• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.56-63
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• 2009

African Americans in the United States suffer from many health disparities such as obesity, diabetes or hypertension. Lifestyle factors including diet and physical activity play an important role in prevention of these health conditions. The purpose of this research project was to assess beliefs, barriers and self-efficacy of eating a healthy diet and self efficacy of shopping for foods such as whole grains or foods designated as low fat or low sodium. Additionally, the objective was to assess beliefs about healthfulness, appropriate consumption, and protective aspect of specific foods including fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. The assessment was done using a survey instrument developed for this study. Data collection took place at two church locations. Data were obtained from 57 African Americans, mean age 50 years old (SD 12.70) completed the survey. The majority of respondents (58.1%) were females and most (75%) had at least some college education. Generally, benefits of eating healthy foods received considerably higher scores compared to barriers of eating healthy. A belief that healthy foods would help to take care of one's body received the highest mean score while a belief that healthy foods are too expensive had the highest score from all barriers. The results showed high self-efficacy of eating and purchasing healthy foods, high awareness of knowledge regarding foods associated with disease prevention but low awareness of recommendations for fruits and vegetables. The high scores for benefits, self-efficacy and knowledge regarding eating healthy foods did not translate into the perception of intake of such foods. Most participants believed that they do not eat enough of healthy foods. Interventions design to help African Americans make dietary changes should be culturally relevant and should involved working on a community level utilizing messages that are familiar and relevant to African Americans.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.15-24
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception and preference of Americans residing in Korea for Korean traditional food. Out of 250 questionnaires, 95 respondents were taken. Most of the respondents (96.8%) were experienced in eating Korean food in Korea and 66.3% of them were experienced in eating Korean food in other countries except Korea. On the appearance and color of Korean flood,94.8% and 93.7% of the respondents answered for earth that it was 'Good'. Most of the respondents (95.7%) had much interest in Korean flood. Nevertheless they proposed the improvement in hot and strongly spiced Korean food. The following Korean foods; bibimbap, bulgogi, kalbigui, samgetang, and chapchae were preferred by most Americans. The preference on 11 korean traditional foods was significantly different in gender, age, and period of residence at p<0.05. This study suggests that we need to develop the sauce and seasoning which is suitable for foreigner's taste to improve the popularity of Korean foods. And we also know that foreigners have the trends to avoid selecting the food item which is unknown for them. Therefore, we need to add the information about Korean food ingredient and the cooking method which is not familiar with foreigners on the menu.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.90-97
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• 2013

The L.A. riots, which happened during three days from April 29 to May 1, 1992, are viewed as the most deadly and destructive riots in American history. Depicted in blaring front-page headlines and violent pictures on television, this urban upheaval received epic exposure in many countries. In Korea, it was especially shocking due to the viewpoint that highlighted the conflict between Korean and African Americans. This paper aims to review the black-Korean conflict during the 1992 L.A. riots in a Korean movie, Western Avenue. It is a film that narrates the despair of Korean Americans in the context of the L.A. riots, while placing American ideologies on trial. It is the only feature-length film to portray the story of Korean Americans in the L.A. riots. This paper examines some of the factors that resulted from the 1992 L.A. riots before the discussion of Western Avenue. Then, the paper analyzes the story of the Korean American in the film, focusing on how this film deals with the black-Korean conflict during the 1992 L.A. riots.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.73-89
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• 2007

