. Participation of Catholic-based civil organizations in social movements has also plunged. Due to the increasing number of priests, lay believer's participation in church activities has become relatively passive, which is indicated by ebbing religious commitments. Solidarity of the congregation has weakened and the number of tepid Catholics has grown. Church vitality has diminished markedly with the continuously declining number of the young generation and the sharp surging proportion of the aged. Moreover, with growing wealth as well as social and political influences, the Catholic Church is being criticized, from inside and outside, as a "religious power." Korean Catholicism has mounted reform drives to deal with such problems, but to no avail. As a consequence, the possibility has risen for Catholicism to accommodate the demands of the middle class congregation, whose degree of commitment is low, and to incur negative societal criticism in place of positive appraisal of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the religious culture of contemporary Korea. It rejects both the causal-normative debate of a standard historical approach and the hegemonic-normative debate of a cultural approach, attempting instead to synthesize facts that are made apparent by the present state. Based on the premise that Korea's religious culture is in a multireligious state, I conceptualize the types of extant religions into central religions, which are deeply rooted in tradition, and peak religions, which exercise direct influence on contemporary society, to examine these religions' intersecting teachings on peak-oriented and center-oriented attitudes. Then, I examine how relationships with political authority are formed based on understandings of contemporariness. A religion's perception of its relations with politics can change depending on whether it considers contemporariness as a monoreligious, multireligious, or multicultural condition. Presently, however, the strata of each religion's situational perception have been significantly and chaotically convoluted. Finally, I point out that religions are showing qualities of new ethnicity. I highlight the resulting inevitable inabilities of religions to communicate and the exclusion they derive, as well as the dynamism of exclusion, upon which religions build their trade value through mega growth, extremity, and convenience in the current state of multicultural markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Korean government announced its plan to lift the ban on the circulation of Japanese popular culture in 1998, it immediately articulated its intention to support "genuinely" domestic comic books (called manhwa in Korean) and animation in Korea. This policy move demonstrated the government's ambivalence toward the influence of Japanese manga; at the same time that the government officially encouraged cross-breeding between Japanese and Korean popular cultures and audiences, they became overly protective of Korea's domestic popular culture industry. This paper offers a critical examination of the notion of national culture or national aesthetics by looking at the official policy toward manhwa in Korea. In addition, Lee Dong-Gi's and Hyun Tae-Jun's artworks prove to be important alternatives to the notion of an authentic Korean manhwa culture. Using theories of the hybridizing process by Arjun Appadurai and Nikos Papastergiadis, I also investigate Lee Dong-Gi's Atomaus, a hybrid of Japanese Astro Boy and Disney's Mickey Mouse, as well as Hyun Tae-Jun's 2007 replicas of classic Japanese animation characters. These characters and artworks show the ambiguous state between original and copy, or national and hybrid cultural products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative medicine is popular in Korea, as it is in Western societies. This paper aims to review the current state of alternative medicine, especially the growth and division of oriental medicine. In the modernization period, practitioners of oriental medicine were divided into a majority of regular oriental medical doctors (OMDs) and a minority group mainly composed of acupuncturists. OMDs have pro fessionalized their work, while acupuncturists have seen their social status fall. OMDs promoted the professionalization of their medical practices and monopolization of knowledge. In contrast, acupuncturists have taken a more popularist approach, advocating low-tech therapy and sharing knowledge among people. Recently, they have advocated a popular health movement by training lay acupuncturists and providing free services. This paper discusses the factors that cause this two-tier approach and the limits of professionalization and the popular health movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Hwang scandal, bioethics has come to occupy a significant place on the public agenda in South Korea. The South Korean state has expressed often-conflicting interests in encouraging stem cell research and the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) industry to save the country while also introducing ethical regulations in conformity with "global standards." This paper examines how the discourse of national population crisis has framed policy concerns and public debate on bioethical issues in contemporary South Korea, and investigates the changing biopolitics of South Korea through debates on