• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.42
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• pp.505-524
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• 2016

This study examines the ways District 9, a film released in 2009, reworks the sci-fi genre to explore the human encounter with "other" alien populations. Like Avatar, released in the same year, District 9 addresses the tropes of conflict over land and human-alien hybridity and introduces non-humans and aliens, not as invaders, but as objects of human oppression and cruelty. Unlike many other science fiction films where the encounter between humans and non-humans occurs in an unidentifiable future time and location, District 9 crosses genre barriers to engage with urban realism, producing a social critique of contemporary urban population problems. The arrival of aliens in District 9 occurs as part of the recorded human past and the film's action is carried out in the present time in the specifically identified city of Johannesburg. A distinctly anti-Hollywood film that locates the action at the street level, District 9 plays out human anxieties about contact with others by referencing the divisions and conflicts historically attached to South Africa's sprawling metropolis and its current problems of urban poverty and illegal immigrants. Focusing on how this particular urban setting frames the film, the study investigates the ways Blomkamp's sci-fi film about extra-terrestrials presents a curious postcolonial mix of aliens and immigrants surviving in abject conditions in an urban slum and forces a realistic examination of the contemporary social problems faced by South Africa's largest city and by extension other major global cities. The paper also examines the film's representation of the human-alien hybrid and its potential as a force to resist human exploitation of the other. It also claims that though the setting is highly local, District 9 speaks to a wider global audience by making obvious the exploitative practices of profit-seeking multinationals. A sci-fi film that is keen on making a social commentary on urban population conflicts, District 9 resonates with the wider sense of insecurity and fear of others that form the horizon of the uncertain and potentially violent contemporary human world.

• Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.61-82
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• 2011

Public resistance is an essential factor of the democratization process. Due to this, public resistance has been recognized as an important element in discussing the democratization of China. Recently in China, and a new era of resistance especially the agrarian resistance has been being expanded. This paper identifies trends and characteristics of that. With searching changes in the relationship between the nation and the societies in China, we will check whether democratization can be built from the whole bottom of the nation's ideology or not. It is a paradox of china's economic growth that the peasant uprising increased is a factor to the growth. The farmers' smoldering discontent exploded with rage because rural communities have been forced to sacrifice during the growth. The authoritarian party-state system in China has been faced with the limits in calming the peasant revolt down with the traditional suppression and restriction. Even though the party-state system in China has accepted farmers' dissatisfaction somewhat, and it has tried to improve its image of a benevolent government and pursued buying stability strategy, the gap between urban and rural areas has been expanded in the sustainable economic development and modernization process, therefore the authorities could not soothe the farmers' sense of alienation. Accordingly, the peasant revolt has not flickered out easily, and has been getting uncontrolled across China. Resistance characteristics of Chinese farmers have also changed. In the past, they had been sporadic and indirect ways, whereas in recent years, they have changed into organized and active ways. Of course, it is generally evaluated that the party-state system has sustained a strong social control so far. Buying stability strategy has prevented farmers' complaints from spreading to a threat to its regime, because civil societies in rural areas have still weak foundations from being formed. The party-state system, because of tensions and conflicts, will control the growing powers of civil societies in rural areas with institutionalization of interaction between the nation and the societies, and they will induce street protests to legalized struggle for a while. However, the relationship between the state and the societies has already started new rearrangement, in terms of that the conflicts between the state and rural communities have continued, and the changes of resistance ways.

• Women's Studies Review
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.73-109
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• 2010

