Contemporary Korean Research Articles

Disease represented in Modern and Contemporary Korean Novels and the related issues and flow

Disease is a problematic subject lying between life and death. It is comparable with ‘Crisis’ which brings ‘Disconnection’ into one’s continuous life. Writers use disease which hit them all of a sudden as the base to develop their literary thinking and imagination. The metaphor and image of disease shown in literature can be a significant code we can interpret with historical-cultural and political-social situations of the time. That is, the disease represented in literature is not a matter limited to one person’s body, but a syndrome inseparable from the time context. Extended further, it can be said that the history of Korean literature can not be fully recorded without history of the long pain. Why disease emerged as a new matter of interest in modern times and where and how it’s been placed in literary works of the time? In modern times. Korean literature has shown various diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, venereal disease, leprosy(Hansen’s disease), cholera, etc. If we include some more pathological symptoms such as nervous breakdown, depression, schizophrenia and psychology, and further quite recent diseases such as AIDS, SARS, and MERS, the history of Korean literature may be called as a pathography full of disease experience or a chronicle of pain itself. Researches on the diseases represented in Korean literature have been conducted from various points of view. Going through the mid-late 1980s and 1990s, the scope of the study was extended to more writers and their works. Over time of the 2000s, the subject and methodology of the research on the disease in literature were more subdivided. Since 2000s, the study on the disease represented in Korean literature has extended its subject and scope by meeting with research achievements in the field of history, sociology, and medical science. In such a flow of research, the study on the disease in literature has become a key topic of discussion to read Korean modernity. Now, it’s time to review disease not only at the contact between literature and medical science, but also from a humanistic perspective.

Challenging journeys: Contemporary Korean artists and some possible implications for education through art

Abstract The growing social need for a creative workforce in Korea has prompted teachers to look to the arts for innovative classroom practices. While a growing body of integrated curriculum studies acknowledges art and artists as valuable sources for alternative ways of knowing, a lack of comprehensive information on what shapes the practices of today’s artists limits ongoing discussion. This article aims to extend teachers’ current thinking on the potential role of art in educational innovation by exploring the growth of creative individuals in the art world, examining the diverse paths to artistic growth of three promising contemporary Korean artists. Withincase analysis provides insights into how these artists have navigated their individual paths while interacting with their surroundings, and contextual analysis of their major transitions highlights the value of risk-taking in promoting creative educational practice through art.

Film Pioneer Lee Man-hee and the Creation of a Contemporary Korean Cinema Legend

Film Pioneer Lee Man-hee and the Creation of a Contemporary Korean Cinema Legend

A Study of Garden Design that Reflects the Works of Artist ‘Kim Chong-Young’

This study aims at exploring the elements of contemporary garden design reflecting the spirit of Kim Chong-Young, a pioneer of contemporary Korean art, and his art work by reinterpreting the garden in Kim Chong-Young’s birthplace. The study focuses on analysis of his art works and correlation between the plants and them, and spatial composition of the garden based on the literature and Kim Chong-Young’s art works, followed by the process of garden design which examines each element of garden. The components of spatial composition have been reinterpreted into visual, auditory, olfactory elements and humanities, which proves their values to be considered in the garden design. Finally, this study demonstrates the feasibility of establishing the garden which applies internal and external form of Kim Chong-Young’s art works to the plants reflecting symbol, humanities, philosophy and the spirit of Seonbi. Keywords: contemporary garden design, element of garden, image of plants, landscape gardening

