• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.123-154
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• 2014

In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Ryukyu kingdom had been invaded and controlled by Japan, some official texts about 'history' were documented. In that texts, there are some myths about the kings-Syunten(舜天), Eiso(英祖), Satto(察度), Syouhasi(尙巴志), Syouen(尙圓)-who founded dynasties of Ryukyu kingdom. This study attempts to delineate the features and meaning of those founder myths as a polotial discourse for kingship. The results of this study are as follows. 1. The founder myths are discourses to describe the genealogy of the Ryukyu kingdom as the result of Mandate of Heaven(T'ien Ming, 天命). 2. In ancient okinawa, the sun was a symbol of ruler. The king of Ryukyu kingdom was thought as 'son of the sun', 'Tedako(てだこ, 太陽子) in the time of Syou dynasty(尙王朝). But in the founder myths, the only one Tedako is Eiso. 3. In the myths, the 'historical' founders are described as the king for agriculture. They were said to make the farming instruments with iron and rule the spring water for farming. The iron and water for fariming was thought to represent the power of king and the kingship. 4. The writers of myths aimed to be separated from the mythical kingship of past Ryukyu(古琉球). So, they threw the idea of Tedako(=mythical kingship) into the prison of mythical ages by rewriting myth of King Eiso. Instead of it, they built up the new image of agriculture-king who rules and controlls the iron and water for good farming. The meaing of this change, from 'shiny sun' to 'cultural king', is that the abstract and general power of kingship was turned into a concrete and restricted power of kingship. On the bases of it, there was the confucian political ideas from China, T'ien Ming thought(天命論). Under the influence of not only China but also Japan, the writers of myths attempt to find a new way for their kingdom by reconstructing kingship with ruminating over the kingship of past. The myth of founders in the 17th and 18th Centuries shows the aspects of kingship of Ryukyu kingdom and tells us that those myths are the political discourses identifying kingship and Ryukyu kingdom.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.14
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• pp.125-158
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• 2012

After liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, there was the three-year period of United States Army Military Government in Korea. In 1948, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Republic of Korea were established in the north and south of the Korean Peninsula. The Republic of Korea is now a modern state set in the southern part of the Korean. We usually refer to Koreans as people who belong to the Republic of Korea. Can we say that is true exactly? Why make of this an obsolete question? The period from 1945 when Korea was emancipated from Japanese colonial rule to 1948 when the Republic of Korea was established has not been a focus of modern Korean history. This three years remains empty in Korean history and makes the concept of 'Korean' we usually consider ambiguous, and prompts careful attention to the silence of 'some Koreans' forced to live against their will in the blurred boundaries between nation and people. This dissertation regards 'Koreans' who came to live in the border of nations, especially 'Korean-Japanese third generation women artists'who are marginalized both Japan and Korea. It questions the category of 'Korean women's art' that has so far been considered, based on the concept of territory, and presents a new perspective for viewing 'Korean women's art'. Almost no study on Korean-Japanese women's art has been conducted, based on research on Korean diaspora, and no systematic historical records exist. Even data-collection is limited due to the political situation of South and North in confrontation. Representation of the Mother Country on the Artworks by First and Second-Generation Korean-Japanese(Zainich) Women Artists after Liberation since 1945 was published in 2011 is the only dissertation in which Korean-Japanese women artists, and early artistic activities. That research is based on press releases and interviews obtained through Japan. This thesis concentrates on the world of Korean-Japanese third generation women artists such as Kim Jung-sook, Kim Ae-soon, and Han Sung-nam, permanent residents in Japan who still have Korean nationality. The three Korean-Japanese third generation women artists whose art world is reviewed in this thesis would like to reveal their voices as minorities in Japan and Korea, resisting power and the universal concepts of nation, people and identity. Questioning the general notions of 'Korean women' and 'Korean women's art'considered within the Korean Peninsula, they explore their identity as Korean women outside the Korean territory from a post-territorial perspective and have a new understanding of the minority's diversity and difference through their eyes as marginal women living outside the mainstream of Korean and Japanese society. This is associated with recent post-colonial critical viewpoints reconsidering myths of universalism and transcendental aesthetic measures. In the 1980s and 1990s art museums and galleries in New York tried a critical shift in aesthetic discourse on contemporary art history, analyzed how power relationships among such elements as gender, sexuality, race, nationalism. Ghost of Ethnicity: Rethinking Art Discourses of the 1940s and 1980s by Lisa Bloom is an obvious presentation about the post-colonial discourse. Lisa Bloom rethinks the diversity of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender each artist and critic has, she began a new discussion on artists who were anti-establishment artists alienated by mainstream society. As migration rapidly increased through globalism lead by the United States the aspects of diaspora experience emerges as critical issues in interpreting contemporary culture. As a new concept of art with hybrid cultural backgrounds exists, each artist's cultural identity and specificity should be viewed and interpreted in a sociopolitical context. A criticism started considering the distinct characteristics of each individual's historical experience and cultural identity, and paying attention to experience of the third world artist, especially women artists, confronting the power of modernist discourses from a perspective of the white male subject. Considering recent international contemporary art, the Korean-Japanese third generation women artists who clarify their cultural identity as minority living in the border between Korea and Japan may present a new direction for contemporary Korean art. Their art world derives from their diaspora experience on colonial trauma historically. Their works made us to see that it is also associated with postcolonial critical perspective in the recent contemporary art stream. And it reminds us of rethinking the diversity of the minority living outside mainstream society. Thus, this should be considered as one of the features in the context of Korean women's art.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.45
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• pp.255-295
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate how much multi-cultural traits the multiculture-oriented TV programs would have and how they tended to represent it with what kinds of meaning structures. As an object of this study, the authors chose the Program of KBS-TV which had been discussed seriously to raise a multi-cultural issue as well as a sexuality issue of lady guests. They collected 70 weekly programs from Nov. 26 of 2006 to March 31, 2008, and finally selected and analyzed 5 weekly programs as main analytic data. They tried to analyze them with various semiotic research methods, especially, linguistic semiotic research methods and pictorial research methods. As results of this study, it was found that this Program was based on multiful-levels of meaning structure: that is, superficial level, representation level and in-depth level. The superficial level of this program presented various multi-cultural traits through many and various talks of lady guests. Its representation level indicated some patterns of discourses about issues and agendas of the talks among lady guests. The in-depth level was based on the sexuality of lady guests as well as the male-dominant ideology. It was finally implicated that this Program was based on the sexuality and feminity of lady guests even though it tried to advocate its multi-cultural traits.

