• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.553-561
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• 2004

It works as intermediation of communication of publics these days. Since 20 century, We, Koreans, have established new chaotic multi culture with traditional Korean culture and other different culture from everywhere. Meanwhile, we occupied the most powerful semi-conduct and IT indusry. Within those circumstance, people feel very confused in political, cultural and social aspect. The society armed with economy and popularization promotes material satisfaction with this potential possibility of anonymous masses. However, it results to cause loneliness, isolation, alienation, anonymity, non individuality and commodity of culture. In my work, such phenomenon reveals through human character in a city. People are exposed culture of consumption and surrounded and tempted by all those artificial and superficial atmosphere. Human are possessed and exposed to attractive products and visual images. Finally they make themselves stuck in their case of this world. People lose their own identify and shape of bodies. That is our portrait, who are living this moment. Also, this is a symbol that destroys this modern society. As a result, 1 consider such aspects through those elements above to think how to keep and rethink our identity and what to do for this world.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.445-455
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• 2021

Interest in the origin of the universe and man has historically been one of the central themes of human inquiry. The question of origin is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity, but a matter of human identity and an important matter of human destiny. The traditional model presented in relation to the origin of man is largely the Christian creationism that all things originated from the Creator, the evolutionary theory that everything happened by chance and evolved from lower to higher animals, and the agnosticism that we cannot know anything about the origin. This study deals with the theory of theistic evolution, a combination of creationism and evolutionism. It is argued that the theory of the evolutionary origin was not an immediate creation, although all things originated from God, but through creation through a long evolutionary process. The theory of theistic evolution was proposed by combining two conflicting theories of origin in a Christian way, which has several essential problems, but this study pointed out two. First, the God of the Bible is reduced to the image of being confined to the laws of nature, not the Almighty Creator. Second, by interpreting the events of the Bible symbolically, it results in rejection of historicity. Therefore, it is more rational to choose either evolutionism or creationism rather than the theory of theistic evolution.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.142-171
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• 2019

The dragon is an imaginary animal that appears in the legends and myths of the Orient and the West. While dragons have mostly been portrayed as aggressive and as bad omens in the West, in the Orient, as they symbolize the emperor or have an auspicious meaning, dragons signify a positive meaning. In addition, as the dragon symbolizes the emperor and its type has been diversified considering it as a divine object that controls water, people have tried to express it as a figure. The records related to dragons in the Goryeo dynasty appeared with diverse topics in 'History of Goryeo' and are generally contents related to founding myths, rituals for rain, and Shinii (神異), etc. The founding myth emphasizes the legality of the Goryeo dynasty through the dragon, and this influenced the formation of the dragon's descendants. In addition, the ability to control water, which is a characteristic of the dragon, was symbolized as an earth dragon related to the rainmaking ritual, i.e., wishing for rain during times of drought. Since the dragon was the symbol of the royal family, the use of the dragon by common people was strictly restricted. Furthermore, the association of a bronze dragon mirror with the royal family is hard to be excluded. The type and quantity of bronze double dragon mirrors discovered to have existed during the Goryeo dynasty is great, and the production and the distribution of bronze mirrors with double dragons seem to have been more active compared to other bronze mirrors, as bronze mirrors with double dragons produced during Goryeo and bronze mirrors originating in China were mixed. Therefore, in this article, the characteristics of diverse bronze mirrors from the 10th century to the 14th century in China were examined. It seems that the master craftsmen who produced bronze mirrors with double dragons during the Goryeo dynasty were influenced by Chinese composition patterns when making the mirrors. Because there were many cases where a bronze mirror's country of origin could not easily be determined, in order to identify the differences between bronze double dragon mirrors produced during the Goryeo dynasty and bronze mirrors produced in China, meticulous analysis was required. Thus, to ascertain that Goryeo mirrors were not imitations of bronze mirrors with double dragons originating in China but produced independently, the mirrors were examined using the bronze double dragon mirror type classification system existing in our country. Bronze mirrors with double dragons are classified into three types: Type I, which has the style of the Yao dynasty, includes the greatest proportion; however, despite there being only a small quantity for comparison, Types II and III were selected for the analysis of the bronze mirrors with double dragons made in Goryeo because they have unique composition patterns. As mentioned above, distinguishing bronze mirrors made during Goryeo from bronze mirrors made in China is challenging because Goryeo bronze mirrors were made under the influence of China. Among them, since the manufacturing place of the bronze mirrors with double dragons found at the nine-story stone pagoda in Woljeongsa Temple in Pyeongchang is questionable and the composition pattern of the bronze mirror is hard to find on bronze mirrors with double dragons made in China, the manufacturing place of those bronze mirrors were examined. These bronze mirrors with double dragons were considered as bronze mirrors with double dragons made during the Goryeo dynasty adopting the Yao dynasty style composition pattern as aspects of the composition pattern belonged to Type I, and the detailed combination of patterns is hard to find in mirrors produced in China.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.84-94
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• 2013

