• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
• /
• no.4
• /
• pp.33-56
• /
• 2006

The cultural debates between conservatives and liberals at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s were termed as "culture wars." The "culture wars" involved a diverse range of controversial issues, such as the introduction of multicultural curricula in educational institutions, prayers in schools, whether to allow gays to serve openly in the military, and whether abortion should be permitted. The most heated debates of the "culture wars" regarding art raged over the NEA and the question of whether Andres Serrano's works should have been publicly funded, in addition to the exhibition "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment" which were charged as projecting "obscene" or "blasphemous" images. This paper examines the development of culture wars in art and focuses on several issues invoked by the NEA debates. However, it is not a detailed chronological investigation. Rather it pays attention to the several phases of the debates, analyzing and criticizing the clashes of the political and esthetical points of views between conservatives and liberals. How could NEA funding, a mere fraction of the federal budget, have become so critical for both sides(conservative and liberal), for politicians and artists' groups, and for academics and the general public? The art community was astounded by this chain of events; artists personally reviled, exhibitions withdrawn and under attack, the NEA budget threatened, all because of a few images. For conservative politicians, the NEA debate was not only a battle over the public funding of art, but a war over a larger social agenda, a war for "American values and cultures"based on the family, Christianity, the English language, and patriarchy. Conservative politicians argued the question was not one of "censorship" but of "sponsorship," since the NEA charter committed it to "helping museums better serve the citizens of the United States."Liberals and art communities argued that the attempt to restrict NEA funding violated the First Amendment rights of artists, namely "free speeches." "No matter how divided individuals are on matters of taste," Arthur C. Danto wrote, "freedom is in the interest of every citizen." The interesting phase is that both sides are actually borrowing one another's point of view when they are accompanied by art criticism. Kramer, representative of conservative art critic, objected the invasion of political contents or values in art, and struggled to keep art's own realm by promoting pure aesthetic values such as quality and beauty. But, when he talked about Mapplethorpe's works, he advocated political and ethical values. By contrast, art experts who argued for Mapplethorpe's works in the Cincinnati trial defended his work, ironically by ignoring its manifest sexual metaphor or content although they believed that the issues of AIDS and homosexuality in his work were to be freely expressed in the art form. They adopted a formalistic approach, for example, by comparing a child nude with putti, a traditional child-angel icon. For a while, NEA debates made art institutions, whether consciously or unconsciously, exert self-censorship, yet at the same time they were also producing positive aspects. To the majority of people, art was still regarded as belonging to the pure aesthetic realm away from political, economical, and social ones. These debates, however, were expanding the very perspective on the notion of what is art and of how art is produced, raising questions on art appreciation, representation, and power. The interesting fact remains: had the works not been swiped in NEA debates, could the Serrano's or Mapplethorpe's images gain the extent of power and acceptance that it has today?

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.177-219
• /
• 2016

A commercial advertisement is not only a way of competition but also a medium of communication. Thus, it is under the constitutional protection of the freedom of business (article 15 of the Constitution) as well as the freedom of press [article 21 (1) of the Constitution]. In terms of the freedom of business or competition, it should be noted that an unfair advertising (false or misleading advertisement) can be regulated as an unfair competition, while any restraint on advertising other than unfair one might be doubted as an unjustifiable restraint of trade. In terms of the freedom of press or communication, it is important that article 21 (2) of the Constitution forbids any kind of (prior) censorship, and the Constitutional Court applies this restriction even to commercial advertising. In this article, the applicability of these schemes to advertising of the so-called learned professions, especially physician, are to be examined, and some proposals for the reformation of the current regulatory regime are to be made. Main arguments of this article can be summarized as follows: First, the current regime which requires advance review of physician advertising as prescribed in article 56 (2) no. 9 of Medical Act should be reformed. It does not mean that the current interpretation of article 21 of the Constitution is agreeable. Though a commercial advertising is a way of communication and can be protected by article 21 (1) of the Constitution, it should not be under the prohibition of censorship prescribed by article 21 (2) of the Constitution. The Constitutional Court adopts the opposite view, however. It is doubtful that physician advertising needs some prior restraint, also. Of course, there exists severe informational asymmetry between physicians and patients and medical treatment might harm the life and health of patients irrevocably, so that medical treatment can be discerned from other services. It is civil and criminal liability for medical malpractice and duty to inform and not regulation on physician advertising, to address these differences or problems. Advance review should be abandoned and repelled, or substituted by more unproblematic way of regulation such as an accreditation of reviewed advertising or a self-regulation preformed by physician association independently from the Ministry of Health and Welfare or any other governmental agencies. Second, the substantive criteria for unfair physician advertising also should correspond that of unfair advertising in general. Some might argue that a learned profession, especially medical practice, is totally different from other businesses. It is performed under the professional ethics and should not persue commercial interest; medical practice in Korea is governed by the National Health Insurance system, the stability of which might be endangered when commercial competition in medical practice be allowed. Medical Act as well as the condition of medical practice market do not exclude competition between physicians. The fact is quite the opposite. Physicians are competing even though under the professional ethics and obligations and all the restrictions provided by the National Health Insurance system. In this situation, regulation on physician advertising might constitute unjustifiable restraint of competition, especially a kind of entry barrier for 'new physicians.'

