• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.40
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• pp.303-336
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• 2022

'Otherness' is a major philosophical concept in modern Western thought. It has been a force through which the concept of a subject's rights emerged. This paper focuses on Emmanuel Levinas' discussion of 'otherness.' Levinas emphasizes our ethical responsibility for others, which is meaningful in that it can be applied as a paradigm of communication for use in modern society. In the context of modern times and multicultural societies, it is important to recognize the diversity of others and to promote coexistence. Coexistence at this time should be 'unifying' rather than subject-centered. This paper attempts to understand this narrative. An epic is a cognitive process that constitutes the fundamental desires and experiences of humans. Humans try to project and understand themselves through narratives. The possibility of coexistence with others can be examined by analyzing otherness as found within those narratives. Therefore, this paper suggests the possibility and direction of coexistence by analyzing the storytelling that establishes relationships by shaping characters in Guillermo del Toro's film, Shape of Water.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.73-81
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• 2018

In this paper, East Asian thoughts in Choi In-ho's novels have been studied based on Emmanuel Levinas' philosophical theories. He is a philosopher who dealt with the matter of subject formed through the encounter the others. The author of this paper quoted his ethics of responsibility, viewing that East-Asian thoughts put stress on the relationship with the others. The conclusions are like these; first, in the novel, Sang Do, there is a true relationship between the subject and the others thinking in the side of the other. Human relationship is like Sangsunyaksoo, which means when subject goes low, there appears a place the other can stay in. Second, in the novel Yoorim the essence of Neo-Confucianism shows up through Kyung thought, in which subject serves on the other in respect. That's like what Levinas said, "responsibility to others". Third, in the novel The Road without Road there appears Jinsokppuli, the central value of Korean Buddhists' Zen thoughts, meaning that you are not differentiated from me. In the times when the nation had been lost, Kyung Ho, who answered the call of people was a man who found what Levinas said, "the other who stays in me". As a conclusion the thoughts such as Sangsunyaksoo, Kyung, and Muae which show up in Choi In-ho's novels are connected with Levinas' ethics of responsibility and well shown as good examples of East Asian ethics.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.329-335
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• 2003

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to inquiry a philosophical foundation for the nursing ethics according to the Levinas' ethics which had emphasis on face to face interpersonal relationship and responsibility for the vulnerable other. Method: First of all, for the foundation of nursing ethics, a understanding of human vulnerability was a starting point; the nurse's bodily sensibility was regarded as a basis for the possibility of the ethical interpersonal relationship. Then, based on Levinas's ethics, it was explained how the moral responsibility for the calling of the suffering other could occur in nursing situation. Result: Nursing implied the altruistic ethical dimension on the subject of the responsibility for the vulnerable other. A nurse as ethical subject in her sensitive passivity is affected by the suffering other and exposed to the other. A nurse herself/himself has to response to the ethical demand of suffering other and to take responsibility for it. After all, based on the Levinas's ethics, the ethical interpersonal relationship could be characterized as the face to face relation, and responsibility for the suffering other. Conclusion: In view of that, his ethical approach could be a proper theory for the explanation of the face to face relationship and altruistic feather of the nursing ethics based human bodily sensibility.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.117-144
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• 2020

The film Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018) is one of the most noted Korean films in recent years as a work that unfolds an elaborate narrative in a delicate visualization. This film is a multi-vocal text in which different types of characters appear and scattered objective facts and ambiguous subjective desires are intertwined, so it is a text that has room for diverse interpretations. This article attempts to read Burning as an ethical discourse centered on the protagonist Jong-su, noting that the film raises universal and significant ethical issues that transcend the specific social and historical conditions of a contemporary Korean youth. I would like to examine the situation in which Jong-su is facing and his reaction to it, above all, from the perspective of Jong-su's ethical awakening and leap forward. Jong-su, a young South Korean non-regular man living in the present, encounters and connects with Hae-mi and Ben and attempts to understand the mysteries of the world. His trajectory, which the film shows closely, inevitably intersects the social and historical dimension of confusion and frustration of a young man graduated from the Department of Creative Writing, the reality of family dissolution and the individual psychological dimension of the sudden disappearance of his lover Hae-mi. Burning is a magistrate film that depicts Jong-su as an ethical subject oriented toward 'communal togetherness' while confronting the world and exploring its mysteries despite all his unfavorable conditions, such as his social position of the precariat youth and the epistemological uncertainty of reality perception. It is read as a story of his painful growth, in which Jong-su is becoming a 'writer', who once was a helpless non-regular delivery worker.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.138-148
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• 2021

In this paper, the basic narrative of The Sweet Home is the story that the residents of the apartment fight and survive the monsters in the isolated circumstances from the outside. This paper analysed the narrative and revealed the characteristics of the NETFLIX drama, The Sweet Home, and dealt with the ethics of contagion, core issue of the drama. Firstly, in the drama Sweet Home, the boundary between the men and the monsters collapses from the contagion. The drama shows the aspects of the apocalyptical world through the optical images, and reveals the main contagion cause is the desire and fury of the human to dominate the others. In the drama, we can see the duality that the characters sometimes stand in solidarity with, and often abuse the others. This story reflects the times after 2000s that the boundary between the man and the monster eclipses. Secondly, the drama shows that the ethics of the others popping up after the contagion is violent and thus can go to the totalitarianism. When the residents are shot by the troopers of the nation, the governmental authority shows its brutality. In this situation, the residents recognize their past behaviors and embrace the others. However, in the point that the characters' selfless behaviors could cover up the complaints and the fury of young generations after 2000s, The Sweet Home is a problematic drama.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.43-53
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to derive ethical life skills in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic from the 'care of self' that Foucault highlighted in . Care of self extends to the relationship one has with oneself and one with others. care of self is a practical ethic that realigns relationships with others and changes society through self-transformation. This study tried to derive specific practices for a life of care of self that individuals can realize against another rule of neoliberalism. Its specific practice style is keeping one's distance from dominant thoughts, forming oneself through practice and writing of subjective thinking, practicing knowing in everyday life, and practicing 'looking down'. These modes of self-care include the other and the world into consciousness in self-examination and transformation. Therefore, through care of self, individuals in the pandemic era can be reborn as members of society who change their lives while building a self-centered life that is faithful to themselves.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.33
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• pp.147-177
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• 2019