페미니스트 아티스트 그룹 ‘입김’의 개입으로서 연대와 예술실천

The aim of this study is to closely examine the works of the “Feminist Artists Group IPGIM” in the context of Contemporary Korean Art and the arts of glocal era. IPGIM was created by 8 woman artists in their 30s in 1997 when Korean women culture movement was at its height. Its founders, Kwak Eunsook, Kim Myungjin, Rhu Junhwa, Woo Shinhee, Yoon Heesu, Jung Jungyeob, Je Miran, and Ha Insun, showed exceptional works in practicing art by temporary solidarity with feminist identity in the 2000s. IPGIM was active in various ways pursuing characteristics of feminist art, activist art, project art and art as public intervention. This study examines the subject, perfunctory design, analysis on aesthetics, as well as the involvement methods and urges on the change of views on woman issues in the Korean society through 4 of the 7 major projects of joint planning, and coproduced: AbanggoongJongmyo Project, Island-Survivor, Disemerging Women, Disemerging Women-Stories of Eumsa.BR IPGIM challenged the female images as a signifier and the politics of space created by patriarchal Confucian culture through feminist perspective. They have unraveled lives of female individuals with various identities that cross over different time and space into realism by focusing on female body and sexuality, labor, class. IPGIM’s activities connects to feminist art in the 1980s and umbilical cord in one sense, and on the other, progressed by reacting sensitively to changing woman issues through accepting contemporary sensibilities, temporary solidarity, uses of various media and so on. Therefore, IPGIM created a unique local feminist art different from the West in the glocal era, and contributed in the contemporary Korean feminist art.

Analogical change of accent in the verbal inflection of Yanbian Korean

Verbal accent in Middle Korean (15–16th c., MK) is not 100% predictable but very strongly correlates with the segmental shape of the stem to varying degrees, leading Ramsey (1978, 1986, 1991, 2001) and Whitman (1994) to reconstruct predictable accent for both stems and suffixes in the protolanguage. In a traditional rule-based approach or in optimality theory, the only possible analysis of the data of MK verbal accent is to list the stems with exceptional accent, and it is difficult to explain the gradient lexical frequency patterns. However, it is now possible to capture these gradient patterns and construct a grammatical model in terms of weighted constraints. This paper first attempts to formalize the tone-segment correlation of MK verbal stems noticed in previous research with a weighted constraint OT grammar (Hayes, 2009). Then, we compare the MK grammar with a corresponding investigation of the accentuation of monosyllabic verbal stems in contemporary Yanbian Korean (north-eastern China). An important fact with regard to the two stages of the language is that due to sound changes, some segmental contrasts that were crucial in classifying various accent sub-categories in the verbal inflection have merged in Yanbian, and as a result the original association between accent class and segmental shape seen in MK became partially obscured. In the face of these changes, Yanbian speakers have restructured the correlation between accent class and segmental shape. They either retained the original accent in spite of the segmental change (conservative accent) or have shifted the accent class of a given verbal stem based on the output of the segmental change (innovative accent). The innovative accent attests to the productivity of these tone-segment associations. This finding is modeled as a diachronic restructuring of the weight hierarchy of relevant OT constraints based on the updated lexical statistics, which led to a shift in the accent.

Theoretical and Empirical Examinations of Happiness in Korea

This study begins to overview the causes of a “positive turn” that tends to place a greater emphasis upon joy, fun or pleasure rather than deferred gratification. External factors of socio-cultural changes, such as increasing non-work time and increasing disposable income due to the diffusion of high technologies in the world of work, are examined. Internal, intrapersonal factors, the rise of post-materialist values, the shift in life interest from production to consumption and changing conceptions of work-life balance are also considered. Next, models of happiness that encompass the main thrusts of the past research on happiness across areas of philosophy, economics, psychology and sociology are explored. Then, the “component model,” “need satisfaction model,” “additive integration model” and the “multiplicative integrated model” are discussed. Given the discussion, a “cubic model of happiness,” that takes into account the effects of utility, need and value is suggested. Finally, based on the selections of world survey data on happiness, the levels and correlates of happiness are compared and the current state of the happiness in Korean society is explicated in terms of typical mentalities of contemporary Koreans including relationalism, inner-worldliness and returnism. In that process, special attention is paid to the discrepancies between economic indices and social indices, and policy measures that help to promote GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness), or overall life satisfaction of the nation, is proposed.

Media Cultural Politics and the Politics of Sympathy—Queen Seondeok: Dramatized Conspiracy Theory as “Power-Narrative”

In this paper I reveal the mutual interaction between drama, history, and reality, and analyze the cultural operating principle of “the political.” I achieve this by analyzing the narrative of, and viewer reactions to, the television drama Queen Seondeok, which serves as a prominent example of popular K-drama culture in 21 st century Korea. First, I explain that conspiracy theory forms the core of the Queen Seondeok narrative arc, showing how it creates a shared bond of sympathy both with and among the audience in the context of popular disillusionment and resistance to “the political.” Viewing the drama with a critical eye focused on the conspiracies fabricated by the political persons that appear in the show, viewers come to support and sympathize with the conspiracy in the narrative, internalizing it as a lens through which to assess the world. In the process, a paradoxical interaction is revealed. To prove this, I analyze the paradoxical approach adopted by the viewers of the drama: by sympathizing with the narrative the audience recognizes “the political” as a “natural” lens. This stems from the way the drama satirizes and “reenacts” modern and contemporary Korean political history. Finally, I unveil specific mechanisms employed by the characters in Queen Seondeok to disguise their emotions and to win the competitive power game. All these elements together show both the operating principles of cultural politics in the medium of TV drama, and the empowerment inherent in the act of watching.

