• English & American cultural studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.47-70
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• 2016

Under the inhumane oppression of imperialism, the Third World's political violence has been often represented as an immediate and explosive one with an instant, concentrated visibility. Yet the ecological and psychological exploitation of the Third-World countries by empires, as Rob Nixon insists, shows the relative invisibility of slow violence. This paper is to reveal this slow violence of the marginalized areas symbolized as the lowland. Although Arne Naess' deep ecology promotes the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. this paper deals with three postcolonial ecological textbooks which criticize the white-centered deep ecology: Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland, and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Through postcolonial critical study, this paper finds out that all these three works have some themes in common. First, these postcolonial works assume a shape of family saga which is parallel to the slow violence of ecological and psychological plundering of empires in the postcolonial countries. Second, like the mangroves which have a tenacious hold on life, these postcolonial people rather overcome the heterogenic challenge with the sturdy and tough mind than defeated. Third, the native people's ethics of earth functions as the stronghold for their respectable lifestyle in their indigenous historicity. Finally, as a big fat brother, the Americanized globalization or neoliberalism is warned as the neocolonialism which is often shown as the disguised pattern of greenwashing. Namely, the people's self-enhancement is always prior to the imperialistic development or neoliberalism in the postcolonial ecological texts which sharply contrast the native's life consciousness and the empire's development theory.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.73-99
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• 2010

To properly answer the question 'Why have Vietnamese Women kept appearing in Korean Films and TV dramas?', We need to induce Postcolonial discourse along with historical and cultural similarities between Korea and Vietnam. It is because the relationship of two countries can be defined as a neocolonialism specially in view of economic relationship. Koreans need to locate themselves on the superior position by othering Vietnamese women, who are close enough to be compared and also distant enough to be othered. This paper is intended to bring their being in Korean films and TV dramas under the light of postcolonial discourse. According to the postcolonial concepts such as ambivalence, stereotyping and subaltern, Korean films and TV dramas are classified into three groups, which are Vietnam war melodramas, Horror movies based in Vietnam, and TV dramas with Vietnamese brides. War melodramas have been othering Vietnamese woman through ambivalence of the fear of Vietcom warrior and the fascination of exotic beauty. Horror movies, produced about 10 years later, brought the Vietnamese women back to Korean audience, stereotyping them into ghosts, which are incarnated through the suppression and eruption of sexual desire. The third group consists mainly of TV dramas. Their story usually evolves around Vietnamese brides migrating into Korea. The women are forced into the position of Subaltern, not representing themselves in their own voices. Facing multi-cultural society, our visual media are requested to modify their neocolonial approach of presenting Vietnamese women. To accomplish the goal, they have to find ways of storytelling to show the women in their everyday lives and help them to speak for themselves.