• Hospice
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• s.34
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• pp.10-12
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• 2005

• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.71
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• pp.71-98
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• 2018

This study is aimed to figure out the way Yoon Hee-sun perceived the real situations of the society under the Japanese ruling and responded to overcome difficulties in the process of anti-Japanese independence movement. Yoon Hee-sun played an important role as a female activist of the righteous army movement in Kangweon-do and Manchuria. She was a daughter-in-law of Yu Hong-seok, wife of Yu Jae-won, and mother of Yu Don-sang. Three generations of her family had taken the lead in anti-Japanese independence movement. The Yus belonged to a school of 'Hwaseo' and devoted their lives to the independent movement based on the thought of 'wijung chuksa sasang', which means 'defending orthodoxy and rejecting heterodoxy'. They desired to go back to the past and recover as it was rather than building a new society. Therefore, their fights against Japan's invasion were not for establishing a modern nation-state but for recovering the royal authority of the existing order. Both her maiden home and her in-laws belonged to a school of 'Hwaseo' and Yoon Hee-sun couldn't go out of the boundary of her family background. Also, the motivation of her participation in the righteous army movement was based on the confucian values such as loyalty to the king, filial piety and fidelity. In particular, she possessed a high level of self-awareness not only as a wife but also as a woman. On the basis of this, she faced up to reality. For the more effective way of revolt against Japan's invasion, she determined to change the perception of women identified only as a wife of somebody. She thought her duty was to enlighten women through 'education'. As a result, manifestoes and songs supporting the righteous army movement were used as a powerful method.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.1
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• pp.23-48
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• 2003

Art theorists support art productions by, introducing them to the public, explaining their meanings, and playing a crucial part in the development of art. These tasks seem like their opus. Because the principles of art production and the artistic languages are quite different from the ordinaries, we need 'interpreters' who can mediate us and the artists. Art works need interpretation. And the interpretation includes not only the characteristics of the given art work, but the customs, history, and the unique qualities of the race that produced the art work. The former director of the Korean National Museum, Choi Soon-woo wrote on the characteristics of Korean art as those that stem from the poised, arbitrary, and non-elaborate state of mind. The statement of the former Director of the National Museum has its weight far greater than just a personal opinion. In fact, we encounter the same resonance of this statement over and over reproduced in the mass media. The problem lies on that it deals with not only a single art work, but the entire Korean art. And going further, this kind of remarks are already infused into every sector of our thought on art appreciation. In this paper, I argue for a re-reading of the characteristics of Korean beauty based on two reasons. First, the characteristic of art work is contemporary, thus we cannot define the characteristics of entire Korean art in a few words without the context of the period of its making. Second, Director Choi defined the characteristics that I pointed out above as 'natural' and 'nature-friendly.' Nature or being natural is not an usual word that defines the characteristics of art work, which stands for the opposite side of the nature in the binary opposition of nature/culture. To delve into these misunderstandings of Korean beauty in the popular notions of Korean art, I suggest the re-reading of three major articles on Korean art: Ryoo Jong-yeol's "Korean race and its art," Ko You-seup's reiteration of Ryoo's thesis called "Discourses in Korean Art History and Aesthetics," and Yoon Hee-soon's antithesis of Ryoo Jong-yeol titiled "Studies on Korean Art History."