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.203-211
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this study was to develop an education system to protect elementary school students from inappropriate information and verify the effect of the program. It was deemed necessary that an education system be developed for the cultivation of appropriate information selection and self-censorship of inappropriate Internet information. To this time, however, schools have not placed great importance on this concept because of the lack of the documents and the teaching strategies. Our system gives support on three levels to a learning course according to collected documentation. The learner receives not only feedback activities and results from others and the teacher, but also counsel from the teacher about difficulties. The system implementing this methodology indicated that both the students' recognition of harmful information and their moral values were improved as the result of applying the system in a local elementary school.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.58
• /
• pp.201-221
• /
• 2012

The male audience for melodrama, a typical women's genre, has drawn little attention in the audience research. Thus, this paper examines how and in what context they watch it, as well as how they accept and rationalize their 'feminine' taste. And in-depth interviews were conducted with seven middle-aged males. While they acknowledge their feminine taste, they tend to legitimize and re-contextualize it in ways that may not contradict their notion of masculinity. Consequently, they often demonstrate seemingly contradictory attitudes oscillating between enjoying it and distancing themselves from their please of viewing. Yet, their acknowledgement of feminization hardly extends to an acceptance of being labelled 'feminine' men. They attempt to distance themselves from emotional engagement in television viewing, either through emotional self-censorship or under-valuation of the taste for the genre itself. Finally, they hardly connect their taste for the genre to a sort of active post-viewing practices of fandom. The results have considerable implications for understanding how the melodrama-viewing males keep traversing the boundaries of gender-specific genres, and reconstitute the notion of masculinity.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.56
• /
• pp.26-47
• /
• 2011

Commercialism of journalism adheres to short-term profit, and the decrease in quality. Commercialization means the process that is deepened low quality of journalism. It is for a purpose and a means to have been transposed. The mid term of 1990's, deregulation of media and commercialism of journalism were gaining power in the developed countries. Korea has come to the similar condition which is most laws of press and broadcasting are deregulated. There is also concern to the commercialization of journalism in Korea. Four broadcasting channels (cross-ownership media) enter in media market, and a huge change is expected. It is for concern regarding commercialization of journalism not to stop to a baseless anxiety. In order to consider more deeply the problems of commercialism, I have approached instances of the art world and the developed countries. Through this, I declared the importance of ethics of journalists.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.58
• /
• pp.106-129
• /
• 2012

Social Network Service(SNS), which are an emerging form of political architecture, have been a political means to promote civic engagement and shape pubic opinions on social issues. Along with the influence of SNSs, the governmental control on the dissemination of information over SNSs has increased more and more. It would be ideal if the autonomous governance regulates SNSs which facilitate the networks of the dispersed people. It is the fact, though, that compulsory regulations under which the government controls impose policy and legal restrictions on political expressions. The current study addresses expressive and participatory nature embedded in technological characteristics of SNSs and discusses the problems of content regulations of political expression over SNSs. First of all, it is analyzed that light touch regulation or light touch monitoring should be applied to regulating content on SNSs, particularly political expressions. Constitutional Court proclaimed that legal restrictions on the Internet could infringe basic rights of the people and thus under unambiguous standards, the Doctrine of Clear and Present Danger should be applied to its content. Second, it is found that clarifying the definition of illegality in the application of legal restrictions is necessary to minimize the excessive misleading. Third, it is required that Korea Communications Standards Commission under the government control needs to change in determining the scope of illegal information. In a domestic level, there needs to be safeguards for the protection of the self-regulatory organization such as KISO to guarantee voluntary and autonomous regulatory practices.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.30
• /
• pp.239-273
• /
• 2005

