Issue In South Korea Research Articles

Risk Profile of Stalking in South Korea: Analyzing the First Year of Court Decisions Following Initial Legal Responses.

South Korea implemented specific legislation titled the Act on Punishment of Crimes of Stalking (APCS) on October 21, 2021, to address the issue of stalking. This study evaluated the risks associated with stalking incidents in South Korea by reviewing and analyzing legal cases with finalized judgments within the first year of the APCS. Data were collected through a systematic search of the Korean Supreme Court's Written Judgment Management System database. We identified 193 stalking-related cases between October 21, 2021, and October 14, 2022. These cases were analyzed based on four risk profile criteria: profiles of stalkers and victims, the nature of stalker-victim relationships, motivations behind stalking, and patterns of stalking behavior. Further, we reviewed cases to which the APCS and the Criminal Act applied by analyzing stalker-victim relationships and the stalkers' underlying motivations to assess the risks associated with stalking. Approximately 16.6% of stalkers were diagnosed with mental disorders, the most common disorder being psychosis. The average age of the victims was 42.84 years, with a higher prevalence of female victims compared to male ones. Predominantly, stalkers were former intimate partners of the victims, with most cases motivated by rejection. Direct contact methods, such as physical approaches, have been observed more frequently than indirect methods, such as repeated unwanted messages, or non-contact behaviors, including surveillance and loitering. The findings provide an up-to-date overview of the under-examined criminal stalking issue in South Korea.

Backlash or victims? ‘Victimised Korean husbands’ of migrant wives and problematic norms on sexual relations in South Korea

Violence against marriage migrants became a critical social issue in South Korea in the late 2000s, and the government instituted various measures in response, partially adopting civil society organisations’ demands to protect migrant women. However, men’s rights groups also mobilised shortly after to advocate for the rights of citizen-husbands under the slogan of ‘male victims of international marriages’. Their campaigns targeted both the unscrupulous commercial matchmakers and their deceitful migrant wives. This article situates the victimised men discourse as a backlash against violence against women campaigns to reverse policy gains in the protection of women’s rights. The article argues that government policies have legitimised such discourse and used flawed ‘data’ to justify their policies. This article uses as data complaints submitted to the Korea Consumer Agency, a government regulator for consumer disputes, about international marriages and focuses on their mentioning of sexual relations, intimacy and sexuality. By doing so, this article demonstrates that men’s rights as consumers of marriage brokerage services are behind their claims of victimhood, and the victimhood discourse undermines the safety and human rights of migrant women. Moreover, a close look at the database about ‘male victimhood’ reveals severe human rights violations against migrant women.

2차 미소공동위원회 당시 정치고문단의 창설과 활동

The Political Advisory Group(PAG) was organized based on the recognition that the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea(AMG) had no dedicated advisory body to consult on political issues in South Korea, despite the fact that AMG dealt with numerous political issues in South Korea in addition to its military duties. The creation of the PAG was the final destination of the ‘decentralized’ and ‘fluid’ organizational transformation of AMG’s political advisory machinery. AMG had previously utilized the military intelligence agencies, political advisors dispatched by the US State Department, Hodge’s personal political advisor, and the American delegates for U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission as political advisory organizations. PAG was comprised of Korea experts and political analysts from AMG. PAG collected and analyzed political intelligence through continuous contact with South Korean political figures. Then, PAG framed and implemented AMG’s occupation policy In particular, PAG actively supported the American delegates for 2nd U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission based on the political intelligence and understanding of South Korean political parties accumulated through its activities. Throughout the 2nd U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission, PAG’s focus was on “creating a situation led by right-wing forces” in the list of Korean political parties and social groups that U.S-U.S.S.R. Joint Commission would consult. The existence and activities of PAG clearly show the way and perspective of AMG’s reorganization of South Korean politics at the time. In addition, the fact that the PAG was established as a permanent organization with a single function as a “political advisor” only in 1947 can be seen as evidence that the political advisory function of the AMG in the early days of the occupation was weak.

Resilience of Family Caregivers of People With Dementia in South Korea: A Scoping Review.

Due to rapid increases in the number of Korean people with dementia, dementia has become a priority health issue in South Korea. Likewise, the well-being of family caregivers of people with dementia has also become an issue of concern. However, little is known about the resilience of Korean family caregivers because there is a lack of review studies from a Korean cultural perspective about the resilience of family caregivers of people with dementia. The purpose of this scoping review was to investigate quantitative studies related to resilience theories, measurement instruments, correlates and resilience interventions for family caregivers of people with dementia. This review was conducted according to the Joanna Briggs Institute based on Arksey and O'Malley. Nine databases were searched to retrieve evidence published in English or Korean between January 2000 and September 2022. Studies with a quantitative research design reporting the resilience of family caregivers of people with dementia based on a resilience theory framework were included. A total of 13 studies were included in this review. All studies used either a modified McCubbin and McCubbin's family stress, adjustment and adaptation model or Walsh's family resilience model. All resilience instruments were used without cross-cultural adaptation. Family adaptation, social support, life satisfaction, family (di)stress and caregiver burden were associated with resilience among family caregivers. A few family resilience-enhancing programmes showed a positive effect on caregiver resilience. This review noted that all the resilience measures documented in this study need to test for cultural adaptation in a Korean context. Further research is required to develop and implement family-based, culturally tailored interventions to effectively enhance Korean resilience for family caregivers of people with dementia. Gerontological nurses should include Korean family caregivers in their nursing care and assess whether family caregivers have depression or suicidal thoughts to promote better health outcomes for caregivers and their family members.

A Legal Ban on Dog Meat Production: Political Decision-Making for an Ethical Community.