Grammatical Features of the Korean Language, found in the Early 20th-century Spoken Corpuses

This study examined three major aspects of grammatical features of the early 20th-century Korean language, found in the literature “Korea University’s Spoken Corpuses: the First Half of the 20th Century” constructed up to now. First, the characteristic features appearing in the phonological system and phenomena of the 20th-century Korean language were examined, based on the fact that the speech sound can be verified directly. Second, the final forms and endings of utterance, which are seen in many forms in conversations between the speaker and the listener, were examined, based on the aspect that these forms and endings are elements in the spoken form. Finally, colloquial expressions that are rather different from those of the present or are seldom used in present were examined. While the early 20th-century spoken corpuses in the Korean language are similar to the present spoken corpuses, they also have differences. The vowel system of the early 20th-century spoken corpuses is different from that of that currently used, and so are the usage of some endings, words or idiomatic expressions. Thus, when you can specifically define the characteristics of the early 20th-century Korean language by systematically analyzing how it is different from the Korean language used today, study on the grammar of the 20th-century Korean language as the transition between the modern Korean language and the contemporary Korean language and as the beginning of the contemporary Korean language will become more active.

A Pragmatic Study of Referring Expressions in English and Korean News Articles

This study explores referring expressions in naturally-occurring contemporary English and Korean written corpus and gives a pragmatic account of the systematic distribution. It focuses on comparing and contrasting types of discourse anaphors to public figures in news articles in two aspects: the order of mention (the first, the second, and the third mention) and the distance between coreferential expressions. This analysis shows that there are two patterns of discourse anaphors in both languages: general anaphoric pattern in English and Korean; sequential anaphoric pattern only in Korean. Meanwhile, it is also argued that Ariel’s cognitive accessibility cannot be applied for explaining two patterns. Rather, a sociocultural pragmatic account gives a comprehensive understanding of two patterns in both languages.

Lee Sang-Beck and Origin of Contemporary Korean Sociology

지금까지 한국 대학의 사회학과에서 가르치는 사회학사는 오로지 서구 사회학의 역사를 의미했다. 이 글에서 저자는 한국사회학의 전통을 만들기 위해서 한국사회학의 역사를 연구할 것을 주장한다. 이 논문은 국내 최초로 대학 내에 사회학과를 만들어 사회학을 하나의 분과 학문으로 제도화한 이상백에 대한 연구이다. 이 글에서 저자는 이상백의 개인사와 학문적 · 사회적 활동, 학문적 성취와 그 내용을 요약하고 그가 사회학과를 창설하는 과정을 역사적 문맥 속에 넣어 두껍게 서술하고 분석한다. 그 결과 1946년 해방 정국에서 미국과 유럽에서 공부한 사회학자들이 여러명 있었음에도 불구하고 이상백이 사회학을 제도화하여 한국 사회학의 아버지가 될 수 있었던 주요 요인으로 그의 극좌파에 대한 비판적 입장, 지속적인 진단학회 활동, 학문에 대한 헌신, 학문적 지도자로서의 자질과 능력 등 네 가지 요소가 작용했음을 밝혔다. 이 글의 결론에서 저자는 이상백이 사회사 분야에서 강조한 실증과 사회학에 대한 실증주의적 입장이 이후 한국사회학의 전개 과정에서 이론적 성찰의 부족과 적합성의 결핍이라는 예기치 않은 문제의 씨앗이 되었다고 해석했다.

