• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.32-44
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• 2016

Having set a trend for luxury fashion brand markets since the $17^{th}$ century, France has established the norms and the forms of the fashion business. In addition, it has maintained its status as a leading fashion power by discovering economic value from the intangible value of design and brand, and developing fashion into a high value-added industry. This paper aims to examine the socio-cultural factors that have exerted a positive influence on the formation of "fashion power" in France from a historical perspective. It will focus on four major external historical factors that made France the top fashion power: insights and innovation of French leaders as well as their constant concerns and efforts for the promotion of fashion, a tradition of experimental cultures and arts, open and the public-centered social environment and an atmosphere of cherishing the values of creation, and the establishment of a legitimate system that protects them.

• Journal of Ginseng Culture
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• v.1
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• pp.28-42
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• 2019

What is unknown about Leibniz (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646~1716), a great philosopher and mathematician, is that he inquired about ginseng. Why Leibniz, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, became interested in ginseng? This paper excavates Leibniz's references on ginseng in his vast amount of correspondences and traces the path of his personal life and cultural context where the question about ginseng arose. From the sixteenth century, Europe saw a notable growth of medical botany, due to the rediscovery of such Greek-texts as Materia Medica and the introduction of a variety of new plants from the New World. In the same context, ginseng, the renowned panacea of the Old World began to appear in a number of European travelogues. As an important part of mercantilistic projects, major scientific academies in Europe embarked on the researches of valuable foreign plants including ginseng. Leibniz visited such scientific academies as the Royal Society in London and $Acad{\acute{e}}mie$ royale des sciences in Paris, and envisioned to establish such scientific society in Germany. When Leibniz visited Rome, he began to form a close relationship with Jesuit missionaries. That opportunity amplified his intellectual curiosity about China and China's famous medicine, ginseng. He inquired about the properties of ginseng to Grimaldi and Bouvet who were the main figures in Jesuit China mission. This article demonstrates ginseng, the unnoticed subject in the Enlightenment, could be an important clue that interweaves the academic landscape, the interactions among the intellectuals, and the mercantilistic expansion of Europe in the late 17th century.