• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.5-33
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• 2019

This study aims to explore the implications of the 2019 European Parliament elections. Existing studies show that European elections serve as secondary elections dominated by domestic issues. However, the 2019 European elections have highlighted pan-European issues such as the Brexit negotiations and the rise of far-right populism, with voter turnout also rising sharply to 50.62%, which is the highest record since the 2000s. There was also a significant change in the number of parliamentary seats held by each political group. First, the European People's Party(EPP) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats(S&D), which had hitherto led the European Parliament, failed to achieve a majority. Second, the number of seats won by Renew Europe, a new liberal-centrist group, was considerably high. Third, the far-right groups organized a full-fledged political force by rallying around the Identity and Democracy(ID) group. The rise of liberal-centrism can be explained as a reaction to the popularity of anti-European populism. Renew Europe's emphasis on open-market competition has created a different issue, especially since the center-left and center-right groups have stressed on the need for state intervention in employment, welfare, security and immigration control. Along with far-right populism, liberal centrism has also reshuffled Europe's political cleavage, and the conflict between 'liberalism' and 'protectionism' has become more evident in the European Parliament.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.115-145
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• 2023

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter referred to as "the 20th National Congress") was under the global spotlight long before it was held for seven days from 16 to 22 October 2022. People wondered whether Xi Jinping would secure a third term as China's leader or whether he would lay the foundations to be in power forever during the third term. In Korea, the press and media questioned whether the event would become the "crowning of Emperor Xi (Xi Huangdi)," whose power rivaled that of the first emperor in China, Shi Hunagdi, and featured the scene where Hu Jintao was forced to leave the venue during the Congress. On the other hand, many Korean academics focused more on how Xi would organize the Politburo and its Standing Committee and whether the outline of his heirs would appear during the event. This tendency in academia in turn worsened the media's concerns. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the 20th National Congress Report, as opposed to an analysis of Xi's political intentions at the event. The National Congress Report outlines the Party's visions, goals, and strategies for the next five years in politics, economy, society, culture, foreign affairs, and relationship with Taiwan. The authoritative document is rich in narrative and logic and deserves academic study. This research analyzes the 18th, 19th, and 20th Reports by identifying their keywords and regular expressions and checking their frequency and percentage through text-mining methods. This approach enables the quantification and visualization of the significant changes in the Party's sovereign vision over the fifteen years of Xi's rule from 2013 to 2027.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.21-51
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• 2018

This article takes several approaches in explaining recent developments in Vietnam. First, it draws upon an array of sources that idealize Vietnam's embrace of capitalism and integration into the global market in order to sketch out its economy's progress in 2017. Second, it observes, evaluates, and diagnoses recent changes in the Vietnamese economy in the medium to long term by incorporating conflicting perspectives on Vietnam's performance as a capitalist country. Third, this article traces the power shifts that have risen from internal struggles in the Communist Party over political and social issues. Fourth, it elaborates on the aforementioned impact that foreign relations have had on socio-political developments in Vietnam, as well as the government's response. In so doing, it also attempts to evaluate, however briefly, the significance of the 25th anniversary of South Korea-Vietnam relations. Finally, it examines the public's reaction to the post-reform transitions in light of recent sociocultural changes. 2017 was a memorable year for Vietnam: a continuous march toward capitalism; the resulting expansion of the Vietnamese people's demands; political controversies and government control; the looming instability of United States-China relations and various attempts to address the situation. These events will inevitably replicate themselves in the future as the ostensibly socialist Vietnam adopts a capitalist model. The problem is that it is unclear whether these experiences will continue with the consent of the people of socialist Vietnam or engender resistance. It is difficult to achieve meaningful consent in the status quo of worsening inequalities, widespread corruption, monopoly on power, and sustained use of unskilled low-wage workers. In other words, when concerns such as welfare, public health, and the environment are set aside in favor of economic development and commercialization as they have been, discontent, rather than consent, will prevail. It is thus important to keep a watchful eye on the viability of the nominal economic growth, surface-level political stability, and strategic responses to foreign relations that took place in 2017.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.523-541
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• 2014

