• Journal of Ginseng Culture
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• v.3
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• pp.90-118
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• 2021

Gaeseong fostered the conditions necessary for modern capitalism, as huge capital was accumulated through the cultivation and trade of ginseng, which were activities that flourished in the 18th century. During the Japanese colonial era, ginseng merchants were not simply limited to acquiring landowner capital from ginseng trade but actively converted such resource to productive and financial capital, thereby becoming modern entrepreneurs. Ginseng merchants led the joint management and investment of Gaeseong Electric Co., Ltd., Daehan Cheonil Bank, Gaeseong Brewing Co., Ltd., and Songgo Textile Company, founded in the early 20th century. They pursued corporate profits and, as leading individuals of society, spearheaded regional development by supporting educational and cultural projects in Gaeseong. These projects included the establishment of the Gaeseong Commercial School, the publication of Goryeo Times, and the operation of the Gaeseong Jwa Theater. Although liberal economics prioritized shareholder interest, the 21st century witnessed an emphasis on social responsibility among stakeholders asthe major purpose of enterprises. A trend that emerged was ESG (environment, social, governance) management, in which non-financial factors are valued more highly than financial performance. A successful business, which was denoted only by high profits in the past, is now defined by whether a company fulfills its social responsibility. In the early 20th century, the corporate activities of ginseng merchants in Gaeseong reflected entrepreneurship and stakeholder-centered ESG management, which later emerged as essential elements of modern business management. The modern management philosophy ahead of its times stemmed from the regionality of Gaeseong. The political discrimination against Gaeseong residents in the Joseon Dynasty precluded them from becoming government officers, and under a strict social hierarchy, yangban ("noblemen"), the intellectuals of the Joseon Dynasty, were forced to serve as merchants. Son Bong-sang and Kong Seong-hak, aside from being representative ginseng merchants, were both Confucian scholars and writers. The second and third generations of ginseng merchant families who had received higher education abroad returned to Gaeseong to carry on with their family businesses, then established modern companies with capital accrued from the ginseng industry. An analysis of the commercial activities of ginseng merchants in the early 20th century confirmed that these individuals were pioneering entrepreneurs who adopted the ESG management philosophy. In ginseng merchants, one sees a dimension of capitalism with a human face, as with ginseng thatsaves human life.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.9-41
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• 2020

Park Jong-won's debut film "Guro Arirang," based on a short story of the same title by Lee Moon-yeol, is the first commercial film to deal with labor struggles from a worker's point of view in the wake of the 1987 democratic movement, and a pioneering work in terms of representing female workers the Korean cinema has traditionally turned away from. In this film Park Jong-won tried to win the sympathy of the middle class for labor movement in spite of the red scare which still stood firm in the Korean society at that time. To convey its progressive message in a form acceptable to the middle class public, the film portrays labor issues in the light of universal humanity and ethics, not in terms of class hostility or struggle. Park Jong-won calls this point of view "common sense of normal people" and emphasizes its universality and objectivity. This study critically examines the cinematic strategies to deal with labor issues in a form acceptable to the public in a conventional and commercial film and the ideological implications of the "common sense of normal people" reflected in such strategies. The first chapter of the study reveals that the film destroys the irony of the original story and reduces the complex constellation of the characters to the conflict between pure good and evil, creating a melodramatic composition in which the good falls victim to evil. The tragedies suffered by the workers in the film are of course intended to arouse the audience's strong sympathy and solidarity with them. The second chapter shows that the film's various scenes and episodes converge on the them of compassion and grief, and are mostly based on cultural and real experiences and events that caused great public sensations at that time. Especially in the last decisive scene of the movie, the memory of the June 1987 uprising is strongly recalled. So "Guro Arirang" can be seen as a patchwork of proven cases of compassion and grief. The third chapter examines the implications of the scene where the workers turn back demands for wages and put the issues of human treatment and trust to the forefront at the crucial moment of their struggle. It appeals to universal moral values and sentiments that everyone has to acknowledge and removes the political dimension from the workers' campaign. While the film tends to become a pure story of humanity marginalizing irreconcilable conflicts of class interest, the workers fall to the position of passive victims who can be deeply sympathetic on the one hand, and on the other, are idealized as leaders with noble attitude keeping themselves aloof from the hard reality. As a result, the movie loses its realistic ground and weakens its narrative probability. The scenes reminiscent of the 1987 uprising which evoke the solidarity between working and middle class fail to integrate harmoniously into the whole story of the film and remain only as fragmentary parts of the patchwork of compassion and grief.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.165-183
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• 2016

