• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.107-135
• /
• 2014

Cham identities which are socially constructed and multilayered, display their markers in a variety of elements, including homeland attachment to the former Kingdom of Champa, religion, language and cultural traditions, to mention a few. However, unlike other contemporary diasporic experience which binds the homeland and the host country, the Cham diaspora in Cambodia has a unique pattern as it seems to have no voice in the political and economic spheres in Vietnam, its homeland. The relations between the Cham in Cambodia and Vietnam seem to be limited to cultural heritages such as Cham musical traditions, traditional clothing, and the architectural heritage. Many Cham people have established networks outside Cambodia with areas of the Muslim world, like Malaysia, Indonesia, southern Thailand and the Middle Eastern countries. Pursuing education or training in Islam as well as working in those countries, especially Malaysia has become a way for the Cham to widen their networks and increase their knowledge of particularly, Islam. Returning to Cambodia, these people become religious teachers or ustadz (Islamic teachers in the pondok [Islamic boarding school]). This has developed slowly, side by side with the formation of their identity as Cham Muslims. Among certain Cham, the absence of an ancient cultural heritage as an identity marker has been replaced by the Islamic culture as the important element of identity. However, being Cham is not a single identity, it is fluid and contested. Many scholars argue that the Cham in Cambodia constitute three groups: the Cham Chvea, Cham, and Cham Bani (Cham Jahed). The so-called Cham Jahed has a unique practice of Islam. Unlike other Cham who pray five times a day, Cham Jahed people pray, once a week, on Fridays. They also have a different ritual for the wedding ceremony which they regard as the authentic tradition of the Cham. Indeed, they consider themselves pure descendants of the Cham in Vietnam; retaining Cham traditions and tending to maintain their relationship with their fellow Cham in Central Vietnam. In terms of language, another marker of identity, the Cham and the Cham Jahed share the same language, but Cham Jahed preserve the written Cham script more often than the Cham. Besides, the Cham Jahed teaches the language to the young generation intensively. This paper, based on fieldwork in Cambodia in 2010 and 2011 will focus on the process of the formation of the Cham identity, especially of those called Cham and Cham Jahed.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.15 no.6
• /
• pp.399-406
• /
• 2017

Contrary to the fact that the old films contain artistic and include contemporary literature, religion, and philosophy, latest films are produced with focusing on external interesting composition and sensational scene. A good movie emotionally express the directors' topic message exuding from an interesting story, and empathize with the social agenda which shows a sharp look of the directors' on contemporary social aspect. In the movies of the Coen brothers, it seems like an entertainment movie as typical black comedy genre through irony and happening, but in fact, it inserts a lot of social problems in the film to show that they cynically express their social agenda from a contemplative view. In their movie "The Big Lebowski (1998)", it seems like they are creating comical content through the main characters' unaffected attitude. However, it is director's excellent director of the sub-text that expresses American social issues such as Vietnam war, post-modernism and an obscurantist policy and au fond the comedy about the historical facts of mass production of social maladjustment into black comedy. We expect to contribute to make a step forward in the Korea film industry by analyzing such movies that has the cultural power of influence.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
• /
• v.39
• /
• pp.69-97
• /
• 2021

'Déconstruction' is a system of thought that induces the emergent property that characterizes contemporary philosophy. The tradition of ancient Greek philosophy evolved over and over again, giving rise to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It seemed to have reached its end under the historical perspective of modernity. However, contemporary philosophy wanted to see more possibilities through the deconstruction of modern philosophy. If modern philosophy dreams of a strange cohabitation between God and man with the humanistic completion of Plato's philosophy, modern philosophy rejects even that through deconstruction. Although Plato's classical metaphysics is a stable system centered around the absolute, it is ultimately based on God and religion. Under that system, human autonomy is only the autonomy bestowed by God. Contemporary philosophy is one of the results of efforts that try to begin philosophy from the original human voice through deconstruction. Instead of epistemology dependent on metaphysics, they wanted to establish epistemology from human existence and realize the best good that would set humans free through deconstruction. As such, it is no mistake to say that deconstruction is also an extension of the modern topic of human freedom. Deconstruction and human freedom act as one body in that the two cannot be separated from each other. Oddly enough, Daesoon Thought, which seems to have religious faith and traditional conservatism as main characteristics, has an emergent property that encompasses modern and contemporary times. The period of Korea, when Kang Jeungsan was active and founded Daesoon Thought, has an important meaning for those who have a keen view of history. Such individuals likely think that they have found a valuable treasure. This is because that period was a time when ideological activities were conducted due to an intense desire to discover the meaning of human freedom and envision a new world without copying the ways of the West. Instead they looked to face internal problems and raise people's awareness through subjectivity. In other words, the subtle ideas created by Korea's self-sustaining liberalism often take the form of what is commonly called new religions in modern times. Among these new religions, Daesoon Thought, as a Chamdonghak (true Eastern Learning), aims to spread a particular modern value beyond modern times through the concept of Haewon (the resolution of grievances) that was proclaimed by Jeungsan. The Haewon espoused in Daesoon Thought is in line with the disbandment of modern philosophy in that it contains modernity beyond modern times. First, Haewon means to resolve the fundamental resentment of human existence, which arose from Danju's grievance. Secondly, Haewon in Daesoon Thought encompasses the Haewon of the Three Realms of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity centers on a Haewon-esque style of existence called Injon (Human Nobility). Haewon in Daesoon Thought can be understood in the same context as Derrida's philosophy of Deconstruction. Modern deconstruction attempts to expose the invisible structures and bonds within human society and attempt to destroy them. In a similar way, Haewon endeavors to resolve the conflicts among the Three Realms by releasing the bonds of fundamental oppression that hinder the Three Realms of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
• /
• v.58 no.4
• /
• pp.72-85
• /
• 2008