This study explored the perception of transplanted English prosody by thirty American and Korean, male and female listeners. The English utterances of various sentence types produced by Korean and American male speakers were employed to transplant the American prosody contours to Korean English utterances. Then, the thirty subjects were instructed to rate the transplanted prosodic components. Results showed that the interactions between the three factors (e.g., rater groups & transplantation types; transplantation types & sentence types; rater groups & transplantation types & sentence types) turned out to be meaningful. Both Americans and Koreans perceived the effectiveness of the combined effect of transplanted duration and pitch or duration and pitch and intensity. However, when perceiving individual prosodic components, Americans and Koreans showed different perceptual ratings. As for the overall prosody change, Americans perceived the change of intensity in a significant way but Koreans did not because intensity is not a crucial semantic factor in Korean. Americans rated the transplantation of duration alone as ineffective while Koreans rated otherwise. This was explained by the difference between English and Korean. The difference of perspective was also significant with different sentence types, especially with the three sentence types that had speech rates slower than other sentence types. A slower speech rate intensified the mismatch between the transplanted duration and the original pitch causing a negative impression on American listeners whereas this did not affect Korean listeners. Pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.89-96
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the importance and satisfaction with Korean food for foreigners living in Busan with consideration for nationalities, for the sake of improving satisfaction with Korean food. The research was performed using questionnaires and conducted from August 14 to September 30, 2011 for 376 foreigners in Busan. Total mean scores for the importance (4.01/5.00) and satisfaction (3.59/5.00) of Korean food attributes were significantly different (p<0.01). The gaps of the importance score and satisfaction score were -0.91 for cleanliness of food, -0.74 for taste, -0.70 for quality, and -0.68 for smell. Mean scores of satisfaction for Americans and Europeans (3.69) and Southeast Asians (3.78) were significantly (p<0.01) higher than those of Japanese (3.44) and Chinese (3.43) descent. Notably high importance and low satisfaction attributes of Korean food broken down by nationality were cleanliness for Americans/Europeans; quality and cleanliness for Japanese; texture and price for Chinese; and taste, smell, and price for Southeast Asians. Attributes rated with high importance and satisfaction were health benefits, nutrition, and quality for Americans/Europeans, Chinese, and Southeast Asians; taste and price for Americans/Europeans and Japanese; and cleanliness for Chinese and Southeast Asians.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.207-234
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• 2001

Even though the number of Korean Americans has dramatically increased over the last 20 years, there have been very few studies that have examined the health of this population. This paper investigates the contemporary health status of Korean Americans in comparison to Koreans, employing mortality related health measures: life expectance, age-specific death rates, and leading cause of death. Overall, we find that Korean American adults enjoy longer life expectancy and lower age-specific death rates than do their Korean counterparts, suggesting superior health status of the former as compared to the latter. Comparison of leading causes of death indicates that Korean American adults (age of 25-64) are more likely to die from neoplasms than are their Korean counterparts, while Koreans show a dramatically higher probability of death from liver-related diseases than Korean Americans. When these two cause of death are regressed on various demographic and socioeconomic factors, the difference in prevalence of neoplasms between the two populations disappeared, while that of liver-related diseases remains unaffected. Based on the outcomes from this research, we suggest that Korean Americans are a self-selected group in terms of health and socioeconomic status, and they adopt healthy behaviors after immigration. This has resulted in the relatively superior health of Korean Americans as compared to Koreans.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.269-274
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• 2008