This study scrutinizes the titles of serial poems on Japanese Apricot, which have lucid characters on season and time changes, having been appreciated and recited by the scholars in the Choseon Dynasty era and analyses the records of Zhang zi(1153~1235), a writer in Song(宋) Dynasty in China, having presented the objects harmonizing perfectly with Japanese Apricot. The results of this study categorizes the objects of Japanese Apricot appreciation and establishes the landscape characteristics on Japanese Apricot appreciation affiliated with as follows. First, the objects of Japanese Apricot appreciation are categorized into 'form of blossoms', 'natural feature(景物)', 'place of tree planting', 'the picturesque scene(景色)' and 'behavior'. Second, the scholars regarded the single trees whose branches are grotesque as the objects of appreciation and enjoyed them. They preferred white and single petal Japanese Apricot and admired red Japanese Apricot which has Taoism images. Third, they admired pines and camelias which represent fidelity and strength and valued Japanese Apricot with cranes which remind themselves of solitary scholars. Fourth, they appreciated the images of Japanese Apricot reflected on the water, and the poetically inspiring atmosphere where the trees are planted by the window. Fifth, the moon and snow were crucial weather conditions for appreciating. cold weather and time from night to dawn were ideally suited for enjoying. Sixth, they enjoyed blossoms in various fashions like bottling(甁梅), potting(盆梅), green-housing(龕梅), searching(龕梅) and black-and-white painting(墨梅) with a view to seeing blossoms earlier than the usual flowering time. Moreover, they used paper drapes, bead curtains, mirrors and ice lamps for active appreciation. They also listened to the sound of Piri(wind) and Geomungo(string), played go and drew tea with noble and elegant beauties when they enjoyed Japanese Apricot. The scholars influenced by the neo-Confucianism, which contemplates the objects, attached the specific sentiments like memories, grieves, dreams and farewells to Japanese Apricot and appreciated them. As stated above the scholars enjoyed the landscape including the picturesque scene like climate-weather, time-season and human behaviors not to mention the physical beauty of Japanese Apricot themselves and objects in company with Japanese Apricot including animals and plants.

• Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.122-168
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• 2017

I tried to understand a folk tale "The half-boy" in terms of analytical psychology. In the story, a lady without children prayed to the Buddha. The white old man came and gave three fishes, but the cat ate half of it. So, she ate two and a half. She gave birth to two perfect sons. The third son had one arm, one leg, and one eye. They grew well. Brothers went to take the civil service examinations, and the half-boy followed. But two brothers did not like the half-boy coming along. So, brothers tied the half-boy to the rocks and trees, and he picked them up with force and gave them down to the yard of the house. And the half-boy followed his brothers again, and brothers tied him with kudzu and put him in front of the tiger. The half-boy won the tiger by betting with cutting kudzu. The half-boy stripped off the tiger's skin. The host coveted the tiger skin and they played with janggi. The half-boy won the game and was permitted to take host's daughter. The half-boy went with a string, a drum, a flea, and a bedbug. He teased host's people with these. The half-boy brought a virgin and lived well. "The Half-Boy" folktale is an old story spread throughout the country. There are similar stories in India and Africa. Unilateral figures are universally distributed archetypal images. In numerous cultures gods and spirits are being portrayed as unilateral figures. In the creation mythology, half-figure beings have immortality. In Indonesian and African folk tales, the half-born boy goes to heaven and merges with its half and becomes perfect. Some of one-sided spirits are harmful to humans but some of one-sided birds, chickens, and spirits are helpful to people. Sometimes half being is a cultural hero who steals grain from heaven or gets some advice how to use bamboo. There are stories that half body becomes a whole body afterwards. But in this folktale and most of the similar folktales, half-figure does not change and maintains half-figure to the end. And as a half-figure he does various great things and marries a virgin. The half-boy symbolizes a psychic experience born in the unconscious. The unconscious contents may seem strange and weird at first and the collective consciousness does not want to accept them. But the unconscious exerts greater power and brings vitality and creativity to consciousness. This folk tale seems to have compensated for the stubborn collective consciousness of our society, which was a Confucian class society. It also allows people to change their attitude toward disabled people and recognize strengths and creativity of the handicapped.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.77-101
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• 2018

Even in our modern era, the projection of monsters in the recent literature contains the critical imagination of human existence for the posthuman age. The meaning of the monster-abject, especially as from the perspective of feministic criticism, contains criticism of the violent and oppressive patriarch as observed in the modern times. This article focuses on the gendered imagination of the discussions of the "abject" discussed by Julia Kristeva, and the "monstrous femine" discussed by Barbara Creed. Kim Eon-Hee's poems and Han Kang's novels, which have been examined extensively for analysis, show that the practical strategy of abject that goes beyond hate and sublime, wonder and joy through the imagination and concepts of monsters. The monster-abject strategy of Kim Eon-Hee's poem can be summarized by the narrative method of mirroring and the imagination of the truncated body. Mirroring falsification, which mimics the male speaker, is a method that some feminists strategically utilize in relation to the problem of female aversion in recent years as noted in the literature. In Kim Eon-Hee's poem, "becoming a man" and "imitating a man," through the method of mirroring appear as an image of cutting to dismantle the body. In that way, the narrative strategy of the abject that draws out abominations and bizarre effects which contains a strong critique of the patriarchal dominant ideology. The monster-abject strategy of Han-Kang's novel is embodied through the being of plants and the process of vegetarian-anorexia process. The world of the adject which was oppressed in the Han-Kang's novel, returns to the senses of the body through the symbol of the body. It is noted that the fictional characters who realize the repressed desire through the pathological symptom expressed by the female, go on to body perform active transformation. The sense of a body in a novel is not only a rejection of the world of animalman-civilization, but also a radically questioning of the noted and recognized boundaries between human beings and non-human being entities. The two writer's works show that the imagination of the monster-adject is not limited to rejecting the existing gender categories, but also goes in the direction of exploring the possibilities of various associated gender actions.