We apply a Bayesian estimation procedure to the analysis of roll call voting records on 2,389 bills processed during the 18th Korean National Assembly. The analysis of roll calls yields useful tools for to combining the measurement of legislative preference with the models of legislative behavior. The current Bayesian procedure is extremely exible, applicable to any legislative setting, irrespective of the extremism of the legislator's voting history or the number of roll calls available for analysis. It can be applied to any legislative settings, providing a useful solution to many statistical problems inherent in the analysis of roll call voting records. We rst estimate the ideal points of all members of the 18th National Assembly and their condence intervals. Subsequently, using the estimated ideal points, we examine the factional disparity within each major party using the estimated ideal points. Our results clearly suggest that there exists a meaningful ideological spectrum within each party. We also show how the Bayesian procedure can easily be extended to accommodate theoretically interesting theoretical models of legislative behavior. More specically, we demonstrate how the estimated posterior probabilities can be used for identifying pivotal legislators.

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.67-108
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• 2017

How well citizens are represented by their representatives holds critical importance in representative democracy. While previous studies of ideological congruence have largely focused on Western established democracies, there was not as much attention paid to young democracies including, South Korea. This article investigates ideological congruence in South Korea based on multiple survey data sources collected from 2002 to 2016. When it comes to unidimensional Left-Right ideology, the distance between citizens and governments, unlike its citizen-assembly counterpart, has widened since 2000 sending a negative signal to the norm of representative democracy. As to multidimensional issue positions, however, it turns out that ideological congruence in South Korea has varied along issues such as aids to North Korea and Welfare spending. These results provide both citizens and parties with some important implications. For citizens, they are required to distinguish which party or candidate is more representative of the issue they value the most beyond a simple Left-Right line; for parties, they are required to deal with how to represent their supporters as well as today's increasing independents by strengthening their organizational capacity and providing effective party programs.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.7
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• pp.125-163
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• 2009

The artworks of Socialist Realism of the former Soviet Union, with the beginning of the 21st century, are gaining a new attention from art collectors. One reason for this might consist in the fact that relevant art pieces exemplify the ways in which they visualize ideas on the basis of their high-profile art tradition and also in which they integrate their utopian ideals with mysticism. These aspects of the Soviet art goes far beyond the wide-spread assumption that their art, as a means of propaganda, principally represents a political allegiance to the system. With Stalin coming into power in the 1930s, the artistic trend of Socialist Realism obtained a nationwide sympathy and support from people, giving birth to a new art which essentially corresponded to the demands of the political power. An official art current of the USSR over the period from the 1930s to 1950s, Socialist Realism was in tandem with the Communist commitment to the party and popularity, symbolizing a loyalty to the cause. It was thus characterized by plainness and lucidity so that ordinary people could gain easy access to art. Its salient feature, over an entire range of art, was an optimistic pursuit of a utopian dream. Therefore, it tallied with the popular sentiment for a Communist paradise, giving form to their beliefs in human agency working at the materialist world and also to such abstract concepts as force, fitness, and beauty by adding even mythical ideals. Its main subject matter includes harvest feasts of collective farms, imaginary socialist cities, grand marches of heroic laborers and in this way it served as a propaganda for a sacred utopia of socialist totalitarianism. On the other end of the spectrum, however, rose the second camp of art, which put an emphasis on bona-fide artistic activities of plastic art and on an artist's personal expression and freedom, as opposed to the surface optimism of Socialist Realism. Central to the Russian Avant Garde art, which prized the above-mentioned values, were Malevich's Geometric Abstraction and A. Rodchenko's Constructivism. Furthermore, in the transitional era of the late 20th century and the 21st century it was recognized that film art or electronic media art, rather than traditional genre of paintings, would function as a more efficient way of propaganda. These new genres were made possible by ridiculing the stereotypes of the Russian lifestyle and also by ignoring ethical or professional dimensions of artworks. That is, they reinvented themselves into a sort of field art, seemingly degrading the quality of artworks and transforming them into artifacts or simulacres in the very sense of post-modernism. The advent of the new era brought about the formation and occupation of pop culture of the younger generations, calling into question the idea of art as the class-determined. It also increased the attention to field art, which extensively found way to modern art centers, galleries, and exhibition projects. It can be stated that this was a natural outcome of human nature.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.56
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• pp.175-193
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• 2011

