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

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.129-153
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• 2010

The guiding research question of this paper is to discover 'why the UK could not develop a general structure in which transnational corporations were born during the end of the 19th ~ beginning of the 20th century like other countries'. In response to this question, although acknowledging its imperfections, the author would like to explore the causality in the context of 'Social Construction' which is reflected in the attributes of British society. As such, researchers are strongly recommended to take into account the actors' interests and the increased value effect of events which is driven by control power. This paper concludes that: firstly, not only was contempt for industrial capitalism prevalent in British society, the British government was unable to recognize the necessity of promoting policies for the development of transnational corporation. In addition, the increase in the clout of commercial-financial capitalists in the city of London along with the expansion of gentlemanly elites interfered with the transnationality of British companies. Secondly, the foundation of the political and economic structures in the UK experienced continuity and challenge simultaneously. Since the 1850's, the British social structure has been progressively characterized by the strengthening power of the commercial-financial elites in London, which resulted not in the transnationality of manufacturing but that of financial services. Finally, the configuration of the social network driven by the British elites consists of the actors' interests and control power in association with severance and connection. Unlike the complementarity of interests, in the initial stage, intended connection based on voluntary motivation between gentries and commercial-financial elites occurred in terms of control power. However, ultimately, the holding of power was transferred to the commercial-financial elites excluding the industrial capitalists and resulted in the reconfiguration of the social network.

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.135-156
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• 2010

While there are a few ways of giving meanings to the term, "Altai" ranging from a language family to a national residing around the Altai Mountains in Russian Federation, and to the people speaking the language or the whole area where they live, there have been controversial debates whether it is a meaningful categorization. This paper argues that the basic cause lying beneath the controversies is the underdevelopment of the subject that identifies itself as a representative of the whole area where the Altaic language family is spoken. It might be true, as some Korean and Russian scholars insist, that what deserves to be called Altaic culture (or civilization) has provided a common culture and mutual interactions with the people. However, the Altaic people failed to constitute themselves as a meaningful modern group, that is a nation, and they did not fully develop national consciousness, As a result, although their way of life may be regarded as an origin of various cultures across North-East Asia, Altaic culture is not sufficient to give a momentum to claim for cultural initiative in the region. This comes at least partly from the reconfiguration of ethnic identity through a Soviet type of modernization and its geopolitical situation surrounded by super-powers such as China and Russia, as well as belated import of religions such as Buddhism and Christianity. From a wide perspective, the trouble about delimiting an area is not unique in Altai, but universally found in anywhere, as far as area studies are concerned. The delimitation of an area is not a natural outcome of physical environment but an artificial production of how cultural-political relationships have been distributed. Therefore, while the case of Alai has its own specificities, its implications that a national or regional boundary in area studies should not be taken for granted may be applied to other areas.

• Iberoamérica
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.123-152
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• 2011

The long standing people's culture of Latin America based on social solidarity of the communities makes the political relations between the leader and the people very different from them of the european societies based on the representative democracy. At any rate, the main stream of the Populist Discourses sees the real populist political processes with the pejorative senses attributing the demagogue style of the leaders. In these sense, it is very important to re-consider the populism discourses of Ernesto Laclau who thinks that the populism is a way of interpreting the emergence of the people to establish the social demands in the context of populist real politics. According to Laclau, "the populism seeks for the radical reconfiguration of the revolt of the 'Status Quo' and new order". This work will confirm if this interpretation of Laclau can be applied to Peronist political regime. Meanwhile the first group of the orthodox line of the discourses on populism including Gino Germani shows that the populism is a political movement based on the manipulation and demagogue by the charismatic leader of the irrational mass during the period in transition after the crises of the traditional oligarchy in Latin America. And another line of the main stream of discourses on populism including Cardoso and O'Donnell says that the populism is a political phenomena in a period of transition towards the modernization and the national development by means of the industrialization through the substitution of the imports and the alliance between the classes after the 1930's. But these principal interpretations on populism disregards that in Argentina many urban poor working class people had lived under the racist, unequal painful social relations due to the underestimation and the discrimination by the upper and the middle class with many intellectuals. But Peronism had considered them as the new social subjects with human dignities. And so we have to rethink the clientelism also with another meanings. In this sense, the theories of Ernesto Laclau on populism is very helpful to illuminate the sensitive and ambiguous meanings of Peronism. Especially Peronism makes the urban working class maintain their life styles more tended to them of the traditional communities and go towards the anti-Status Quo. That is a key of success of Peronism not only that time but until these days. And so this study will show that it is the most important thing that Peronist regime had made the emergence of the 'people' in the meaning of advancing the democracy in Argentina.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.199-226
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• 2024

