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This essay examines Kim Yongt’ae’s photocollage DMZ, which consists of photo-portraits he acquired from commercial photo studios in US military camptowns in South Korea. The co-founding member of the South Korean artist group Hyŏnsilgwa parŏn (Reality and Utterance), Kim visited camptowns in 1984. There, he found hundreds of studio photo-portraits depicting Korean women and American GIs serving United States Forces Korea (USFK). While discussions on “found” photographs often center on the discourses of archive, appropriation, or vernacularity appended by the cultural specificity of their origins, this essay proposes a new framework through which Kim’s work is explored: transnational militarism and “disidentification” — a concept put forth by Jose Esteban Munoz on minoritarian performativity. Through this framework, DMZ challenges the binary reading of camptown subjects as victim and victimizer and proposes the performative formation of a new subjectivity.

A new phenyl glycoside, 2-(sophorosyl)-1-(4-hydroxyphenyl)ethanone (9), was isolated from the ethanolic extract of the aerial parts of Equisetum hyemale L., together with eight known compounds (1-8). The structures of these compounds were elucidated using a combination of spectroscopic analyses and chemical method. Of these nine compounds, 4 and 7 showed hepatoprotective effects towards tacrine-induced cytotoxicity in Hep 3B cells with EC50 values of 42.7 ± 1.5 and 132.6 ± 2.8 μM, respectively.

Portraiture is one of the most common practices of photography around the world. Different cultures have developed distinctive types of portraits, from the post-mortem photographs of the Victorian era to the funerary portraiture of East Asia. Korea's unique set of photographic portrait types revolves around the stages of life: a portrait on the hundredth day after birth and the first birthday; family portraits on the sixtieth, seventieth and eightieth birthdays; and a portrait for use at the subject's funeral. These constitute photographs as rites of passage, commemorating the importance of certain stages in life, and such commemorative portraiture has come to comprise an integral part of modern traditions in Korea. The development of photographic portraiture as a modern ritual is closely related to intellectual movements led by Korean elites under colonial rule (1910–45); it was nevertheless under the military regime (1961–92) that family and baby photographic portraiture in South Korea truly began to re...

A new beta-dihydroagarofuran sesquiterpene ester, 1beta,2beta,6alpha, 13-tetraacetoxy-9alpha-cinnamoyloxy-beta-dihydroagarofuran (1), and the known compound 1beta,6alpha,13-triacetoxy-9alpha-benzoyloxy-beta-dihydroagarofuran (2), have been isolated from the fruits of Celastrus orbiculatus Thunb. Their structures have been elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic methods. Compound 1 shows moderate activity of inhibiting LPS-induced nitric oxide production in murine macrophage RAW264.7 cells, with an IC50 of 55.4 microM.

A new anthracycline antibiotic, designated as aclacinomycin X, was isolated from the culture broth of Streptomyces galilaeus ATCC 31133, and was identified as 7-(O-rhodosaminyl-deoxyfucosyl-rednosyl)- aklavinone. Its in vitro cytotoxicity was tested against several human tumor cell lines.

A transgalactosylation reaction from p-nitrophenyl-α-D-galactopyranoside to 1-deoxynojirimycin was done using α-galactosidase [EC 3.2.1.22] from green coffee beans. The enzyme formed 6-O-α-D-galactopyranosyl-1-deoxynojirimycin as the major product.