• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.147-170
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• 2011

This paper elucidates the characteristics of transnational adoption, estimates the possibility of beyond-borders identity of transnational adoptees, and tries to analyze Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood in its context. Though it has been regarded as one of the most humanitarian ways of helping orphans and poor children of the world, transnational adoption, a one-way flow of children from poor Asian countries to rich white countries, has been operated under the market logic between countries. Transnational adoptees, who had been abandoned and forced to be taken away from their birth mother, and later, to fulfill the desire of white parents for a perfect family, perform an ideological labor, serving to make the heterogeneous nuclear family complete. Korean transnational adoptees, forced to transcend the borders of nation, culture, and ethnicity, experience racial conflict and alienation in white adoptive family and society. Their diaspora experience of violent dislocation creates frustration and confusion in establishing their identity as a whole being. When they return to Korea to find their birth mother and their true identity, Korean adoptees, however, are faced with other obstructing issues, such as language problem, culture conflict, and maternal nationalism. Finally, Korean transnational adoptees reject Korean nationalism discourse based on blood, and try to redefine themselves as beyond-borders subjectivities with new and fluid identities. Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood, an autobiographical novel based on her experiences as a transnational adoptee, represents a Korean adopted girl's personal, cultural, and racial conflict within her white adoptive family, and questions the image of benevolent white mother and the myth of multiculturalism. The novel further represents Jane's return to Korea to find out her true identity, and shows Jane's disappointment and alienation in her birth country due to her ignorance of language and culture. Returning to USA again, and trying to be reconciled with her American mother, Jane shows the promise of accepting her new identity capable of transcending the borders, and thus, the possibility of enlarging the category of belonging.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.163-174
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• 2009

The first Chinese film maker from Korean ethnicity, Jang Ryul is also the first Korean director from Chinese background. As a diaspora himself, he crosses over two countries, trying to look through diaspora viewpoint at diaspora phenomena widely scattered in Northeast Asia. This paper is written in an effort to closely consider his story and style through 3 films, , , and . The main character in is a Korean Chinese woman, Choi Sun Hee, who sells Kimchi in outskirt of a city. is the story about the relationship between Hangai, a Mongolian man who plants trees in deserted prairie and North Korean mother and son in defection from North Korea. treats a group of characters floating around in Iri, the city that was vanished by the explosion 30 years ago. The first thing of the style of Jang Ryul building the diaspora viewpoint is time, crossing the floating space. The second one is the inversion of on-screen space and off-screen space or center and periphery. The third one is the absence of language. Given the fact that discourses about the identity of East Asia flourish these days, his movies, as the fruit of consistent attempt to search for East Asian identity within the filmmaking process, deserve more attentions.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.37
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• pp.95-125
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• 2018

While myriads of small and large festivals are being organized in many regions across the country after the successful establishment of local governments around 2000, the undeniable fact is that the identity and purpose of such events are not properly reflected in their programs. This paper carefully examines the 2017 Jeonju International Sori Festival as an exemplary case of a local performing art festival to contribute to the improvement of performing art festivals in the future. In particular, it focuses on a musical program with respect to the composition, content, meaning, and direction that can effectively reveal the identity and intention of a festival. The most significant accomplishment of the 2017 Jeonju International Sori Festival is that it presented a local cultural resource, Pansori, in various ways not only to manifest its identity but also to satisfy both the enthusiasts of such musical genre and the general audience. The achievements of the 2017 Jeonju International Sori Festival through the performing art program can be summarized as follows: first, it created a new image of traditional music; second, it realized the desire to rise above regional and generational demarcations through cultural communication; third, it provided a stage for budding and local artists; fourth, it served as a vehicle for summoning the public; and last, it was conducive to expanding the spectrum of potential audience. This paper has limitation in covering the subject of the improvement of performing art festivals because it analyzed only one event. In follow-up studies, a more objective discussion should be performed by further analyzing the 2017 Jeonju International Sori Festival in comparison with various other performing art festivals.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.191-219
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• 2020

This paper aims to identify the key features of the novel writing of Korean American immigrants and their meaning as one aspect of movement and contact occuring in the early modern period. The late return of the novels written by Nakcheong THUN in the 1930s is significant in that it restored ideas on the diversity of early modern mobility and confronted the history and culture of immigrants who were excluded from records and memories. Not only are these novels a product of the phenomenon of immigration, but they have also created a crack in the dichotomous perceptions of domination and subordination, center and periphery by envisioning it as a space that creates new history, culture, institutions and values. These novels treat the free love of intellectual, emotional, and ethical figures as a central event, demystifying Western free love, and at the same time, a society divided by various identities including class, race, and gender. The novels by Nakchung THUN visualize the active exchange between the immigrant and the indigenous community through the character of Jack, and imagines the heterotopia as a place where not for the immigrants' utopia, but for everyone's coexists. These novels have declared a kind of memory war on the subordinate and marginalized contact zones. The contact zones of the immigration area had been a place for experiencing extreme conflicts and discords, and at the same time, it has served as a place where various groups and communities are connected. The contact zones were common areas of solidarity and creation before being subject to division and occupation. The contact zones are far from the border or borderlands, so it is not a fixed and immutable deadlock. As a world free from central domination the contact zones have been a space that preoccupied history and culture through various encounters, and have been a community.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.52
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• pp.157-183
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• 2017

Korean Modernization is the period which Western Culture is settled as common sense, but modern introsepction of Confucianism acted as a sign to ask what is the basis of Korean modern subject. Park Eun-Sik transformed the basis of our thinking from Confucianism to the philosophy of Wang Yangming in the crash time of the Confucianism metaphysical structure. Park Eun-sik organized Definition of Real Me(眞我論) with the idealogical basis, that is, benevolence of the whole creation of the universe(萬物一體之仁) and the origin of the mind(良知) of Wang Yangming. He tried to realize the Basis of Confuciasism in the modern era with the origin of the mind(良知). And also he tried to figure out the origin of Confucianism by The public(民衆). He suggested the Public(民衆) as the unity to realize the Confucianism as equalitarianism. Park Eun-Sik declared the thought of great unity and peace of Korea(大同平和思想) with the idea of Real Me(眞我論) and benevolence of the whole creation of the universe(萬物一體之仁). Great unity and peace of Korea(大同平和思想) is based with the origin of the mind(良知) of Wang Yangming and is realized to be fulfilled as the thought of great unity and peace of Korea(大同平和思想).

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.267-302
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• 2013

In recent years, partnership has become a central strategy for welfare provision worldwide. Particularly, civil society organisations have obtained considerable attention as the most accountable and democratic partner for public welfare delivery. Yet the mainstreaming of civil society into welfare policies challenges the conventional nature of civil society as an independent sector, and brings into critical question, how the political position of the civil society sector could be redefined in the new era of multi-sectoral partnership. The purpose of this study is to explore the current debates of state-civil society partnership and to propose three theoretical viewpoints (i.e. the mainstream, critical and alternative perspectives) regarding the role of the civil society sector in partnership. In doing so, this article introduces the key literature and scholars in partnership debates and provides analytical frameworks that researchers can use in examining state-civil society partnership cases.