With the new millennium setting in, our society is plowing its way through more drastically changing currents than ever. Nowadays, many people believe that high tech such as the Internet, digital civilization, the IT revolution, bio-industry, and the genome project, that has brought humans material prosperity, is the right change in direction. However, the more we adopt high tech into our lives, the more we desire high touch in order to achieve a balance. In other words, we need something to act as a ballast to stabilize our minds. As such, the more high tech develops, the more individuals miss and search for tools that appeal to their emotions. Because of this, although high touch is an opposite concept to high tech, it coexists with high tech, and it is defined as "human contact of high sensitivity that stimulates the emotion of humans". High Touch, a term which originated from "High Tech, High Touch", a book written by American futurist John Naisbitt, refers to human contact that makes human life richer, forminga deep impression on individuals and providing comfort. As such, high touch, which is gaining significant attention in modern society, is a phenomenon occurring throughout politics, society, culture, art, and religion, together with high tech. Through high touch, modern people must realize how to understand and accept a modern society that is dominated by the age of technology and in which direction they should head. Under this background, this study has the following objectives: to interpret the concept of high touch in the age of high tech in association with formative art and fashion, and through various media examine the desire for expression that may stimulate emotion in modern people, which is required by the high tech-prevalent modern society. It further analyzes how high touch is reflected in modern fashion and presents the direction future fashion should head in.

• The Korean Nurse
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.86-98
• /
• 1994

We have examined the development and conceptual definition of shamanism and divination through significant characteristics of various illnesses. However, the terrminology has been inconsistent and its real conceptual meaning is not well defined. Divination is a historically dominant religious practice which represents the core of Korean folk culture. Despite prevalent prejudice toward its primitive nature, we cannot deny its profound relationship to our unconscious, especially our reliance on its religious role whenever we face crisis or conflict. It is therefore appropriate to use the term divination in this context. Shamanism originated as humanity's oldest mode of communication with divine - a religion, The shaman is not a sorceress but a priestess, a healer, a spritual guide, a leader, a mystic, traditionally having a different significance from that of the contemporary diviner or "shaman". The traditional concept of illness has been profoundly altered to serve new functions: while the shamanistic view is based upon spiritual abduction, divination on the other hand invokes concepts of spiritual invasion phenomena such as spirit intrusion, taboo violations, soul loss, object instrusion, deviations from the appropriate spiritual path besiegement, and curess or predestination (the idea that the sufferer is born with his fate), We should therefore try to understand divination from a more holistic point of view, rather than attempting to fit it into the standrd medical illness. We must recognize divination as a phenomenon within our culture, since most people have a mixed conception of illness arising from a combination of divinational and modem concepts, Since divination's humanistic approach is ingrained in our people, to irresponsibly ignore the spiritual aspects of treatment would exert a negative influence on our culture, Especially now, while attraction is focused on Korean culture and its influence on every aspect of our livies, it is important for nurses to expand our horizons in order to create a way of nursing more suitable to Korean culture. Increased importance is now being given to the opinions of patients themselves about their own illness and health, so nurses should seek to understand how patients accept their illness and what particular kinds of help they expect to receive. Consequently, an understanding of traditional divinations will enable us to utilize these characteristics on the job in order to enhance nursing care.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
• /
• v.29
• /
• pp.241-278
• /
• 2017