the regulation of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and surrogacy. In this process, the paper takes the technologies of reproduction as its main focus of investigation. As a potent symbol of both the past and future, reproduction has become one of the most contested topics in contemporary politics, connecting individual lives and collective entities. Starting with a short summary of the Bioethics Law in South Korea, this paper will examine the debate on legal regulation of assisted reproduction and the controversial issue of surrogacy in the context of the depopulation crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines international causes of South Korean dramatic political changes and the accompanying shift in national policy priorities during the early 1960s. Based on declassified U.S. government documents and other primary materials, this paper aims to narrate the interactions between Korean domestic politics and U.S. policy. By doing so, this paper demonstrates that U.S. policy functioned as a structural cause for the change of South Korea's national policy priorities from unification to economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of South Korea's economic growth, the collapse of socialist blocs, and the rise of globalization, foreign workers and overseas Koreans are migrating to South Korea in large numbers, creating large settlements of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. As international marriages account for 12 percent of all marriages in South Korea, the myth of South Koreans' ethnic and cultural homogeneity is crumbling. In addition, the possible huge influx of North Koreans to the South could send shockwaves of unprecedented magnitude through South Korean society in the future. In recognition of the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity in South Korean society, this paper aims to address how South Korean society should prepare itself in terms of ideology, institutions, and civil consciousness in order to utilize its growing plurality as a driving force for social development. Toward this end, this paper reviews the discussions over multicultural citizenship and assesses its applicability to South Korean society. A review of the ideology, principles, institution, civil consciousness, and virtues of multicultural citizenship developed in other countries such as the United States, Canada, and France reveals huge implications for dealing with the potential problems arising from the increase of cultural and ethnic diversity in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While politics in Seoul has made great strides in democratization over the past two decades, scholars continue to deplore that local politics and local governance in South Korea remain a far cry from democracy. This paper addresses the intriguing question of "democratic lag" in South Korea. It argues that one of the main sources/causes of slow democratization at the local level lies in the underdevelopment and lack of empowerment of local civil society. The paper first introduces the concept of "democratic lag" to conceptualize asymmetric democratization in South Korea. Next, it describes and assesses various theoretical accounts explaining the absence of local democracy and highlights an underdeveloped civil society as a cause. The paper then submits several "vignettes" of the reality of local politics. After explaining why such underdevelopment of civil society has resulted, the paper concludes with a set of policy prescriptions for empowering local civil society and thereby resolving the problem of "democratic lag" in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the multilayered meanings of the Korean Workers' Party Headquarters, Cheorwon (WPHQ) as a place of memory. Originally built by North Korea in 1946, the building was partly destroyed during the Korean War, and taken over by South Korea after the 1953 ceasefire. After decades of desertion within the Civilian Control Line near the Demilitarized Zone, it was eventually registered as a cultural heritage property by South Korea. For decades, the WPHQ remains have built on the collective memory of anticommunism in South Korea and contributed to formulating a sense of national identity. From the standpoint of counter-memory, however, the site calls for a more nuanced approach. Oppressed memory can reemerge to integrate with current experiences and produce new meaning. Through this process, the site is recoded as a part of cultural memory and transmitted to future generations. Recognized in South Korea for its value as cultural heritage, the WPHQ has become an unintentional historical monument. But reminding us of loss and demise, it has also become an anti-monument. In this uncanny space, dualities such as south/north, center/periphery, prosperity/collapse, and presence/absence converge and their distinctions are blurred, while the various memories associated with the site lead us to reconsider our views on Korea's modern history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three fertility surveys were carried out in Korea in the 1960s through funding provided by the Population Council. In this study, I reveal the sociological turn in population studies in Korea that occurred over the 1960s and 1970s by focusing on sociologist Yi Hae-yeongs 1965 fertility survey and a 1972 scholarly conference