The cultural pluralism on which more and more emphasis is put in the globalized cultural environment, takes local identity as a crucial index for the cultural exchange on the global level, but at the same time it results in transforming individual regions/places into a homogeneous space, as it forces the local identity itself to fit into the standardized global perspective. In this context I focus on two art projects that are related to 'Dongducheon', a town that houses the U. S. Second Infantry Division. These projects attract specific attention due to the fact that Dongducheon is a significant place with very 'thick' cultural identity: it reveals that modernization in Korea took place in intersection of nationalism, patriarchy and gender/sexuality postcolonial (military) culture. With these two Dongducheon related art projects (Donglyung Kim) and (Eunyoung Jeong) as excellent examples of site-specific art practice, this paper asks what it means to keep the historicity of disappearing local space/place in the global era. And how is it possible to 'represent' an extremely gendered/sexualized place like Dongducheon. This should be examined from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Since emancipation from Japanese occupation Dongducheon has been an island or an outside space in the nation-state Korea. This becomes more complicated, as now mostly women from the Philippines or former Soviet countries are working in the nightclubs in Doungducheon. and are feminist activist experiments to make the place with its residents to be seen and heard in proper a way of mourning, recognition and communication. shows the 'new' kijich'on women as those who are daring to be on an 'Odyssey' for a better life as they run everyday life in Dongducheon, working in clubs, doing laundry, bearing children, going to mass; tries to help them to be heard and felt, while it gathers sounds on the street or at mass and shows the doors or narrow alleys which lead to the their rooms. It aims to mourn the dead kijich'on women and to represent the precarious life of the present migrant kijich'on women, as it shows no faces.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.39-55
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• 2019

Recently banks and large financial institutions have introduced lots of Robo-Advisor products. Robo-Advisor is a Robot to produce the optimal asset allocation portfolio for investors by using the financial engineering algorithms without any human intervention. Since the first introduction in Wall Street in 2008, the market size has grown to 60 billion dollars and is expected to expand to 2,000 billion dollars by 2020. Since Robo-Advisor algorithms suggest asset allocation output to investors, mathematical or statistical asset allocation strategies are applied. Mean variance optimization model developed by Markowitz is the typical asset allocation model. The model is a simple but quite intuitive portfolio strategy. For example, assets are allocated in order to minimize the risk on the portfolio while maximizing the expected return on the portfolio using optimization techniques. Despite its theoretical background, both academics and practitioners find that the standard mean variance optimization portfolio is very sensitive to the expected returns calculated by past price data. Corner solutions are often found to be allocated only to a few assets. The Black-Litterman Optimization model overcomes these problems by choosing a neutral Capital Asset Pricing Model equilibrium point. Implied equilibrium returns of each asset are derived from equilibrium market portfolio through reverse optimization. The Black-Litterman model uses a Bayesian approach to combine the subjective views on the price forecast of one or more assets with implied equilibrium returns, resulting a new estimates of risk and expected returns. These new estimates can produce optimal portfolio by the well-known Markowitz mean-variance optimization algorithm. If the investor does not have any views on his asset classes, the Black-Litterman optimization model produce the same portfolio as the market portfolio. What if the subjective views are incorrect? A survey on reports of stocks performance recommended by securities analysts show very poor results. Therefore the incorrect views combined with implied equilibrium returns may produce very poor portfolio output to the Black-Litterman model users. This paper suggests an objective investor views model based on Support Vector Machines(SVM), which have showed good performance results in stock price forecasting. SVM is a discriminative classifier defined by a separating hyper plane. The linear, radial basis and polynomial kernel functions are used to learn the hyper planes. Input variables for the SVM are returns, standard deviations, Stochastics %K and price parity degree for each asset class. SVM output returns expected stock price movements and their probabilities, which are used as input variables in the intelligent views model. The stock price movements are categorized by three phases; down, neutral and up. The expected stock returns make P matrix and their probability results are used in Q matrix. Implied equilibrium returns vector is combined with the intelligent views matrix, resulting the Black-Litterman optimal portfolio. For comparisons, Markowitz mean-variance optimization model and risk parity model are used. The value weighted market portfolio and equal weighted market portfolio are used as benchmark indexes. We collect the 8 KOSPI 200 sector indexes from January 2008 to December 2018 including 132 monthly index values. Training period is from 2008 to 2015 and testing period is from 2016 to 2018. Our suggested intelligent view model combined with implied equilibrium returns produced the optimal Black-Litterman portfolio. The out of sample period portfolio showed better performance compared with the well-known Markowitz mean-variance optimization portfolio, risk parity portfolio and market portfolio. The total return from 3 year-period Black-Litterman portfolio records 6.4%, which is the highest value. The maximum draw down is -20.8%, which is also the lowest value. Sharpe Ratio shows the highest value, 0.17. It measures the return to risk ratio. Overall, our suggested view model shows the possibility of replacing subjective analysts's views with objective view model for practitioners to apply the Robo-Advisor asset allocation algorithms in the real trading fields.