• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.32
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• pp.215-249
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• 2011

This essay reflects on the modernity of Korea by examining the transformation of the traditional knowledge system from a historico-semantic perspective with its focus on the opposition and collision of the old and the new conception occurred in the early period(1890~1910) of the acceptance of the Western modern civilization. With scientific success, trick of reason, Christianity and evolutionary view of history, the Western modernity regarded itself as a peak of civilization and forced the non-Western societies into the world system in which they came to be considered as 'barbarism(野蠻)' or 'half-enlightened(半開).' The East Asian civilization, which had its own history for several centuries, became degraded as kind of delusion and old-fashioned customs from which it ought to free itself. The Western civilization presented itself as exemplary future which East Asian people should achieve, while East Asian past traditions came to be conceived as just unnecessary vestiges which it was better to wipe out. It can be said that East Asian modernization was established through the propagation and acceptance of the modern products of the Western civilization rather than through the preservation of its past experience and pursuit of the new at the same time. Accordingly, it is difficult to apply directly to East Asian societies Koselleck's hypothesis; while mapping out his Basic Concept of History, he assumed that, in the so-called 'age of saddle,' semantic struggle over concepts becomes active between the past experience and the horizon of expectation on the future, and concepts undergoes 'temporalization', 'democratization', 'ideologization', 'politicization.'The struggle over the old and new conceptions in Korea was most noticeable in the opposition of the Neo-Confucian scholars of Hwangseongsinmun and the theorists of civilization of Doknipsinmun. The opposition and struggle demanded the change of understanding in every field, but there was difference of opinion over the conception of the past traditional knowledge system. For the theorists of civilization, 'the old(舊)' was not just 'past' and 'old-fashioned' things, but rather an obstacle to the building of new civilization. On the other hand, it contained the possibility of regeneration(新) for the Neo-Confucian scholars; that is, they suggested finding a guide into tomorrow by taking lessons from the past. The traditional knowledge system lost their holy status of learning(聖學) in the process of its change into a 'new learning(新學),' and religion and religious tradition also weakened. The traditional knowledge system could change itself into modern learning by accepting scientific methodology which pursues objectivity and rationality. This transformation of the traditional knowledge system and 'the formation of the new learning from the old learning' was accompanied by the intersection between the old and new conceptions. It is necessary to pay attention to the role played by the concept of Sil(hak)(實學) or Practical Learning in the intersection of the old and new conceptions. Various modern media published before and after the 20th century show clearly the multi-layered development of the old and new conceptions, and it is noticeable that 'Sil(hak)' as conceptual frame of reference contributed to the transformation of the traditional knowledge system into the new learning. Although Silhak often designated, or was even considered equivalent to, the Western learning, Neo-Confucian scholars reinterpreted the concept of 'Silhak' which the theorists of civilization had monopolized until then, and opened the way to change the traditional knowledge system into the new learning. They re-appropriated the concept of Silhak, and enabled it to be invested with values, which were losing their own status due to the overwhelming scientific technology. With Japanese occupation of Korea by force, the attempt to transform the traditional knowledge system independently was obliged to reach its own limit, but its theory of 'making new learning from old one' can be considered to get over both the contradiction of Dondoseogi(東道西器: principle of preserving Eastern philosophy while accepting Western technology) and the de-subjectivity of the theory of civilization. While developing its own logic, the theory of Dongdoseogi was compelled to bring in the contradiction of considering the indivisible(道and 器) as divisible, though it tried to cope with the reality where the principle of morality and that of competition were opposed each other and the ideologies of 'evolution' and 'progress' prevailed. On the other hand, the theory of civilization was not free from the criticism that it brought about a crack in subjectivity due to its internalization of the West, cutting itself off from the traditional knowledge system.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

There are only a handful number of research conducted on pattern analysis of corporate distress as compared with research for bankruptcy prediction. The few that exists mainly focus on audited firms because financial data collection is easier for these firms. But in reality, corporate financial distress is a far more common and critical phenomenon for non-audited firms which are mainly comprised of small and medium sized firms. The purpose of this paper is to classify non-audited firms under distress according to their financial ratio using data mining; Self-Organizing Map (SOM). SOM is a type of artificial neural network that is trained using unsupervised learning to produce a lower dimensional discretized representation of the input space of the training samples, called a map. SOM is different from other artificial neural networks as it applies competitive learning as opposed to error-correction learning such as backpropagation with gradient descent, and in the sense that it uses a neighborhood function to preserve the topological properties of the input space. It is one of the popular and successful clustering algorithm. In this study, we classify types of financial distress firms, specially, non-audited firms. In the empirical test, we collect 10 financial ratios of 100 non-audited firms under distress in 2004 for the previous two years (2002 and 2003). Using these financial ratios and the SOM algorithm, five distinct patterns were distinguished. In pattern 1, financial distress was very serious in almost all financial ratios. 12% of the firms are included in these patterns. In pattern 2, financial distress was weak in almost financial ratios. 14% of the firms are included in pattern 2. In pattern 3, growth ratio was the worst among all patterns. It is speculated that the firms of this pattern may be under distress due to severe competition in their industries. Approximately 30% of the firms fell into this group. In pattern 4, the growth ratio was higher than any other pattern but the cash ratio and profitability ratio were not at the level of the growth ratio. It is concluded that the firms of this pattern were under distress in pursuit of expanding their business. About 25% of the firms were in this pattern. Last, pattern 5 encompassed very solvent firms. Perhaps firms of this pattern were distressed due to a bad short-term strategic decision or due to problems with the enterpriser of the firms. Approximately 18% of the firms were under this pattern. This study has the academic and empirical contribution. In the perspectives of the academic contribution, non-audited companies that tend to be easily bankrupt and have the unstructured or easily manipulated financial data are classified by the data mining technology (Self-Organizing Map) rather than big sized audited firms that have the well prepared and reliable financial data. In the perspectives of the empirical one, even though the financial data of the non-audited firms are conducted to analyze, it is useful for find out the first order symptom of financial distress, which makes us to forecast the prediction of bankruptcy of the firms and to manage the early warning and alert signal. These are the academic and empirical contribution of this study. The limitation of this research is to analyze only 100 corporates due to the difficulty of collecting the financial data of the non-audited firms, which make us to be hard to proceed to the analysis by the category or size difference. Also, non-financial qualitative data is crucial for the analysis of bankruptcy. Thus, the non-financial qualitative factor is taken into account for the next study. This study sheds some light on the non-audited small and medium sized firms' distress prediction in the future.