This article attempts to examine the fundamental perceptions and attitudes of human beings towards others utilizing the concept of 'precariat,' a new word recently created to designate people affected by the inequality and instability brought about by neoliberal globalization. Especially, the precariats within South Korean society noted in this article will be North Korean migrants. When leaving North Korea, they have entered into South Korean society with hurting bodies and minds as they made their way through China or third party countries. After arriving in South Korea, they face difficulties such as inadequate jobs and low-level welfare benefits. Also, considering the social discrimination, exclusion, and indifference towards North Korean migrants which are commonplace, they come to live their lives as precariats. Given their situation, I would like to seek wisdom for North Korean migrants to apply as they escape from insecure lives, and perhaps Sangsaeng (mutual beneficence) would allow them to do that within South Korean society. In this light, I think that the concept of hospitality and Haewon Sangsaeng (the resolution of grievances for mutual beneficence), a code of practical ethics within the Daesoon Thought, as a basis for discussion with other philosophies that are practical in enabling North Korean migrants and South Korean citizens to coexist within modern day South Korean society. This can be achieved because 'Haewon (grievance-resolution)' lowers the boundary between self and others through sharing, and consequently, daily mutual interactions can unfold as 'Sangsaeng', which stands as a new ethical and practical system of values available to all modern individuals. In fact, contrary to the religious implications of Daesoon Thought, the philosophical and existential significance of Daesoon Thought has not received much attention. However, if we pay attention to the question of why human subjects should be hospitable to others, we can grasp how Daesoon Thought presents values that are existential in nature and also consider the specific context that accompanies the religious aspects of this system of thought.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.239-254
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of ethical geography education, based on the 'relational turn' of understanding of human/non-humans and place in the context of the student's daily consumption. To do this, first and foremost, due to the de-localization of product networks that students consume, it has been discussed the situation that the ethics of responsibility and care is reduced. Then, this paper suggests an understanding of place and human/non-humans in a relational view, as a basis for the student's ability to look at matters of consumption and ethics through the viewpoint of relational ethics of responsibility and care. Finally, this research examined relation of commodity consumption, relational geographies and ethics of responsibility and care through 'mobile phone connection'. It is argued in the paper that the role of ethical geography education lies also in allowing students to feel connected to various humans/non-humans as a absent presence in his own life and to acquire cognitive and practical skills to provide more responsibility and care for their socio-ecological environment, thus making a better world.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.29
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• pp.179-202
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• 2010

In addition to the emphasis on filial piety ethics in everyday life, filial piety obtained a further significance in Confucianism which had the strong sense of ancestor worship. This paper focuses on filial piety as a mechanism of continuity within Confucianism and points out that it owed its development to its connection to agricultural culture. The sedentary life with less mobility forged a relative intimacy among people and filial piety was the actual expression of that kind of intimate affection. Yet, filial piety in Confucianism created a unique culture in terms that it not only stipulated material and emotional support for parents but also expected one's piety to the further ancestors through a memorial service and made its connection to the infinite posterity through sons. From the perspective of Confucianism that established filial piety at the turning point from life to death, the self existing in present was not an isolated self anymore. Yet, one can see another characteristic of Confucianism from that filial piety, based on blood bonds, could move beyond paternalism to broaden itself. It could be expanded to the care for strangers. The aged experience and wisdom through agricultural life begot the insight that the nature made its infinite connections with everything through circulation. As a stone thrown in a pond would enlarge its boundary by drawing larger and larger concentric circles, this thought enabled people to enlarge their affection to their parents to universal humanity. In this enlarged network, though it was natural to make distinctions between the closer and the farther, Confucianism sought to overcome it by establishing oneself upright. Confucianism emphasized the moral cultivation with its filial piety concept that contained the diachronic thought penetrating life and death and the broadened perspective relating everything around. In Confucianism, filial piety provided an important medium in forming a moral subject that penetrated life and death and related self and others. Inherent in it is the Confucius thought of continuity that searched for a paragon of a moral human being regardless of time and space.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.32
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• pp.277-308
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to show that there are textual similarities between philosophy of Zhuangzi(莊子) and what Jacques Derrida' concepts such as 'differance', 'trace', and 'play', etc. Through our comparative study, we have established a philosophical affinity between Taoist thinking of Zhuangzi and Derridian deconstructive thinking. Zhuangzi and Derrida deconstruct all kinds of traditional and metaphysical thoughts. Zhuangzi's saying of "There is Tao(道) for Thievery(盜)". I call this philosophical tendency 'the logic of cohabitation and coexistence' of the Taoist philosophy. Derrida and Zhuangzi suggest that the logic of cohabitation and coexistence recognizes and affirms differences between opposites. In these thoughts of double affirmation, there is no violence of dichotomous thinking. In other words, their ways of thinking challenge the value system that suggests a single truth, and propose that all human values necessarily carry half-values. They give us to create an enjoyable play-space for human beings in this world. Zhuangzi's suggestions for moral theory provide us with a chance for making question as what is the better life with the others, with a fresh and new perspectives to understand differently the human beings along the category of universe in the 21st century.