hosted by the Korean Sociological Association under the title "Sociological Evaluation of Korean Family Planning Research Activities." I analyze the academic foundations of fertility surveys in the 1960s (i.e., 'coupling to American academia'), internal changes of the actors implementing the surveys in the field (i.e., 'feedback from the field'), and the discursive challenge to medical doctor-led implementation of fertility surveys initiated by tacit knowledge of survey (i.e., 'competition for institutional resources'). Thus, I review the attempt at the Koreanization of social surveys in the field of sociology and the sociological turn in population studies, and explore the reason this legacy has been forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widow's heir adoption in Joseon was largely secured by the adoption law in the Great Code of Administration. Widows, especially eldest daughters-in-law, in late Joseon were involved in legal disputes with their husbands' younger brothers or the entire descent group over adoption. On the one hand, widows relied on adoption to protect their positions in their husband's lineage against the encroachment of their brothers-in-law claiming the status of lineage heir. On the other hand, widows actively pursued their choice of an adoptee with strong social background, albeit from a distant relative, against the collective opinion of the husband's descent group. In most cases, the state ruled for the widow's adoption not only by law but also by acknowledging the widow's position as the eldest son's wife. The state believed that the widowed eldest daughters-in-law could secure the lineal succession of a descent group against the collateral line. Widows themselves went on to appropriate such a descent- line principle to their favor, actively claiming their status as a representative of the direct line of descent. Such a close relationship between widows and the lineage principle in late Joseon was something rarely seen in contemporaneous China. Widow's heir adoption may be a useful lens for observing differences in kinship practices between pre-modern Korea and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Born of the fratricidal Korean War (1950-1953), Korea's Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) endures as the oldest continuous frontline of the Cold War. It is also a sealed heritage site, replete with accumulated emotions, trauma, and tension. Given the strict restrictions to access, until recently the DMZ has remained largely imaginary to the public, yet it has been attracting growing interest. The appeal of the Paju DMZ is that it provides the only public window through which the North can be glimpsed from the South. First opened to international visitors in the 1970s through a so-called "security DMZ tour" it was from 2000 increasingly promoted to both domestic and international visitors under the new name "peace and security DMZ tour." Tracing the tour route in Paju, this study examines the formation of the Cold War heritage-scape to understand the role of border heritage in Korea today. We pay particular attention to the heritagization of the Paju DMZ from 1953 to the present. This study also assesses the degree to which the heritage-scape of the Paju DMZ contributes to the representation of peace and reconciliation that the tour aims to convey. We argue that Korea's border heritage acts as a bellwether for the broader inter-Korean relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For three decades, advertisements for Orion Choco Pie, a chocolate-covered biscuit and marshmallow snack cake, have thematized jeong ..., becoming a benchmark for this reputedly quintessential Korean sentiment. A time-nurtured affective connection that dissolves boundaries between self and other, jeong first featured in the Orion Choco Pie commercials in the late 1980s, to be repeatedly elaborated on into the 2010s. This study examines differences in portrayals of jeong in Orion Choco Pie commercials over three decades and relates shifts in those popular-cultural representations to broad changes in South Korean society. Specifically, the article contrasts the inaugural campaign of 1989--1993, which celebrated jeong as enabling wordless communication, with the 2012--2013 campaign, which called for expressing jeong in words, suggesting a reversal in cultural scripts that govern this much mystified Korean emotion. Drawing on Eva Illouz's (2007) theorizations of "emotional capitalism," my analysis links changes in the advertising depictions of appropriate jeong expression to the dominant notions of emotions, selves, and human relationality under neoliberal hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the current status of social inequality and unfairness issues in Korea to which the media devoted attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected 2,069 articles published by 49 media outlets in Korea between January 20, 2020 and November 24, 2020 that satisfied the conditions of "COVID-19 (AND) Inequality (OR) Unfair" and conducted keyword frequency and centrality analysis. We also performed semantic network analysis on 64 main keywords. Semantic network analysis was concurrently conducted with CONCOR analysis for a clear identification of the detailed issues. According to this analysis, the main issues were classified into five types, most of which were