• Korean Association of Arts Management
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• no.50
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• pp.101-146
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• 2019

After the enactment of the Local Culture Promotion Act in 2014, the government has been continuously trying to find the direction of the local culture that reflects the local life and conforms to the local people's emotions. In response to these efforts, the Organizing Committee for the C Region Biennale has uniquely formed the Biennale Artistic Director as a local artist who includes the historical, ecological and emotional characteristics of the C region. Therefore, I sought to explore the perception of the identity and role of the local cultural arts director through the narratives of the research participants who were appointed as the local residents of the C region and the director of the Craft Biennale. For the study, six local cultural arts directors were selected as research participants, and their identity as a local cultural arts director and its role were explored, focusing on their narratives. In this process, various types of data such as photographs, documents, in - depth interviews, and conference materials were collected and narrative was analyzed based on deterministic events. The results of the investigation are as follows. The idea of the identity of the local cultural arts directors was found to be in three directions. First, it is the view that the symbolic role of the artistic supervisory system of the 10 persons guarantees the identity. Second, the identity of local cultural arts directors was recognized as a role to find ways to be localized by developing and debating cultural and artistic discourses in various regions. Third, the participants had a concern and affection for local cultural arts, not one-time but continuous, and recognized it as their identity. The directors who participated in the interviews showed that the discourse of cultural arts in various regions were developed and discussed, and they wanted to find ways to be localized. The roles of local cultural arts directors recognized by research participants in connection with their identity are as follows. First, it should be the subject of systematic and long-term planning that can close the year and connect with the art events of the following year. Second, it should play a role of academic / research that can derive the identity of social and cultural ecological analysis connected with the area. Third, local arts professionals are required to act as cultural brokers, ie local culture professionals, who can create a venue for international cultural exchanges. Research on the form of local government supervision as a mediator of local cultural arts is to find out the origin of the identity of local artists and to establish a methodology for the direction of culture and art as a subject of local people. In addition, there is a need for continued interest and research in providing a reflection on the communication and meaning of the desirable local culture, and suggesting the system for cultivating local cultural arts intermediaries.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.13
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• pp.279-303
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• 2007

The Study on the Film, as the one of the main fields in the cultural studies, has the significant meaning in analyzing our society in that culture represents the realities of the present society. Film is the metaphorically expressed text and the specific space where a variety of discourses cross. The director's social consciousness projected in the film must have the ultimate significance through the dialectic relation between the intention of the director and the interpretation of the audience, not through the his one-sided message to the audience. This paper focuses on the analysis of the movie 'The Host', which is evaluated to show the meaningful social phenomena related to 'disaster' among the recent movies in Korea. The Host which is characteristic of 'the open structure' can be referred to as the film reflecting the imperial order prevalent in the colonial society.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2016

Humanities is one of the largest buzzword in Korea. Humanities programs are being provided indiscriminately in public authorities, universities, life-long education institutions, cultural centers, the media, museums, libraries etc. Among them, the public library is the base camp for spreading and popularizing the humanities. Nevertheless, there is also a critical views for the humanities program of public library. The purpose of this study is to discuss the discourse of the humanities banquet in theoretical positions and practical aspects. The former discussed the humanities banquet in terms of academic axioms, global macro and micro discourse, social and economic wave, the spirit cultural evolution. The latter discussed the humanities banquet at the axiom and identity of the library and humanities, pitfalls and limitations in terms of reason, paradox and the dilemma on the linkage side, inconvenient truth at the destination aspect, weaknesses and challenges in the content aspect.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.26-37
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• 2003