In response to the era of transformation necessitating the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital technologies, educational innovation is undertaken with the implementation of AI digital textbooks in Mathematics, English, and Information subjects by 2025 in Korea. Within this context, this study analyzed the perceptions and needs of elementary school teachers regarding mathematics AI digital textbook. Based on a survey conducted in November 2023, involving 132 elementary school teachers across the country, the analysis revealed that the majority of elementary school teachers had a low perception of the introduction and need for mathematics AI digital textbooks. However, some recognized the potential for personalized learning and effective teaching support. Furthermore, among the core technologies of the AI digital textbook, teachers highly valued the necessity of learning diagnostics and teacher reconfiguration functions and had the most positive perception of their usefulness in math lessons, while their perception of interactivity was relatively low. These findings suggest the need for changing teachers' perceptions through professional development and information provision to ensure the successful adoption and use of mathematics AI digital textbooks. Specifically, providing concrete and practical ways to use the AI digital textbook, exploring alternatives to digital overload, and continuing development and research on core technologies.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.39-57
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• 2012

The unabated influx of micro businesses has turned the Korean retailing market to a rat race, which causes severe financial distress for micro business owners due to heavy competition. The woes of these micro business owner's are exacerbated by the presence of large scale distributors such as Super Supermarket(SSM) and large discount stores. In summary, the Korean retail market is overburdened an uneconomically viable. Retailing has low barriers to entry which attracts unskilled labor or those with little capital. These start-ups have low opportunity costs since they would make low wages elsewhere in the economy. Thus, these owners are content with relatively low returns on their investment. These 'subsistence ventures' are maintained for economical viability rather than economic growth. These 'subsistence ventures' intensifies competition among small-scale businesses. The presence of large retail corporations also aggravates the situation. The recent stagnation of the economy has worsened the retail market in Korea. The overwhelming competition solidifies the coarse structural system and the prolonged economic sluggishness has increased the risk of insolvency for micro business owners. As the economy continues to stagnate, the imminent risk in retailing market will rise up to surface threatening economic stability. More systematic inflows and outflows of retailers are required in order to redress this structural problem. It has been empirically shown that the self-employment rate is high in Korea compared to other OECD countries. To draw the comparison of self-employment rate by industry, Korea shows high rates among transportation, whole sale, retail, education, lodging, and restaurants. In the case of the transportation and education service sectors, this high rate can be explained by the idiosyncratic nature of Korean culture. In the transportation sector, political policies favor private cap service and private freight carriers. In the education service sector, Koreans put particular emphasis on education that leads to many private institutions that outnumber other OECD countries. For these singular reasons, Korea maintains high micro business, self-employed rates particularly in retailing. A comparable nation is Japan, with its similar social, economic, cultural environment among OECD countries. Unlike Korea, Japan has much lower rates of micro business which continues to decrease. Also Korean retailers are much more destitute than Japanese. The fundamental problem of Korean retailing is the involuntary exit of these 'subsistence ventures,' micro businesses with low margins, in which a small drop in demand can lead to financial difficulties for the owner. This problem will be exacerbated when Korean babyboomers retire and join the micro business ventures. The first priority in order to cope with the severity of oversupply in retailing is to provide better opportunities for the potential self-employers. There should be viable alternatives to subsistent ventures. Strengthening the retirement program, scrutiny of exit process, reconfiguration of policy funds are the recommendations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 1993.06a
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• pp.975-976
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• 1993