This study aims to classify broadscale anti-religious movements in Korea based on critical public sentiment and analyze the meanings of these movements. To carry out the research, global religious changes that have occurred in modern times were closely looked into first. The world religions have had an influence on the world's religious awareness. As a result, they intend to acquire universality on their own individual grounds while keeping consistency with the past. This phenomenon used to appear to retain the identity, recreate tradition, transform itself to fit in the present times, pursue innovation, or even become overshadowed by other forms of thought such as when religions have collided with nationalism. How does Korean society perceive the changes that emerged in world religions? In general, the circumstances that Korea faces in this era tend to manifest themselves via the Internet, multimedia, and Youtube wherein they sound off on religion and this includes criticism of Christianity, demand for reformation, attack on minor religions, pro-reform academic circles and media, and the propagation of anti-theism. Criticism of religion is interpreted as an anti-religious movement. The secularism and anti-theism brought up by some Western scholars and critical theories of religion from scientific or historical perspectives are being spread through bookstores. Christianity is prone to reflecting on itself and trying to emphasizing a meta-religious spirituality. This in short, characterizes anti-religious movements in Korea. Indeed, criticism against particular religions has also emerged in the past. However, anti-religious movements that have recently come into existence in Korea are in some regards unprecedented when compared to that of the past in terms of their patterns and context. Especially, the active anti-Christianity movement in general is definitely a new phenomenon. This research mainly focused on Christianity, but on-going anti-religious movements will be a major topic for further research that aims to understand the religious changes unfolding in Korea.

• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
• /
• v.67
• /
• pp.339-375
• /
• 2021

The author considers that contemporary society has entered the era of 'life on earth in peril' as a very serious situation in comparison with the past, and assumes that this life-in-peril situation, known as 'life crisis,' is one of the most urgent and important issues in Christian education as well as in public education. This urgency and importance is mainly based on the belief that Christianity is the religion of life that values all living beings' life and all Christians have the sacred vocation to cope with this crisis of life on earth, given by the life-giving God. For this reason, this study aims at identifying some tasks that Christian education should perform in the era of imperiled life, premising that diverse life-threatening situations and circumstances in today's world are closely related to the Christian Sabbath. More specifically, first of all, this article analyzes some notable phenomena of the life crisis in the contemporary world, such as deaths from intentional self-harm (suicides), deaths from industrial accidents and disasters, the real-life situation of vulnerable populations, people's indifference and insensitivity to the situation, and natural environmental degradation, by reflecting on current global issues as well as issues in Korea. This paper also criticizes neoliberalism, productivism, consumerism, economic materialism, egotism, and anthropocentrism as ideologies for causing these phenomena. After the criticism, the author interprets, from biblical and theological perspectives on the Christian Sabbath, main purposes and meanings of the Sabbath for contemporary society that are deeply connected with the crisis of life on earth: confessing that God takes the initiative to govern every creature's living and being; building the relationship with the God who has given the power of life to all living beings; practicing the Sabbath rest by living a holy life; and participating in the Sabbath rest as 'life-giving ministry.' In conclusion, this article suggests Christian educational practices that confront the life crisis, rooted in the purposes and meanings of the Christian Sabbath: reminding participants of the belief that God is the source of life on earth; cultivating 'life literacy'; helping people to resist the crisis of life; and encouraging humans to pursue the well-being and peace of both humanity and the earth.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.28
• /
• pp.17-36
• /
• 2012

This essay places the South Korean film Thirst (2009) within Park Chan-wook's oeuvre as a filmmaker notorious for graphic depictions of violence and revenge. Park's use of dark humour in his films, which is emphasized in Thirst perhaps more than ever, allows for a more self-aware depiction of violence, where both the viewer and the protagonist are awakened to the futility of revenge. This ultimately paints his characters as fascinatingly crazy - simultaneously heroes, villains, and victims. Film theorist Wes D. Gehring's three themes of dark humour ('man as beast,' 'the absurdity of the world,' and 'the omnipresence of death') become most obvious in Park's most recent film, which pays closer attention to character development through narrative detail. Rather than portraying the characters as sentimental, dark humour depicts their misfortunes in an alternative way, allowing for consideration of such taboo subjects as religion, adultery, and death/suicide. These issues are further tackled through Thirst's portrayal of its vampire protagonist, which ultimately de-mystifies the traditional vampire figure. While this character has more often been associated with romance, exoticism and the mystical powers of the supernatural, Thirst takes relatively little from the demons of Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) and various other Dracula adaptations, nor the romantic figures of Interview with the Vampire (Jordan, 1994), and Twilight (Hardwicke, 2008). Instead, it is part of a much smaller group of contemporary vampire films, which are rather informed by a postmodern reconfiguration of the monster. Thus, this paper examines Thirst as an important contribution to the global and hybrid nature of those films in which postmodern vampires are sympathetic and de-mystified, exhibiting symptoms stemming from a natural illness or misfortune. Park's undertaking of a vampire film allows for a complex balance between narrative and visuals through his focus on the Western implications of this myth within Korean cinema. This combination of international references and traditional Korean culture marks it as highly conscious of New Korean Cinema's focus on globalization. With Thirst, Park successfully unites familiar images of the vampire hunting and feeding, with more stylistically distinct, grotesque images of violence and revenge. In this sense, dark humour highlights the less charming aspects of the vampire struggling to survive, most effective in scenes depicting the protagonist feeding from his friend's IV in the hospital, and sitting in the sunlight, slowly turning to ash, in the final minutes of the film. The international appeal of Park's style, combining conventions of the horror/thriller genre with his own mixture of dark humour and non-linear narrative, is epitomized in Thirst, which underscores South Korea's growing global interest with its overt international framework. Furthermore, he portrayal of the vampire as a sympathetic figure allows for a shift away from the conventional focus on myth and the exotic, toward a renewed construction of the vampire in terms of its contribution to generic hybridization and cultural adaptation.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
• /
• no.53
• /
• pp.45-77
• /
• 2017