related to economic inequality and unfairness. Through this method, we identified issues related to inequality and unfairness in Korean society. We found that news reports focused on the economic sector disprove the notion that there is a relative lack of interest in new types of social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to the early part of the Joseon period (1392-1910) lecture halls and meditation halls were maintained by the monasteries of the doctrinal and meditational schools, respectively. When the samgha became consolidated into the Seon (Zen) school in the late Joseon period (1600-1910), doctrinal learning was incorporated as part of the three gates of cultivation--meditation, doctrinal studies, and chanting the name of the Buddha Amitābha--which maintained the importance of the three traditions. In the 18th century, Pure Land practices became popular so that assemblies for chanting the name of Amitābha were formed in many areas. This trend continued, and later in the 19th century, Buddha recitation halls became common at monasteries. It was not uncommon for monastics in late Joseon to study at a lecture hall after receiving their precepts and thereafter enter a meditation hall for Seon practices. In the late years of life, he or she would either spend time practicing chanting the name of the Buddha Amitābha at a secluded temple or practice with laypersons. In this way, lecture halls and meditation halls coexisted, providing the backdrop for active debates on meditation and even the nature of the mind. Such context gave way to new developments in practice and thought in Korean Buddhism of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon the analysis of nationalist narratives in the ancient Korean history chapters of eight official Korean history textbooks published in or after 2014, this study attempts to assess how Korean history textbooks meet their stated objective of "Korean history within and alongside world history" drawn from the global citizenship education point of view. This study presents an analytical inquiry into the nationalist narratives embedded in these textbooks--despite appearances to the contrary--notably in the portions dealing with ancient history. Nationalist narratives found in the treatment of ancient Korean history in these textbooks can be categorized into overstatements on the emergence of a single ethnic group, an earlier timeframe for historical events, territorial exaggerations, and misinformation about neighboring countries. It is important to bring the extended stakeholders, particularly history scholars, into the authorship of textbook-making processes to reflect up-to-date findings for objective narratives in textbooks and to take serious account of issues that transcend borders, regions, and cultures from a global and comprehensive perspective. In history education, a balanced understanding of history among learners can be realized only through global citizenship education that goes beyond nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates North Korean refugees' experiences and their implications as part of a process of reconstructing the destruction and loss caused by the Korean War. In particular, this study focuses on women who migrated from North Korea to South Korea and labored in the settlement projects. Migration between North and South in a divided political system was a path by which the aims of the two newly founded nations and the choices of individual agents interlinked and crisscrossed. The refugees' reasons for migration were complicated and involved oppression by the socialist system in the North as well as familial and personal motivations. Furthermore, many were involuntarily evacuated due to military operations. After the war, resettlement projects were carried out in South Korea to incorporate refugees into society. During this time, women from North Korea struggled to survive and, in particular, to protect their families formed after marriage. They also worked hard to earn a living in resettlement areas after the war, laboring out of a will to survive, devotion to their families, and in an effort to overcome obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration scholarship agrees that ethnic enclaves that arise from the concentrated settlement of immigrants provide opportunities for cooperation that fortify members against the host society's hostility. However, the scholarly image of cohesive enclaves often ignores the larger context that may influence the internal dynamics of the community. Drawing upon in-depth interview data from 58 Korean-Chinese immigrants in Korea, this study examines how the ethnic community experienced by coethnic immigrants is susceptible to the policies and social environment governing their presence in the host society. Our findings reveal that the ethnic enclave promotes the exchange of instrumental and expressive resources among immigrants. Yet, the Korean government's selective inclusion politics lead Korean-Chinese immigrants to duplicate the negative attitudes toward their community common among South Korean natives, resulting in the degeneration of cohesion. These findings suggest that a host society's sociopolitical practices strongly influence the interpersonal dynamics within enclaves, which are seemingly marked by unobstructed solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]