Consuming regular meals has been studied in relation to better health, while higher regularity of eating-out has been linked to obesity. This study examined whether acculturation was associated with regularity of meals, eating-out, and overweight in Korean Americans. Pre-tested questionnaires were mailed to a U.S. national sample with Korean American surnames, and 55% of the deliverable sample responded, producing 356 usable questionnaires. Acculturation was measured using a two-culture matrix model and Gordon's theoretical work, and showed there were three distinct groups (acculturated, bicultural, and traditional). Only 36% reported that they regularly ate three meals a day. Breakfast was the least frequent meal of the day with 43% reporting eating breakfast everyday. More than half (58%) reported that they usually eat out or get take-out food at least once a week. After controlling for age, sex, income, education, and working status, higher acculturation was related to greater regularity of eating-out, but not meal regularity. A total of 28% of men and 6% of women were overweight (BMI>25), and there were significant and positive relationships between body weight status and acculturation in men but not women. However, no significant relationships between frequency of meals and eating-out and overweight status were present. This study did not find significant relationships of meal regularity and eating-out with body weight, however, given the positive relationship between acculturation and eating-out among the subjects and the well-established relationship between eating-out and obesity, nutrition education about skipping meals and eating-for Korean Americans may be useful to prevent such relationships from developing.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.121-135
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Korean speakers realize English stress and rhythm at the sentence level, and investigate what different acoustic characteristics of English sentence stress and rhythm Korean speakers have, compared with those of American English speakers. Stressed words in the sentence were analyzed in terms of duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the stressed vowel in the word with neutral stress and with emphatic stress, respectively. According to the results, when the words had emphatic stress, both Koreans' and Americans' F0 and intensity of the stressed vowel were higher than those with neutral stress. Korean speakers of English realized the sentence stress with shorter vowel duration and higher F0 than American English speakers when the words had emphatic stress. The analysis of the timing of the sentence with increased unstressed syllables showed that both Americans and Koreans produced the sentence with longer duration as the number of unstressed syllables increased. However, the duration of unstressed syllables between stressed syllables by Koreans was longer than that by Americans. Americans seemed to produce unstressed syllables between stressed syllables faster than Koreans for regular intervals of stressed syllables. This analysis implies that if there are more unstressed syllables between stressed syllables, Koreans might produce unstressed syllables and the whole sentence with longer duration.

• Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.246-253
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• 2003

With globalization taking place at a rapid speed, more and more people move from one place to another and more people with diverse cultural backgrounds are now living together than ever before. As a result, more people go through the process of acculturation. Dietary acculturation, a part of overall acculturation, is a series of changes that occur in food and nutrient consumption and dietary behaviors. This paper examined dietary acculturation in Korean Americans through a critical literature review. The current diet quality of Korean Americans is fair, and the areas in need of improvement include sodium, calcium, and fiber intakes. Korean Americans had different diet profiles by acculturation status； however, whether dietary acculturation leads to a lower diet quality is not conclusive at this time. This paper also suggests areas that warrant consideration in future research： 1) acculturation measures, 2) dietary measures, 3) possible factors affecting dietary acculturation, 4) health consequences of dietary acculturation, and 5) study design issues. Studying dietary acculturation among immigrants and their offspring is important because it will provide useful insights for designing health and nutrition interventions in both original and new countries. Quality research in dietary acculturation requires collaborations among researchers from different nations because it deals with diverse cultures.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.20
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• pp.113-148
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• 2010

This paper examines the American role in shaping South Korean nation-building during the early Cold War by considering how the United States attempted to form South Korea's education and how Koreans responded to these efforts. It looks at education as an arena where "American" ideas such as democracy and liberalism were received, transformed, and utilized by Koreans. This study pays particular attention to the gap between American intentions and Korean expectations, as well as to the competition between American and Japanese systems, which explains the contradictory role America played in South Korean nation-building. In order to better assess the role of the United States in shaping South Korean education, this article considers the complex dynamics between the Japanese legacies, American influence, and Korean actors. Americans had exerted a great effect on Korean education since the beginning of their relationship. American missionaries, U.S. military government, and educational mission teams had all contributed to the expansion of educational opportunities for Koreans. Through the educational institutions that they established or helped establish, Americans tried to spread "their" ideas. In this process, Americans had to struggle with two obstacles: Korean nationalism and the legacies of Japanese colonialism. Many Koreans used American missionary schools for their own purposes and resisted U.S. military government's policies which ignored their desire for self-determination. American education missions had limited effect on Korean education due to the heterogeneous Japanese system that was still influencing South Korea even after liberation. The ways in which Americans have influenced the democratization of South Korea have not been simple. Although "American" democratic ideas reached Koreans through various routes, Koreans understood the "American" idea within their own historical context and in a way that fit their existing socio-political relations. Oftentimes suspicious of "American" democracy, Koreans developed their own concept of democracy. The overall American influence on Korean democratization, as well as on Korean education, was important but limited. While Americans helped Koreans build educational infrastructure and tried to transfer democratic ideas through it, Koreans actors and Japanese colonial legacies limited its impact.