This study intends to rehabilitate the memories of the social other which have been gradually forgotten in the social events overloaded with the undemocratic violence in South Korea today. This study explores a case of Yongsan Tragedy in 2009 among the most tragic events. It notes the autonomous ways in which activist artists would like to memorize the socio-historical events anew despite the emptiness of public records. In other words, this study considers the Yongsan case to be significant that a group of the public, artists, grassroots activists, religion men got together in solidarity so as to create the contested narratives countering dominant memories and thus to signify the records written by the civil society. Among others, activist artists had documented the unofficial counter-memories of socially alienated peoples in terms of planning a series of artistic events such as opening some gallery exhibitions and performance events, issuing a volume of work books, comics and photographies, online broadcasting, and directing some documentaries. Especially, this paper tends to note the documentation of on-site activist artists to record the counter-memories against social oblivion. By doing so, it finally suggests how we could document the Yongsan Tragedy both to search out the archival implications of today's art activism and to insert those artistic records into the commonly shared counter-memories in a more inclusive way.

• Journal of Korean Classical Literature and Education
• /
• no.15
• /
• pp.329-353
• /
• 2008

Tasan Jeong Yak-yong is great scholar, who makes a synthesis of Sil-hak[實學, Practical Science of Korea], reformer of society, and a poet in the Joseon Dynasty. He expressed contradiction and conflict of those days by intellectual language, and reperceived basic ideology of the Joseon society. Also he theorized dissatisfaction of the people about those days and its system as form of religion. We can divide Tasan's life into two times. The first part is his ages 16~39 in the period of Jeong-jo(1777~1800). The second part is in the period of Sun-jo(1801~1834). In this period, he was exiled into Gang-jin for 17 years. After banishment, he lived a quiet life for the rest of his life in his hometown. His allegoric poetry were written in this second period. The special feature of allegoric poetry is strong satire. An allegory would be that is 'king's ear', which the barber has sight, or the barber's voice, which has divulged king's secret among the bamboos. Otherwise it would be that is the sound 'king's ear is donkey's ear' in the bamboos. This sound is divulging of the true donkey's ear. It doesn't travel to audiences, but travels trough wind in the bamboos. The narration exists just as story that barber can't stand to keep silence about king's secret. There are exposure of true and critical motive as allegoric expression. Tasan's allegoric poetry stand on the basis of his love for the people. Also there reveals his thought deeply with an enormous amount of reading and self-communion. Moreover there are his warm mind with his sharp insight in which captures alive lives as allegoric materials. Most of allegoric poetry satirize actuality of those days to make an excuse for external distinguishing marks of animals and plants. However Tasan's poetry are different from them. After he grasped serious problems from his contemporary actuality, and then choosed allegoric media to express correctly. Because he grasped the special features of lives after minute observation, he could exposure controversial point of the actual. His sharp insight was not limited to allegoric media. He noticed his period and the current of his society sensitively. It made his allegoric poetry as important materials to make us to know the condition of the people in the Joseon Dynasty. Tasan's allegoric poetry is inherited by Baek Seok[白石, 1912~1995] as regular juvenile literature. Baek Seok's juvenile stories are the results of expansion and transition for Tasan's allegoric poetry. Allegoric poetry was the shout of barber to prosecute about social irregularities and contradiction, and the sound of the bamboos to travel moaning of the people in the past. Now allegoric poetry create new emotion to make us to speculate ourselves with our surrounding. This changes are caused by special feature of allegoric poetry as a form to reflect our general lives.