This talk presents the overview of the author's research and development activities on fuzzy inference hardware. We involved it with two distinct approaches. The first approach is to use application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) technology. The fuzzy inference method is directly implemented in silicon. The second approach, which is in its preliminary stage, is to use more conventional microprocessor architecture. Here, we use a quantitative technique used by designer of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) to modify an architecture of a microprocessor. In the ASIC approach, we implemented the most widely used fuzzy inference mechanism directly on silicon. The mechanism is beaded on a max-min compositional rule of inference, and Mandami's method of fuzzy implication. The two VLSI fuzzy inference chips are designed, fabricated, and fully tested. Both used a full-custom CMOS technology. The second and more claborate chip was designed at the University of North Carolina(U C) in cooperation with MCNC. Both VLSI chips had muliple datapaths for rule digital fuzzy inference chips had multiple datapaths for rule evaluation, and they executed multiple fuzzy if-then rules in parallel. The AT & T chip is the first digital fuzzy inference chip in the world. It ran with a 20 MHz clock cycle and achieved an approximately 80.000 Fuzzy Logical inferences Per Second (FLIPS). It stored and executed 16 fuzzy if-then rules. Since it was designed as a proof of concept prototype chip, it had minimal amount of peripheral logic for system integration. UNC/MCNC chip consists of 688,131 transistors of which 476,160 are used for RAM memory. It ran with a 10 MHz clock cycle. The chip has a 3-staged pipeline and initiates a computation of new inference every 64 cycle. This chip achieved an approximately 160,000 FLIPS. The new architecture have the following important improvements from the AT & T chip: Programmable rule set memory (RAM). On-chip fuzzification operation by a table lookup method. On-chip defuzzification operation by a centroid method. Reconfigurable architecture for processing two rule formats. RAM/datapath redundancy for higher yield It can store and execute 51 if-then rule of the following format: IF A and B and C and D Then Do E, and Then Do F. With this format, the chip takes four inputs and produces two outputs. By software reconfiguration, it can store and execute 102 if-then rules of the following simpler format using the same datapath: IF A and B Then Do E. With this format the chip takes two inputs and produces one outputs. We have built two VME-bus board systems based on this chip for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The board is now installed in a robot at ORNL. Researchers uses this board for experiment in autonomous robot navigation. The Fuzzy Logic system board places the Fuzzy chip into a VMEbus environment. High level C language functions hide the operational details of the board from the applications programme . The programmer treats rule memories and fuzzification function memories as local structures passed as parameters to the C functions. ASIC fuzzy inference hardware is extremely fast, but they are limited in generality. Many aspects of the design are limited or fixed. We have proposed to designing a are limited or fixed. We have proposed to designing a fuzzy information processor as an application specific processor using a quantitative approach. The quantitative approach was developed by RISC designers. In effect, we are interested in evaluating the effectiveness of a specialized RISC processor for fuzzy information processing. As the first step, we measured the possible speed-up of a fuzzy inference program based on if-then rules by an introduction of specialized instructions, i.e., min and max instructions. The minimum and maximum operations are heavily used in fuzzy logic applications as fuzzy intersection and union. We performed measurements using a MIPS R3000 as a base micropro essor. The initial result is encouraging. We can achieve as high as a 2.5 increase in inference speed if the R3000 had min and max instructions. Also, they are useful for speeding up other fuzzy operations such as bounded product and bounded sum. The embedded processor's main task is to control some device or process. It usually runs a single or a embedded processer to create an embedded processor for fuzzy control is very effective. Table I shows the measured speed of the inference by a MIPS R3000 microprocessor, a fictitious MIPS R3000 microprocessor with min and max instructions, and a UNC/MCNC ASIC fuzzy inference chip. The software that used on microprocessors is a simulator of the ASIC chip. The first row is the computation time in seconds of 6000 inferences using 51 rules where each fuzzy set is represented by an array of 64 elements. The second row is the time required to perform a single inference. The last row is the fuzzy logical inferences per second (FLIPS) measured for ach device. There is a large gap in run time between the ASIC and software approaches even if we resort to a specialized fuzzy microprocessor. As for design time and cost, these two approaches represent two extremes. An ASIC approach is extremely expensive. It is, therefore, an important research topic to design a specialized computing architecture for fuzzy applications that falls between these two extremes both in run time and design time/cost. TABLEI INFERENCE TIME BY 51 RULES {{{{Time }}{{MIPS R3000 }}{{ASIC }}{{Regular }}{{With min/mix }}{{6000 inference 1 inference FLIPS }}{{125s 20.8ms 48 }}{{49s 8.2ms 122 }}{{0.0038s 6.4㎲ 156,250 }} }}