• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.119
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• pp.1-33
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• 2017

This article explore the relation between meritocracy and democracy in the context of South-Korea's confucian modernity. It starts with the confirmation that South-Korea's confucian-meritocratic tradition has positive influence on democracy, in similar way as in the western countries where meritocracy was as a basis for democracy evaluated. But meritocracy has not always the positive implication for democracy. This article shows that meritocracy is in its essence 'an ideology of the betrayal' which destroy the basis of democracy through producing and justifying extreme socio-economic inequalities between citizens. But the long confucian-meritocratic tradition of East Asia makes meritocracy ideology attractive for the people, so even the temptation of the 'political meritocracy' is strong, as we see in Singapore and China. This article argues that the political meritocracy cannot be the alternative of democracy, seeks the different way to overcome the crisis of democracy than meritocracy indicate. Finally, it discusses shortly which implications this sort of relation between meritocracy and democracy for the future of South-Korean democracy can have.

• Journal of vocational education research
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.47-63
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to develop the competency model of specialized vocational school teachers as admission officers. Whereas professional admission officers deal with a variety of admission activities in universities, teachers are responsible for admission duties in specialized high schools in Korea. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the core competencies required for teachers responsible for admission duties in specialized high school settings. In order to develop a competency model, factor analysis was completed for the survey results of 191 teachers who teach in specialized vocational high schools in Seoul, Korea. For evaluating validity of the competency model, the responses from those who had high experiences in admission duties and the average teachers were compared. As a result, this study identified a total of 14 competencies in three competency areas. The competencies required for specialized high school teachers include responsibilities for admission officers, ethics for evaluators, communication skills, teamwork, understandings of admissions process for specialized vocational high school, developing evaluation criteria, generating interview questions, increasing interrater reliability, interview skills, simultaneous evaluation of interviewees, quantification of evaluation results, synthesis of evaluation results, and decision making skills.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.373-392
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• 2022

The present study aimed to emprically verify the materialistic pursuits process of undergraduates by applying the escape theory of materialism(Donnelly et al., 2016). Among the six steps of Donnelly's model, the first step is percieving that the fall short of high standards of life, as measured by external contingencies of self-worth. The second step is blaming the self for falling short of standards, as measured by self-discrepancy. The third step of high aversive self-awareness is measured by low stability of self-esteem. A total of 465(203 male and 262 female) college students participated in the online survey and the model was tested using structural equation model. We found that the relationship of external contingencies of self-worth and materialism was mediated by self-discrepancy and there was a sequential mediation effect of self-discrepancy and the stability of self-esteem. The direct effect of external contingencies of self-worth on materialism was also significant. This study is meaningful in that it used the escape theory to emprically verify the materialistic pursuit process of Korean undergraduates living in a meritocratic society.