This study explored how South Korean newspapers covered North Korea's second nuclear test in May of 2009. Findings show that South Korean newspapers mostly reported North Korea's nuclear experiment in relatively negative tones. Their coverage mainly focused on the influences of nuclear threat from the North on the military, political and economic areas in South Korea. However, the media's agenda settings and frames were not similar in terms of each paper's political and ideological inclination. Whereas the progressive papers, such as the Hankyoreh and the Kyunghyang Shinmun, recognized that the current nuclear issue in Korean peninsula is getting worse because of South Korea's rigorous pressure on North Korea, the conservative papers, such as the Chosun Ilbo and the Donga Ilbo, see that the deadlock between North and South mainly comes from the system malfunction of North Korea. To prevent the current impasse, the left-side papers emphasized to develop the six-party talk in dealing with North Korean issue, while the right-wing papers paid attentions to the West's sanctions on North Korea and ensuring national security.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.185-212
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• 2017

The National League for Democracy (NLD) has restored a civilian government since the military had taken political power in 1962 as a result of general elections on 7, November 2015. But Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could not take part in the presidential election due to some restraints in constitution, so new government created the state counsellor position and the ministry of sate counsellor's office against military's resistance. It never publicized whether the military has to back to barracks including abolish of military's occupying the parliament seats. The ruling party is still taking laissez-faire to the military's political and economic role. The National level Ceasefire Agreement called the 21st Panglong conference launched in the end of August for a week, but stakeholders only insisted their demands. Rohingya issue is not involved in the 21st Panglong conference which aims to achieve national unity. The U.S. fully lifted a comprehensive sanction toward Myanmar since 1993, Japan promised huge grant assistance succeeding the former quasi civilian government. China strived to restore alienated relations of two countries. Although Korea kept Official Development Assistance, the summit which was planed two times in 2016 did not hold. The civilian government announced twelve points of developmental agenda in July 2016, instead of destroying the national development policy of the Thein Sein government. This agenda only showed the direction of policy not road map which was the same trend of the former government. The main direction of economic development stressed agriculture but manufacture like light industry was ignored.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.91-110
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• 2021

In the face of the prolonged Covid-19, this study conducted a network analysis to propose the policy direction for the Korean National Assembly to go forward. Using COVID-19 news articles, various types of networks were created and analyzed for the parliamentary activities of the Korean National Assembly related to Covid-19. Specifically, we utilize the co-occurrence and keyword information to generate two types of parliamentary networks: co-occurrence-based network and content-based network. In addition, a topic keyword-driven parliamentary network was constructed by using topic modeling. The results of the study are as follows. First, lawmakers in the ruling party had a wide range of topics regarding Covid-19, while lawmakers from other political parties had a limited number of issues covered. Next, a few representative legislators were identified as influential actors in most of the centrality indicators. Based on the research results, cooperation on diverse agendas related to Covid-19 should be promoted between lawmakers from various political parties. And representative legislators from both major parties should play a crucial role as intermediaries to increase communication between them.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.135-156
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• 2010

In the 1640's and 1650's, Milton wrote many prose works on a variety of topics such as education, church polity, divorce, censorship, regicide, tithing, civil liberty, and blindness. Much of his prose shows us turbulent decades of English history. In this period, he also published his first collection of poems and wrote sonnets. He wrote 23 sonnets in his life, and many sonnets Milton wrote after he had become Latin secretary are occasional poems in historical time. Milton's sonnets, as Annabel Patterson says, are a marker in his personal development, in his life, in his career as a writer, and in the history of his time. Four sonnets (15, 16, 17, 23), written between 1648 and 1655, were not published in the collected edition of Milton's poem in 1673. These sonnets, addressed to leaders of the Parliamentary party during the English revolution, Thomas Fairfax, Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Vane, and to his friend Cyriack Skinner, have been known as "commonwealth" sonnets. They are also called as "heroic sonnets" because they have the common style and theme with his later heroic epic poems. These sonnets were finally published in 1694 by Milton's nephew John Phillips. Milton was interested in religious, domestic, and political liberty for his lifetime, and his heroic sonnets also deal with these ideas of liberty. Milton asks civil liberty from Fairfax, freedom in religion from Cromwell, and from Vane for the reconciliation of both. The aim of this article is to examine how the rhetorical strategies of his "left-handed" prose interact with those of his "right-handed" poetry. This paper explores the relationship between Milton's heroic sonnets and his prose works, such as The Second Defense of the People of England, A Treatise of Civil Power, and The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings. Milton deals with the critical issues of religious tolerance, the separation of church and state, liberty of conscience and defense of his blindness, and attempts to define the statesman's role in peacetime England in these heroic sonnets and prose works.