Korean Art from the view of foreigners in Korea from the period of independence to 1950s (광복 후부터 1950년대까지 한국에서 활동한 외국인이 본 한국미술)
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- The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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- no.4
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- pp.123-144
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- 2006
Foreigners who arrived in Korea after the age of enlightenment were Japanese, Chinese and 'Westerners' who were Europeans and Americans. The westerners were diplomats who visited Korea for colonization or for increasing their economical profits by trading after the spread of imperialism, and tourists curious of back countries, artists, explores and missionaries to perform their roles for their religious beliefs. They contacted with Korean cultural and educational people as missionaries and instructors during Japanese colonial period. In 1945, the allied forces occupied Korea under the name of takeover of Japanese colony after Japan's surrender and the relation between foreigners and Korean cultured men enter upon a new phase. For 3 years, American soldiers enforced lots of systems in Korea and many pro-American people were educated. This relationship lasted even after the establishment of the government of Korean Republic and especially, diplomats called as pro-Korean group came again after Korean War. Among them, there were lots of foreigners interested in cultures and arts. In particular, government officials under American Forces who were influential on political circles or diplomats widened their insights toward Korean cultural assets and collected them a lot. Those who were in Korea from the period of independence to 1950s wrote their impressions about Korean cultural assets on newspapers or journals after visiting contemporary Korean exhibitions. Among them, A. J. McTaggart, Richard Hertz and the Hendersons were dominant. They thought the artists had great interests in compromising and uniting the Orient and the West based on their knowledge of Korean cultural assets and they advised. However, it was different from Korean artist's point of view that the foreigners thought Korean art adhered oriental features and contained western contents. From foreigners' point of view, it is hard to understand the attitude Korean artists chose to keep their self-respect through experiencing the Korean war. It is difficult to distinguish their thought about Korean art based on their exotic taste from the Korean artists' local and peninsular features under Japanese imperialism. We can see their thought about Korean art and their viewpoint toward the third world, after staying in Korea for a short period and being a member of the first world. The basic thing was that they could see the potentialities through the worldwide, beautiful Korean cultural assets and they thought it was important to start with traditions. It is an evidence showing Korean artists' pride in regard to the art culture through experiencing the infringement of their country. By writing about illuminating Korean art from the third party's view, foreigners represented their thoughts through it that their economical, military superiority goes with their cultural superiority. The Korean artist's thought of emphasizing Korean history and traditions, reexamining and using it as an original creation may have been inspired by westerners' writings. 'The establishment of national art' that Korean artists gave emphasis then, didn't only affect one of the reactions toward external impact, 'the adhesion of tradition'. In the process of introducing Korean contemporary art and national treasure in America, different view caused by role differences-foreigner as selector and Korean as assistant-showed the fact evidently that the standard of beauty differed between them. By emphasizing that the basis to classify Korean cultural assets is different from the neighborhood China and Japan, they tried to reflect their understanding that the feature of Korean art is on speciality other than universality. And this make us understand that even when Korean artists profess modernism, they stress that the roots are on Korean and oriental tradition. It was obviously a different thought from foreigners' view on Korean art that Korean artists' conception of modernism and traditional roots are inherent in Korean history. In 1950s, after the independence, Korea had different ideas from foreigners that abstract was to be learned from the west. Korea was enduring tough times with their artists' self-respect which made them think that they can learn the method, but the spirit of abstract is in the orient.