Urban park are indispensable elements of contemporary cities. However, the structure and culture of contemporary cities is currently changing. There are prevalent discourses that Olmstedian parte are no longer relevant to our new societies and cultures. New kinds of parks have emerged with different forms and functions. In order to propose a new paradigm for parks in the 21st century, we need to look back to the origin of modem parks, which is to say, Olmstedian parte. This paper aims to trace the background of park movements in the 19th century America and to identify and describe Olmsted's idea of urban parks. In addition, the paper will clarify the limitations and reinterpret the meaning of Olmsted's idea of urban parks. One idea behind the development of urban parte was to mitigate urban problems such as public health, alcoholism violence and class conflicts in 19th century industrial cities. The aim of urban park was partially achieved at that time. However, those parse did not serve the use of diverse classes. Olmstedian parks were designed for passive and civilized recreation, and lower classes were more attracted by active theme parks and areas such as Coney Island and John Wood. The strengths of Olmsted's idea of urban parte can be outlined as follows: First, designing parte goes beyond shaping physical lands to embrace social reforms. This means that park designers should have a critical understanding of society and culture. Also, landscape designers should have a bold vision for the future. Without such a vision and social agenda, landscape architects cannot postulate alternative possibilities through engaging in new practices. Second, Olmsted successfully adapted British landscape aesthetic ideas such as the picturesque, the sublime and the beautiful into an American context. Finally, his vision and idea of urban parks show us that landscape architecture is not just technical work, but that it can create a locus to engage a new cultural praxis by inventing cultural products - parks.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.65-77
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• 2018

Recently, the number of 'single-person household' is increasing rapidly. It brings about changes in the societal cultural aspect. Examples of television programs focused on their lifestyle provoked the societal attention as a important social agenda. This research investigated to figure out inherent ideologies in of tvN through Semiotic and Discourse analyses. As a result, predominant ideologies were revealed on the basis of representations of such single-person households. The authors also tried to find out how the media represent attitudes of single-person households and figure out how the media approach their ways of lives on bases of specific discourses and ideologies.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.111-139
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• 2016

Plato's philosophical importance in western thinking history cannot be understated. Especially his dichotomy system became common to the European traditions of philosophical and scientific discourses by assigning principal value to the presence that is opposed to the absence. Since the ancient Greeks, the concept of presence has been expressed itself in number of ways such as God, Truth, Logos, and center. Derrida called this European thinking "the metaphysics of presence." In order to analyze logocentrism also called the metaphysics of presence in No Telephone to Heaven, I used the term, paralogy that Aristotle did not accept as rules of argumentation but that Lyotard revived it positively as the principle of reason. Lyotard's incredulity towards rationalist theory of modernism is that knowledge can never be certain. Without any ultimate validity, certainty is impossible. Nevertheless, as Fanon said, the colonial world is dominated with a traditional Manichaean world. As a result what remains to the colonized to establish their identities is that of an armed struggle towards the colonizer even though they know it results in the vicious circle of hatred endlessly. Cliff attempted to show this message in her text through the tragic heroine, Clare Savage. Cliff's another critique of modernism's rationalism is shown through the ambiguous sexuality of Harry/Harriot. In this novel, gender plays also a central role by questioning the traditional binary system of sexuality. In this paper, I deconstructed this traditional gender system in terms of Bulter's concept of performitivity. This study will give the text another layer of deconstructive interpretation echoing with the proverb, one tree cannot make a forest.

• Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.73-99
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• 2023

The dragon is a special imaginary figure created by the people of East Asia. Its archetypes appeared primarily as totemic symbols of different tribes and groups in the region. The formation of early dynasties probably generated the molding of the dragon symbol. Dragon symbols carried deep imprints of nature. They concealed alternative messages of how ancient people at different locations dealt with or interacted with nature. Under pressure to standardize in the medieval and late imperial periods, the popular dragon had to transform physically and ideologically. It became imposed, unified, and framed, conveying ideas of caste classification and power, and losing itsecological implications. The dragon transitioned from a semi-ecological domain into a total social caste system. However, many people considered the "standardized" dragon as the symbol of the oppressor. Because of continuous orthopraxy and calls for imperial reverence, especially under orthopractic agenda and the surveillance of local elites, the popularized dragon was imbued within local artworks or hidden under the sanctity of Buddhas or popular gods in order to survive. Through disguise, the popular dragon partially maintained its ecological narratives. When the imperial dynasties ended in East Asia (1910 in Korea, 1911 in China, 1945 in Vietnam), the dragon was dramatically decentralized. However, trends of re-standardization and re-centralization have emerged recently in China, as the country rises in the global arena. In this newly-emerging "re-orthopraxy", the dragon has been superimposed with a more externally political discourse ("soft power" in international relations) rather than the old-style standardization for internal centralization in the late imperial period. In the contemporary world, science and technology have advanced humanity's ability to improve the world; however, it seems that people have abused science and technology to control nature, consequently damaging the environment (pollution, global warming, etc.). The dragon symbol needs to be re-defined, "re-molded", re-evaluated and reinterpreted accordingly, especially under the newly-emerging lens-the New Confucian "anthropocosmic" view.