• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.117-126
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• 2019

Historically, the United Nations supported the establishment of the government of the Republic of Korea after liberation and played a decisive role in defending liberal democracy and peace by sending peacekeepers during the Korean War. With the political and military support of the United Nations, the Republic of Korea was able to grow into the world's 10th largest economy today, and now it is time to fulfill its responsibilities and roles to contribute to peace and prosperity in the international community as a middle power. The international peace operations of the United Nations are comprehensive concepts encompassing conflict prevention, peacemaking, peace enforcement, peacekeeping, and peace building, and are implemented in accordance with the Security Council resolutions based on the UN Charter. In order to effectively respond to changes in the international security environment and conflict factors after the post-Cold War, the UN promoted a paradigm shift in international peace operations through the 2000 Brahim Report and the 2015 High-Level Panel Report on UN Peace Activities. Therefore, this study aims to assess the Korean military's international peace operations at a limited level, such as reconstruction assistance and humanitarian assistance, and to present development measures for more active participation as a middle power in the future. To this end, we reviewed the history and specificities of conflict, the conflicting factors after the post-Cold War, and the new paradigm of UN peace operations, focusing on the African region where a number of UN peacekeeping missions are stationed. And it also suggested ways to develop international peace operations that the Korean military should pursue in the future.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.131-172
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• 2018

It is noted that nowadays, the bride wealth custom takes an extremely distorted form in African society. Such a phenomenon is a result that the male-dominant culture, Western religions, and capitalist economic system have been negatively combined into dynamic factors seen as bride wealth. This means that the concept of bride wealth has been incessantly reconstructed in the middle of clash and conflict of tradition and modernity. There is also little doubt that the practice is inextricably tangled with the common and current ways of livelihood, early marriage, polygyny, kinship/family structure, poverty, and migration labor. Bride wealth has become an increasingly commercialized element under a capitalist economic system. Accordingly, its traditional symbolism is seen to be subsequently weakening, whereas a tendency towards the reification of women is strengthening more in modern society that embraces modern customs bent on the protection of women's human rights. Its commercialization has produced a result, which instigates the noted violations of women's basic human rights, gender inequality, and promotion of domestic violence. The ways that people perceive bride wealth vary according to their own sex, generation, stratification, and ethnic background. Those people who negatively recognize bride wealth will increase with the deepening of its commercialization due to the influence of capitalism. Its color and effect will deepen and depend on how its agents correspond to socioeconomic changes. They will constantly reinterpret and reconstruct it within their own environments, but the basic human rights efforts are constantly under review by concerned individuals seeking to promote equality for women as a global effort.