This study compares the Korean and U.S. media's coverage of the No Gun Ri massacre, analyzing their usages of sources in the stories and explaining by the perspective of media sociology why they differed in them. For the comparison with the AP's report, we selected only the reports of the Korean media which dealt with the incident itself. It was found that most of the Korean media utilized a very small number of sources, and that they relied on the victims alone. In contrast, the AP's sources were much more numerous drawn from both the victims and offenders. As a result, the Korean media failed to ensure the 'diversity of sources' and to illuminate the whole picture of the incident, although they had started to report it far earlier than the AP. From the depth interviews with the reporters, through the framework of media sociology, it was found first at the personal level, that the difference was brought about by the divergent news evaluation. It seemed that the Korean journalists regarded the incident with relatively lower news value than their U.S. counterparts. Next, at the intra-organizational level, it was conceded, neither did the Korean new media have so flexible news collecting system, nor so murk man-power and resource as the AP, which were required for the coverage of such an incident. The Korean media had not established the convention to utilize various sources with conflicting interests. Last, at the extra-organizational level, the Korean news media's coverage was still influenced by the self-censorship mechanism due to the ideologies of 'pro-Americanism' and 'anti-communism', even though the democratization of Korean society itself enabled the sensitive incident to be dealt with eventually by the media.

• Journal of Information Management
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.183-209
• /
• 2007

The representative example of the business model on internet environment, the business of the Naver, Empas and Google which provides information retrieval service is the internet portal. The portal sites provide information retrieval service which provides users information what they want to find, that is a huge social contribution. The portal site which provides a search service leads much problems. Consequently, the regulation against information retrieval is asserted powerfully in spite of the public interest. Namely, the regulation regarding the search business owner is tried. Finally, portal business owner puts the social responsibility as OSP. But, there is a doubt that portal business owner who has much problem which occurred on the portal site indirectly has responsibility directly. That is duty on portal site owner the censorship on the contents transferred. So, this thesis researches on the social critical opinion relating with a information retrieval from the legal side against the problem of the Internet.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.45-86
• /
• 2020

In this article, the "modernization of the tradition" constructed on the cultural politics and the way in which it appropriated in the korean theatre in the 1970s were analyzed. It is trying to reveal its implications. It is also a work to critically review the aspects of self-censorship in the korean theatre in the 70s. To that end, we looked at the theatre company Minye Theatre, which preoccupied the traditional discussions in the 1970s by creating national dramas. Until now, the evaluation of the theatre company Minye Theatre in the 1970s has focused on the achievement on the directing of Heo Gyu, who promoted the succession and transformation of tradition. However, the traditional ideology constructed in the state-led cultural politics in the 70s and the way in which it was operated cannot be evaluated only in terms of artistic achievement. The ideology of tradition is selected according to the selective criteria of the subject to appropriate tradition. What's important is that certain objects are excluded, discarded, re-elected, re-interpreted and re-recognized in the selection process of selected traditional ideology. This is the situation in the '70s, when tradition was constantly re-recognized amid differences between the decadent and the disorder that were then designated as non-cultural, and led to a new way of appropriate. The nation-led traditional discussion of the '70s legalized the tradition with stable values, one of the its way was the national literary and artistic support. Under the banner of modernization of tradition, theatre company Minye preoccupied the discussions on the tradition and presented folk drama as a new theatre. As an alternative to the crisis of korean theatre at the time, the Minye chose the method of inheriting and transforming tradition. It is noteworthy that Heo Gyu, the representative director of the theatre company Minye, recognized the succession and transformation of traditional performance as both a calling and an experiment. For Heo Gyu, tradition was accepted as an irresistible stable value and an unquestionable calling, and as a result, his performance, filled with excessive traditional practices, became overambitious, especially when it failed to reflect the present-here reality, the repeated use of traditional expression tools resulted in skilled craftsmanship, not artistic creation. The traditional ideology of the 70s unfolds in a new aspect of appropriation in the 80s. In 1986, Son Jin-Cheok, Kim Seong-nyeo, and Yoon Mun-sik, who were key members of the theatre company Minye Theatre, left the theatre to create the theatre company Michu, and secured popularity through Madangnori(popular folk yard theatre). Son Jin-Cheok's Madangnori is overbearing through satire and humor. It gained popularity by criticizing and mocking state power. On the other hand, not only the form of traditional performance, but also the university-centered Madanggeuk movement, which appropriated on the spirit of resistance from the people to its traditional values, has rapidly grown. In the field of traditional discussions of the 70s, Madanggeuk was self-born through appropriation in which the spirit of resistance of the people is used as a traditional value. Madanggeuk as well as Michu that achieved the popularization of Madangnori cannot be discussed solely by the artistic achievement of the modernization of tradition. Critics of korean theatre in response to state-led traditional discussions in the 70s was focused only on the qualitative achievement of performing arts based on artistry. I am very sorry for that. As a result, the popular resistance of the Madanggeuk and the Madangnori were established in the 'difference' with the traditions of the theatre company Minye Theatre. Theatre company Minye Theatre was an opportunity for the modernization of tradition, but the fact that it did not continuously produce significant differences. This is the meaning and limitation of the "tradition" of the theatre company Minye Theatre in the history of korean theatre in the 1970s.