• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.35
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• pp.123-154
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• 2014

In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Ryukyu kingdom had been invaded and controlled by Japan, some official texts about 'history' were documented. In that texts, there are some myths about the kings-Syunten(舜天), Eiso(英祖), Satto(察度), Syouhasi(尙巴志), Syouen(尙圓)-who founded dynasties of Ryukyu kingdom. This study attempts to delineate the features and meaning of those founder myths as a polotial discourse for kingship. The results of this study are as follows. 1. The founder myths are discourses to describe the genealogy of the Ryukyu kingdom as the result of Mandate of Heaven(T'ien Ming, 天命). 2. In ancient okinawa, the sun was a symbol of ruler. The king of Ryukyu kingdom was thought as 'son of the sun', 'Tedako(てだこ, 太陽子) in the time of Syou dynasty(尙王朝). But in the founder myths, the only one Tedako is Eiso. 3. In the myths, the 'historical' founders are described as the king for agriculture. They were said to make the farming instruments with iron and rule the spring water for farming. The iron and water for fariming was thought to represent the power of king and the kingship. 4. The writers of myths aimed to be separated from the mythical kingship of past Ryukyu(古琉球). So, they threw the idea of Tedako(=mythical kingship) into the prison of mythical ages by rewriting myth of King Eiso. Instead of it, they built up the new image of agriculture-king who rules and controlls the iron and water for good farming. The meaing of this change, from 'shiny sun' to 'cultural king', is that the abstract and general power of kingship was turned into a concrete and restricted power of kingship. On the bases of it, there was the confucian political ideas from China, T'ien Ming thought(天命論). Under the influence of not only China but also Japan, the writers of myths attempt to find a new way for their kingdom by reconstructing kingship with ruminating over the kingship of past. The myth of founders in the 17th and 18th Centuries shows the aspects of kingship of Ryukyu kingdom and tells us that those myths are the political discourses identifying kingship and Ryukyu kingdom.

• Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.50-87
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• 2013

C. G. Jung believed that universal and basic condition of human's Unconscious comes out from Märchen or mythology. We can easily experience these universality of human nature in dreams. Therefore, It is very important to interpret mythogens that appear in myths and märchen in analytical psychology to understand these 'big dreams' which could be seen in clinical practice. As I was interested in interpreting myths in analytic psychology, I tried to find universality of archetypes in Korea's traditional folk tales and took note of the birth myth of Hyeokgeose, the founder of Shilla dynasty, while examining the chater of the Unsual in history in the Heritage of the Three Kingdoms. Shilla was founded earlier than two other countries, but it was located in the very south of the Korean Peninsula, and it was behind times in politically, militarily, and culturally compare to Goguryeo and Baekje. However, Shilla achieved unifying the Three Kingdoms and it lasted 1000 years, the longest unified history in Korean history. I tried to examine archetypes in the birth myth if there are any backgrounds that are related to finding a Shilla Kingdom. It is noted that myth of the founder of Korean Peninsula's small Kingdom Shilla has complete story from before the birth to birth, birth of spouse, growth, marriage, accession, governing, death, after death, and succession. Symbols such as numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13 and 61, various azimuthes including north, west, south, east, and central, animals like tiger, white horse, hen, dragon, phoenix, and snakes, natures like main symbol egg, rock, gourd, lightening, spring water, stream, tree, forest, mountain, iron and goddess-image like seon-do Holy Mother gradually appears in the myth. These symbols could show a meaning of human experience such as birth of Conscious, growth and development of paternal and maternal love, and story of regeneration and extinction. Moreover, It could be seen as these progress eternally continues in next generation. I have found out that a word, a sentence or stories that looks meaningless in myth revealed its true symbolical meaning. In addition, interaction between Unconscious and Conscious repeats in different forms, and expressed in layered.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.6
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• pp.51-75
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• 2004

Is there a pattern in history? How and why does social change occur? Are we to distinguish between the methods to be employed in the study of man and the study of nature? How does linguistic, or 'philological', knowledge contribute to unearthing historical facts? These are the queries that Vico grappled with throughout his life. Vico, however, was an outsider to the intellectual atmosphere of his own day, dismissed as obscure, speculative, and unsound. Only after his death did he begin to inspire enthusiasm among diverse readers, and as long as we remain concerned with the queries mentioned above, Vico's reflections will come alive with contemporary relevance. Actually he has been regarded as the founder--unrecognized by his contemporaries--of the philosophy of history and as a thinker whose ideas anticipated such later intellectual movements as historicism, pragmatism, existentialism, and structuralism. There are many among modern minds who find Vico fascinating for his view of myth as concrete thought and of an age of myth as a necessary age in the intellectual evolution of the human race. James Joyce, for one, was deeply impressed by Vico's view on myth, on metaphor, on Homer, on language, on psychology, and much else besides. 'My imagination grows when I read Vico,' he once confessed, 'as it doesn't when I read Freud or Jung.' Some philosophers, critics, psychologists, social scientists and even geographers would describe themselves as 'Vichians', sharing the view that Vico was a poet and a lawyer, a platonist and a baconian rolled into one. His refusal to be confined within any one discipline, his imaginative effort to understand different cultures, and his insight in dealing with some fundamental problems in the study of humanity all compel admiration and deserve to be emulated in our age--an age when the split between the literary and the scientific approaches to the understanding of society is widening into a chasm. Vico has left some of his most important ideas underdeveloped or even undeveloped, to be excavated and polished by us afier our own fashion. It is surprising that Vico is still a man of obscure name in the academia of our country, Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.178-188
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• 1998

In this paper, I tried to interpretate the matter and form of Chumsungdae, which has been mainly assumed as an facility for astronomical observaton of ancient Shilla dynasty, located on Kyongju, Korea. Basically, I took the thoughts of the place and the theory of cognition on landscape as a research tool, and the research was undertaken through the surveying the physical surroundings of chumsungdae and studying the references related to a myth, thoughts, and a tale of shilla era. This research was anticipated to find out the various symbolic meanings and functions of Chumsungdae and its place, which is somewhat different from the view of scientific uses of it. The matter and form of the Chumsungdae realizes the archetypal form of the well and meanings of petition for agricultural abundance, leading to a wishing for political stability of the nation, especially an authority of a reign of the queen, named Sun-duk who is the first one in Shilla Dynasty. The chumsungdae was located on the very sacred place surrounded by the tumulous and Kyerim forest which was birth and death place of the founder and king of a family of Kim. It does mean that the Chumsungdae was very scared work, and made place with combination of meaning above mentioned and natural environment. Finally, this paper suggested the neighboring area of the Chumsungdae be restored with the forest as an archetypeof old picture and environment of Kyerim.