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid diffusion of technological devices and a rising number of various devices, resulting in an escalation of virtual reality technology. Technological market has rapidly been changed from smartphone to wearable devices based on virtual reality. Virtual reality can make users feel real situation through sensing interaction, voice, motion capture and so on. Facebook.com, Google, Samsung, LG, Sony and so on have investigated developing platform of virtual reality. the pricing of virtual reality devices also had decreased into 30% from their launched period. Thus market infrastructure in virtual reality have rapidly been developed to crease marketplace. However, most consumers recognize that virtual reality is not ease to purchase or use. That could not lead consumers to positive attitude for devices and purchase the related devices in the early market. Through previous studies related to virtual reality, there are few studies focusing on why the devices for virtual reality stayed in early stage in adoption & diffusion context in the market. Almost previous studies considered the reasons of hard adoption for innovative products in the viewpoints of Typology of Innovation Resistance, MIR(Management of Innovation Resistant), UTAUT & UTAUT2. However, product-based antecedents also important to increase user intention to purchase and use products in the technological market. In this study, we focus on user acceptance and resistance for increasing purchase and usage promotions of wearable devices related to virtual reality based on headgear products like Galaxy Gear. Especially, we added a variables like attitude confidence as a dimension for user resistance. The research questions of this study are follows. First, how attitude confidence and innovativeness resistance affect user intention to use? Second, What factors related to content and brand contexts can affect user intention to use? This research collected data from the participants who have experiences using virtual rality headgears aged between 20s to 50s located in South Korea. In order to collect data, this study used a pilot test and through making face-to-face interviews on three specialists, face validity and content validity were evaluated for the questionnaire validity. Cleansing the data, we dropped some outliers and data of irrelevant papers. Totally, 156 responses were used for testing the suggested hypotheses. Through collecting data, demographics and the relationships among variables were analyzed through conducting structural equation modeling by PLS. The data showed that the sex of respondents who have experience using social commerce sites (male=86(55.1%), female=70(44.9%). The ages of respondents are mostly from 20s (74.4%) to 30s (16.7%). 126 respondents (80.8%) have used virtual reality devices. The results of our model estimation are as follows. With the exception of Hypothesis 1 and 7, which deals with the two relationships between brand awareness to attitude confidence, and quality of content to perceived enjoyment, all of our hypotheses were supported. In compliance with our hypotheses, perceived ease of use (H2) and use innovativeness (H3) were supported with its positively influence for the attitude confidence. This finding indicates that the more ease of use and innovativeness for devices increased, the more users' attitude confidence increased. Perceived price (H4), enjoyment (H5), Quantity of contents (H6) significantly increase user resistance. However, perceived price positively affect user innovativeness resistance meanwhile perceived enjoyment and quantity of contents negatively affect user innovativeness resistance. In addition, aesthetic exterior (H6) was also positively associated with perceived price (p<0.01). Also projection quality (H8) can increase perceived enjoyment (p<0.05). Finally, attitude confidence (H10) increased user intention to use virtual reality devices. however user resistance (H11) negatively affect user intention to use virtual reality devices. The findings of this study show that attitude confidence and user innovativeness resistance differently influence customer intention for using virtual reality devices. There are two distinct characteristic of attitude confidence: perceived ease of use and user innovativeness. This study identified the antecedents of different roles of perceived price (aesthetic exterior) and perceived enjoyment (quality of contents & projection quality). The findings indicated that brand awareness and quality of contents for virtual reality is not formed within virtual reality market yet. Therefore, firms should developed brand awareness for their product in the virtual market to increase market share.