New Goddesses at Paektu Mountain: Two Contemporary Korean Myths

Mountain worship and sanshin (mountain gods) legends are intrinsic to Korean culture. Central for narratives of anti-colonial struggle and contemporary policy of North Korea, Mt. Paektu also became a symbol of Korean national identity in South Korean popular culture. This paper engages two legends sited there, suggesting that their main protagonists represent contemporary sanshin. Firstly we consider the image of Kim Chŏng-suk of North Korea, and those narratives addressing her husband, Kim Il-sŏng’s guerrilla resistance in terrains surrounding Paektu. As a bodyguard of Kim Il-sŏng and a champion of revolutionary struggle, Kim Chŏng-suk transcends her human nature, and embodies female presence on Mt. Paektu. Secondly the paper investigates narrative from contemporary South Korean practice GiCheon (氣天 Kich’ŏn), intended for physical and moral cultivation of a person, reinvented in modernity on the basis of ancient East-Asian traditions. It recounts a mythic meeting of Bodhidharma with the Immortal Woman of Heaven (天仙女 Ch’ŏnsŏnyŏ) dwelling at Mt. Paektu. The Woman of Heaven overpowers Bodhidharma in battle, challenging patriarchal gender conceptions and contesting Chinese cultural superiority. Examined together, these two narratives demonstrate common cultural background. Ancient tradition, passed down from past to present, continuously accumulates and transforms, acquiring new forms in South and North Korean contexts.

A Consideration on Degrammaticalization of Contemporary Korean Language

A Consideration on Degrammaticalization of Contemporary Korean Language

The Pragmatic System of Speaker Stance Expression in Contemporary Korean

The Pragmatic System of Speaker Stance Expression in Contemporary Korean

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note McCann David R. April 2016 It’s quite amazing to think, at least for me, but it does still happen, from time to time. For example, I was thinking that this issue of AZALEA seemed quite different from the very first, nine years ago. It is somewhat smaller in size, for one thing; about two-thirds the number of pages. It features only one Korean writer born before 1950, the poet Kim Kirim. Volume One had six. And of those who translated the poems and stories, eight of the current issue’s team are professional translators or otherwise engaged, while three are what used to be called academics, graduate students, or teaching faculty in Korean literature. This trio notably includes Professor Emeritus Kevin O’Rourke, who has defined the field in so many directions and dimensions, including his own poems. But in Issue Number One, twenty of the translators were either graduate students or teaching in the field of Korean literature, while four were in other fields. One might be tempted to conclude that the field of Korean literature has expanded far beyond the academic studies of a decade ago. We know it as a vital part of the international literary scene, an indirect but strong indication being the breadth of interests that now draw translators, publishers, and readers to it. Readers will find the poems and stories in the current issue reflecting that engagement. Not documents or testaments, they take compelling shape in the English-language translations, commentary, and discussions, reminding us that they too are a [End Page 7] part of the contemporary Korean literary scene, as vast and vital as any, the realm to which AZALEA has, over the years, sought to be a bridge. But still, a voice somewhere reminds me, there is the example of Kim Kirim, whose voice and vision come clear in Jack Jung’s gifted translations. Kim Kirim is one of the historical authors, more frequent in our pages a decade ago. Born in 1907, he disappeared into the North during the Korean War, 1950–53, and we are left with no trace, no record of his life or his death. Jack Jung notes that Kim Kirim criticized T. S. Eliot for not being quite there yet in The Waste Land. But with the translation, and the images of the original book Weather Map as designed by the poet and architect, short story master flâneur Yi Sang, 1910–1937, we readers have an opportunity to catch up to where Korean literature and design arts were, some eight decades ago, and in the other literary works and remarkable images in our current issue, where they are now. Welcome, then. Do come in. [End Page 8] Copyright © 2016 President and Fellows of Harvard College

The Change in the Contemporary Korean Film Industry under the Pressure of Global Capitalism

