• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.39-60
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• 2018

This paper closely examines the textual representations of 'blackness' in Korean military camptown (gijichon) literature from 1950's to 1980's, and argues that the animalistic portrayals and almost compulsive bestialization of blacks reveal an attempted hierarchization of Koreans above blacks with an underlying belief in white supremacy in coming to terms with Korean postcolonial subjectivity. Going against the grain of nationalist readings of gijichon literature, which largely celebrate its resistance against US domination, this paper problematizes racialized postcoloniality emerging out of these stories that span over four decades. The paper demonstrates that the racist depictions of blacks as the Other and even sympathetic portrayals of black soldiers all work to legitimate white supremacy and hierarchize race in the formation of Korean postcolonial subjectivity, paradoxically reinforcing and perpetuating colonial racial ideologies.

• Journal of architectural history
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.27-34
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• 2015

The tasks of writing history is to reconstruct the past in order to understand the present condition and to envision the future. Modern architectural histories in the west have assumed this role, from Winckelmann to Giedion. Likewise, history of Korean modern architecture has to serve this purpose. However, existing histories of Korean modern architecture simply list up stylistic changes from western eclectic architecture to modernism without any historical narratives explaining the transition from Korean traditional architecture to modern architecture. History of Korean modern architecture has simply been understood as a unilateral process of transplantation of western architecture into Korea. This paper points out two major problems underlying this kind of historiography of Korean modern architecture. The one is formalistic approach which sees history of modern architecture mainly as a process of formal and stylistic changes. The other is humanistic approach which sees modern architects as agents of history. This paper argues that this kind of history writings has limitations since modernity of Korean architecture is fundamentally different from that of the west. and that specific tasks that Korean modern architectural history has to address are then two folds;(re)connecting the past architectural tradition to the present and forming self-identity of Korean architecture.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.349-392
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• 2019

In the 1960s of Korea, the normalization of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan led to a sense of a vigorous anxiety and fear that "Japan will once again come to the Korean peninsula". As a reaction to this, the discourse on the criticism of 'Japanese Style' strongly emerged. If the prior discourse of criticism was to express the national antipathy toward the colonial remnants that had not yet been disposed of, the critical discourse of the 1960s was the wariness of the newly created 'Japanese Style' in popular culture, and to grasp it as a symptomatic phenomenon that 'evil-minded Japan' was revealed. Thus, this new logic of criticism of the 'Japanese Style' had a qualitative difference from the existing ones. It was accompanied by a willingness to inspect and censor the 'masses' that grew up as consumers of transnational 'mass culture' that flowed and chained in the geopolitical order under the Cold War system. Therefore, the topology of 'popular things=Japanese things=consuming things' reveals the paradox of moral demands that existed within Korean society in the 1960s. This was to solidify the divisive circulation structure that caused them to avoid direct contact with the other called 'Japan', but at the same time, get as close to it as ever. It is a repetitive obsession that pushes the other to another side through the moral segregation that strictly draws a line of demarcation between oneself and the other, but on the other hand is attracted to the object and pulls it back to its side. This paper intends to listen to the different voices that have arisen in the repetitive obsession to understand the significance of the dissonance that has been repeated in the contemporary era. This will be an examination of the paradoxical object of Japan that has been repeatedly asked to build the internal control principle of Korean society, or to hide the oppressive and violent side of the power, and that can neither be accepted nor destroyed completely as part of oneself.