As an official journal of the Asian-Australasian Association of Animal Production Societies (AAAP), the Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences (AJAS) was born in February 1987 and the first issue (Volume 1, Number 1) was published in March 1988 under the Editorship of Professor In K. Han (Korea). By the end of 2001, a total of 84 issues in 14 volumes and 1,761 papers in 11,462 pages had been published. In addition to these 14 volumes, a special issue entitled "Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition" (April, 2000) and 3 supplements entitled "Proceedings of the 9th AAAP Animal Science Congress" (July, 2000) were also published. Publication frequency has steadily increased from 4 issues in 1988, to 6 issues in 1997 and to 12 issues in 2000. The total number of pages per volume and the number of original or review papers published also increased. Some significant milestones in the history of the AJAS include that (1) it became a Science Citation Index (SCI) journal in 1997, (2) the impact factor of the journal improved from 0.257 in 1999 to 0.446 in 2000, (3) it became a monthly journal (12 issues per volume) in 2000, (4) it adopted an English editing system in 1999, and (5) it has been covered in "Current Contents/Agriculture, Biology and Environmental Science since 2000. The AJAS is subscribed by 842 individuals or institutions. Annual subscription fees of US$ 50 (Category B) or US$ 70 (Category A) for individuals and US$ 70 (Category B) or US$ 120 (Category A) for institutions are much less than the actual production costs of US$ 130. A list of the 1,761 papers published in AJAS, listed according to subject area, may be found in the AJAS homepage (http://www.ajas.snu.ac.kr) and a very well prepared "Editorial Policy with Guide for Authors" is available in the Appendix of this paper. With regard to the submission status of manuscripts from AAAP member countries, India (235), Korea (235) and Japan (198) have submitted the most manuscripts. On the other hand, Mongolia, Nepal, and Papua New Guinea have never submitted any articles. The average time required from submission of a manuscript to printing in the AJAS has been reduced from 11 months in 1997-2000 to 7.8 months in 2001. The average rejection rate of manuscripts was 35.3%, a percentage slightly higher than most leading animal science journals. The total number of scientific papers published in the AJAS by AAAP member countries during a 14-year period (1988-2001) was 1,333 papers (75.7%) and that by non- AAAP member countries was 428 papers (24.3%). Japanese animal scientists have published the largest number of papers (397), followed by Korea (275), India (160), Bangladesh (111), Pakistan (85), Australia (71), Malaysia (59), China (53), Thailand (53), and Indonesia (34). It is regrettable that the Philippines (15), Vietnam (10), New Zealand (8), Nepal (2), Mongolia (0) and Papua New Guinea (0) have not actively participated in publishing papers in the AJAS. It is also interesting to note that the top 5 countries (Bangladesh, India, Japan, Korea and Pakistan) have published 1,028 papers in total indicating 77% of the total papers being published by AAAP animal scientists from Vol. 1 to 14 of the AJAS. The largest number of papers were published in the ruminant nutrition section (591 papers-44.3%), followed by the non-ruminant nutrition section (251 papers-18.8%), the animal reproduction section (153 papers-11.5%) and the animal breeding section (115 papers-8.6%). The largest portion of AJAS manuscripts was reviewed by Korean editors (44.3%), followed by Japanese editors (18.1%), Australian editors (6.0%) and Chinese editors (5.6%). Editors from the rest of the AAAP member countries have reviewed slightly less than 5% of the total AJAS manuscripts. It was regrettably noticed that editorial members representing Nepal (66.7%), Mongolia (50.0%), India (35.7%), Pakistan (25.0%), Papua New Guinea (25.0%), Malaysia (22.8%) and New Zealand (21.5%) have failed to return many of the manuscripts requested to be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief. Financial records show that Korea has contributed the largest portion of production costs (68.5%), followed by Japan (17.3%), China (8.3%), and Australia (3.5%). It was found that 6 AAAP member countries have contributed less than 1% of the total production costs (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Thailand), and another 6 AAAP member countries (Mongolia, Nepal and Pakistan, Philippine and Vietnam) have never provided any financial contribution in the form of subscriptions, page charges or reprints. It should be pointed out that most AAAP member countries have published more papers than their financial input with the exception of Korea and China. For example, Japan has published 29.8% of the total papers published in AJAS by AAAP member countries. However, Japan has contributed only 17.3% of total income. Similar trends could also be found in the case of Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. A total of 12 Asian young animal scientists (under 40 years of age) have been awarded the AJAS-Purina Outstanding Research Award which was initiated in 1990 with a donation of US$ 2,000-3,000 by Mr. K. Y. Kim, President of Agribrands Purina Korea Inc. In order to improve the impact factor (citation frequency) and the financial structure of the AJAS, (1) submission of more manuscripts of good quality should be encouraged, (2) subscription rate of all AAAP member countries, especially Category B member countries should be dramatically increased, (3) a page charge policy and reprint ordering system should be applied to all AAAP member countries, and (4) all AAAP countries, especially Category A member countries should share more of the financial burden (advertisement revenue or support from public or private sector).