1990년대부터 2000년대 초반까지 한국영화산업은 특히 배급/투자 구조에서 큰 변화를 겪었다. 일각에서는 한국영화와 같은 작은 규모의 내셔널 시네마가 글로벌 시네마의 장에 성공적으로 진입한 것에 대해 우호적인 시선을 보내고 있지만, 이 논문은 이와는 다른 시각에서 동시대 한국영화산업이 변형되어 온 조건들을 비판적으로 검토하려고 한다. 본 논문은 한국영화산업의 변화를 ‘형식적’ 포섭과 ‘실제적’ 포섭이라는 관점에서분석함으로써 이러한 변화를 전지구적 시각 경제의 보다 넓은 자장 속에서 파악하고자 하며, 한국영화산업의 변화 과정에서 국가가 어떤 역할을했는지에 대해서도 검토하고자 한다. 한국영화산업의 변화를 설명하기위한 비판적 관점을 명료화하고자 하며, 이를 실천하기 위해 세계 체제적관점에서 한국영화산업을 바라보는 관점이 지닌 중요성을 검토하고자한다. 그러나 세계체제적 관점에서 한국영화산업의 변화 과정을 파악하는 것의 유의미성과 효과에 대해 충분히 긍정하면서도, 본 논문은 마이클하트와 안토니오 네그리를 따라 제국론의 관점에서 한국영화산업의 변화를 추적하려고 한다. 전지구적 시각 네크워크의 모든 구성 요소들이경향적으로 밀접하게 연관되는 상황 속에서, 한국영화산업은 세계체제적 관점에서 반-주변부로 위치 지어지기 보다는 전지구적 시각 체제 속으로 실제적으로 포섭된 것으로 설정될 때 보다 정확히 이해될 수 있을 것이기 때문이다.

Evolution of Korean honorifics

The aim of the present paper is to revisit earlier studies on the evolution of Korean honorifics and, following a brief survey of the contemporary system, (a) overview the historical development of Korean honorific patterns from Old Korean to Contemporary Korean and (b) propose to account, on a principled basis, for the evolutional processes in the framework of grammaticalization. I assume that Korean honorifics have evolved due essentially to the three interdependent language/culture-specific forces: structural, socio-cultural, and interactional, as directed by the language-universal principles and processes of grammaticalization. The essence of the structural forces is the agglutinative, predicate-final, and head-final morpho-syntactic nature of Korean. This typological salience is a crucial condition under which honorific affixes and particles may be germinated. Socio-cultural forces include the Korean people’s traditional and contemporary socio-cultural systems, values, and norms of hierarchism and collectivism, as language is regarded as reflecting culture and society. Koreans’ hierarchism and collectivism are sufficiently manifested in the structure and use of the language (e.g. H. Sohn 1986). The interactional forces are Koreans’ society/culture/context-bound interpersonal language use for communicative purposes. These three interlocking forces are assumed to have motivated and sustained a dynamic set of addressee and referent honorific contrasts in Korean, which have evolved as driven by the universal principles and processes of grammaticalization.

A contrastive study on the contemporary Japanese verbal suffix [shiteiru] and the contemporary Korean verbal suffixes [-ko iss-],[-e iss-] and [-ess-] -with special attention to the suffix [-ess-] in the so-called adjectival verbs

A contrastive study on the contemporary Japanese verbal suffix [shiteiru] and the contemporary Korean verbal suffixes [-ko iss-],[-e iss-] and [-ess-] -with special attention to the suffix [-ess-] in the so-called adjectival verbs

Kyung-Sung: Cinematic Memories of the Colonial Past in Contemporary Korea

This essay examines two films, Modern Boy (dir. Ji-woo Jeong, South Korea, 2008) and Private Eye (dir. Dae-min Park, South Korea, 2009), both of which depict Seoul in the 1930s—the period during which Korean colonial modernity was fully shaped—and in so doing draw contemporary Koreans' attention to the vibrant facade of the city, a long-forgotten facet of the dark colonial era. It stresses that these films, through their regeneration of lost cultural imagery on the screen, evoke a certain sensibility that is commensurable with guilt. For instance, in a climactic scene in Modern Boy, the male hero walks out of the Chosun Government-General Building and passes the camera. On-screen, as the hero exits from view, the colonial building gradually looms large behind him—beautifully reconstructed in the center of the city, with its iconic aura fully retrieved. At this moment, viewers are awakened to the unfortunate history of Japanese colonialism and thus experience a feeling of regret or melancholy for the past. This cinematic encounter with the past also resonates with cultural imagery of Seoul as a forgotten colonial city that has reemerged across Korean society, especially in worn-out photographs, cinematic reconstructions of lost urban scenery, and even recent repairs of ancient palaces and streets, and suggests how the discursive space that is Seoul accommodates the negativity that buttresses the historical narrative in Korea.

A Preliminary approach to the period classification of the contemporary Korean educational history.

A Preliminary approach to the period classification of the contemporary Korean educational history.