• English & American cultural studies
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.1-25
• /
• 2017

This essay investigates how the industrialization of the US food system was closely linked to US foreign policy, gender issues, and the rise of consumerism in the Cold War era. While many scholars in American studies and women's studies over the past few decades have paid increasing attention to the interrelationship of gender politics and the media industry in shaping US domesticity, they have seldom studied how and why reading gender issues in relation to environmental discourse in general and the industrialized US food system in particular can help us better understand the complex relationship between environmental and social problems that we are facing today, both collectively and individually. In this context, this essay shows how US national politics have not only created the ideal of American domesticity that promotes traditional gender roles and consumerism at the expense of gender equality, but also negatively affected women's somatic and mental health writ large. By closely examining the cultural implications of Nixon's and Khrushchev's Kitchen Debate in the 1950s alongside newspapers, photographs, advertisements, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), I argue that reading Cold War consumer culture in relation to the US food system leads readers to see the invisible links between gender politics and today's environmental and social problems in comparative and global contexts.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.44
• /
• pp.144-179
• /
• 2008

This paper explores the formation of global responsibility discourses in the elite US media used in promoting NATO's military interventions in the post-Cold War era. The case study of global responsibility discourses surrounding the Bosnian War (1992-1995) and the Kosovo Conflict (1998-1999) offers an account of the roles of the elite US media in foreign policy. The construction and articulation of global responsibility discourses in the elite US media were closely related to the US government's policy and were formed within the framework of US national interest and domestic responsibility. The cases of military intervention in the post-Cold War period imply that there were more fundamental structure and patterns by which the elite US media approached the 'humanitarian crises': 'benevolent domination' and the subsequent construction of a 'melodramatic national identity' in the war narratives. Presuming that the elite US media's discourse is a primary site for the public for experiencing and understanding distant suffering, this paper concludes that global responsibility discourses within the media may have dangerous ramifications for global democracy because the discourse of responsibility can potentially absorb the creative, progressive energies created by the public's awareness of responsibility on a global scale in order to reinforce the relations of domination.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.58 no.2
• /
• pp.327-345
• /
• 2012

This paper explores how gender, sexuality, momism and national security are intertwined in the POW fictions of the Korean War, revealing the blurred demarcation line of the private and the public during the Cold War era. Works such as Night and Valley of Fire reveal the weakened manhood of the soldiers who were brainwashed or easily succumbed to the enemy during their imprisonment. The novels commonly attribute their weakness to materialism and spiritual corruption prevalent in the society, in addition to mass media including TV. Moreover, a social critic like Phillip Wily provokes the polemical idea of "Momism" which was ardently circulated among some male circles. In Manchurian Candidate, momism is integrated into incest and homosexuality, epitomized by Raymond and his mother. The novel illustrates how momism can be dangerous to national security and devastate the growth of manhood. Mrs. Iselin, a masculinized middle-aged woman, becomes a 'monster' whose overweening desire for power overrides any maternal concern for her son. Such 'monstrosity' exposes the danger of a woman who can castrate a man and manipulate a society. To a certain extent, the same tendency can be found in Turncoat and Night. Both novels reveal how the love of mother brings detrimental impact on boys who become prey to the communist's brainwashing in the POW camps. In short, the POW novels betray society's patriarchal concerns with women's emerging power threatening its ideology.

• Journal of National Security and Military Science
• /
• s.1
• /
• pp.71-111
• /
• 2003

The key lessons of the very complex modern war can be dangerously misleading to the outsiders. The efforts trying to draw lessons learned from the Iraq War (OIF : Operation Iraqi Freedom) may be biased by the view of point by Americans, because most of war episodes have been come from the Western media coverage. More serious bias can be committed thanks to the differences of warfighting doctrines and military technology between US forces and ROK forces. However, OIF-fought allied commanders and outside military experts said this campaign exemplified 21st-century warfare: swift, agile and decisive, employing overpowering technology to bring relentless violence to bear in many places at once. Even though the campaign evolved differently than anticipated, allied forces regrouped and regained the initiative remarkably quickly, thanks in large part to a new command flexibility, tied to new technology that made possible the more rapid sharing of data. These factors permitted "new air-land dynamic". The things that compel that are good sensors networked with good intelligence disseminated through a robust networking system, which then yields speed. Speed turns out to be a very important factor for conducting "Rapid Decisive Operations" relied on joint "Mass of Effects". ROK forces facing the heaviest ground threat in the world may learn more from Cold War era-typed US Army 3rd Infantry Division (3ID), which operating considerably beyond existing doctrine. 3ID flew its personnel into Kuwait to meet up with equipment already located in the region as pre-positioned stock. During OIF, the division conducted continuous offensive operations over 230km deep battlespace for 21 days. The lessons learned for ROK army to prepare tomorrow's war may be found from 3ID in its training, command and control, task organization, firepower and battlespace management, and logistics.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.16
• /
• pp.168-206
• /
• 2001

This study attempts to examine the relationships between the major market-based media and the government after closing military regime era, 1961-1987. After the military regime was collapsed, while the mass media in Korea obtained independence and autonomy from government, they have been confronted with the terrible competition not so much comparatively as before. The watchdog role in the traditional liberalism, which is regarded as normative relationship between the media and the government would be transformed in accordance with the market condition and the maturity of democracy. Thus, the watchdog metaphor has been variously deviated in rower-centered society; lap dog, guard dog, attack dog. liberalists argue that the primary democratic role of the media is to art as a public watchdog overseeing the state. Social democrats, however, criticize them as simplistic conception which could be only applied to the government. They argue that the media should be seen as a source of redress against the abuse of all forms of power over others; the home, the economy, and the civil society. The lap dog view is that the media is overwhelmingly dependent on the established power structure contrary to the watchdog. While the guard dog perspective is a means to preserve the power structure alarming with playing 'conflict role', the attack do8 aims to the private interest of the media in intruding into the politics. The attack dog perspective by T. Patterson could be composed of the interpretive style of report, the game schema report over the policy schema in the election, and the negativism against politics and government. The market-dominant press has been likely to transform from lap-guard dog into attack-guard dog. In Roh Tae Woo government(1988-1992), while the press was a lessened lap-guard dog before three parties merger in 1990, after merger the press had been transformed as the reinforced lap-guard dog because this merger entailed joint, party-to-party negotiations, and the formation of the new party preceded by dissolution of the ruling blot. In the early stage of Kim Young Sam government(1993-1997), the press has kept in pace with the reform movement drive-forced by the government. However, the press withdrew the support of Kim's reform in reaching the level of threat to ruling bloc. The press coalesced only circumstantially with government and was interested in preserving some margin of independence. The failure of Kim's reform proved the political muscle of the press in post-autho-ritarianism. In the middle stage of Kim Dae Jung government (1998-) that resulted in the shift of power structure as once-opposition party leader, the stress has been a manifested attack-guard dog owing to the anti-cold war policy, the realignment policy of power, and the minority-base of Kim's government. The press has endeavored to hold political communication within limits relatively less threatening to the established order.