For over 40 years, the human consumption of dog meat has been a controversial issue in South Korea. While some defend it as cultural tradition, others criticize the act as unethical treatment of dogs. This study examined the public perceptions and opinions driving the legislative efforts to ban dog meat through an online survey of 1000 participants assessing their experiences with dog meat, awareness of related issues, and support for institutional bans. The results revealed a widespread negative view of the dog meat industry, largely due to concerns over animal cruelty, and a negligible demand for consuming dog meat, which points to the expected demise of the industry. However, there was notable resistance to the ban from the view that it restricts personal freedom, with anthropocentric attitudes hindering progress in animal welfare. Regression analysis identified gender, political affiliations, animal experiences, and perceptions of dog meat as key predictors of support for the ban. As beloved pets, dogs influence human ethics, and the growing awareness of animal ethics has led to a 'political turn' enabling policymakers to enact bans. This study highlights how animal welfare benefits from political actions backed by societal consensus.

Unmasking the Shadows: Examining Workplace Violence in South Korea

Workplace violence has been an emerging issue in South Korea, garnering both social and scholarly interest over the past decades. Since the early 2000s, the country has witnessed thousands of cases of workplace violence in various sectors of work that range from big, high-profile cases to smaller-scale incidents. In fact, this issue already seems to be deeply ingrained in South Korean society as one in four workers reported having experienced workplace violence in the last year (Lee, 2023). Therefore, reflecting the rapidly growing recognition of and attention on workplace violence, this paper examines the historical background, causes, different types of violence in various sectors of work, consequences, and past attempted solutions of workplace violence. A lack of studies and resolutions was identified in the process of research. Therefore, active government intervention and social involvement in combating workplace violence as well as promoting a healthy workplace environment seems vital.

Contents analysis of thyroid cancer-related information uploaded to YouTube by physicians in Korea: endorsing thyroid cancer screening, potentially leading to overdiagnosis

BackgroundThyroid cancer overdiagnosis is a major public health issue in South Korea, which has the highest incidence rate. The accessibility of information through the Internet, particularly on YouTube, could potentially impact excessive screening. This study aimed to analyze the content of thyroid cancer-related YouTube videos, particularly those from 2016 onwards, to evaluate the potential spread of misinformation.MethodsA total of 326 videos for analysis were collected using a video search protocol with the keyword “thyroid cancer” on YouTube. This study classified the selected YouTube videos as either provided by medical professionals or not and used topic clustering with LDA (latent dirichlet allocation), sentiment analysis with KoBERT (Korean bidirectional encoder representations from transformers), and reliability evaluation to analyze the content. The proportion of mentions of poor prognosis for thyroid cancer and the categorization of advertising content was also analyzed.ResultsVideos by medical professionals were categorized into 7 topics, with “Thyroid cancer is not a ‘Good cancer’” being the most common. The number of videos opposing excessive thyroid cancer screening decreased gradually yearly. Videos advocating screening received more favorable comments from viewers than videos opposing excessive thyroid cancer screening. Patient experience videos were categorized into 6 topics, with the “Treatment process and after-treatment” being the most common.ConclusionThis study found that a significant proportion of videos uploaded by medical professionals on thyroid cancer endorse the practice, potentially leading to excessive treatments. The study highlights the need for medical professionals to provide high-quality and unbiased information on social media platforms to prevent the spread of medical misinformation and the need for criteria to judge the content and quality of online health information.

Refugees as perceived threat: College students' attitudes towards refugees in South Korea

AbstractIn 2018, the influx of Yemeni asylum seekers generated the unprecedented politicization of the refugee issue in South Korea. This paper explored South Korean attitudes towards refugees by collecting data from Korean college students. In doing so, we looked into what led to negative attitudes towards refugees and the role perceived threats play as a mediator. Following previous studies on intergroup threat theory, we noted that threat perception was a useful tool in understanding intergroup prejudice and anxiety as perceived threats and their antecedents were found to explain a significant amount of the attitudes towards refugees. We also found strong interconnections between prejudices towards different minority groups, including Islamophobia, homophobia and anti‐refugee attitudes. This finding supported the idea that such prejudices are part of a larger intolerant belief system towards minority groups in general.

The Dominance of Gamelan in South Korea in a Discursive Perspective

This article provides a genealogical investigation through a postcolonial perspective about gamelan discourses in South Korea. Gamelan is known as a traditional orchestra representative of Indonesia, especially in academic circles. Whereas Indonesian culture is still not well known in South Korea, Indonesian traditional instruments are not limited to gamelan. There are also a great many other traditional instruments on each island and among different ethnic groups in the nation. How and why has gamelan come to be seen as such a representative Indonesian musical instrument within South Korea? Knowledge of gamelan or Indonesian music is a more recent issue in South Korea where there has been no long history of Indonesian musical discourse. The aim of this article is therefore to understand how gamelan was decontextualized from its origin through orientalism and colonial era research into the performing arts, and how this led to it becoming a representative Indonesian traditional music form in South Korea throughFoucault’s theory of discourse. To do this, historical data was investigated using genealogical methodology. Gamelan was one of the popular objects during the colonial era for Western musicians and musicologists. The popularity of gamelan has been parallel with the development of ethnomusicology, and it has flown into South Korea with increasing Korean students who study in the West and through interactions between musicologists in the ethnomusicology field.
 Keywords: Korean gamelan, Indonesian music, colonialism, postcolonial, ethnomusicology

Waste acceptance criteria testings of a phosphate-based geopolymer waste form to immobilize radioactive borate waste

Immobilization of radioactive borate waste (BW) is an urgent issue in South Korea because of the lack of appropriate waste forms. This study aimed to investigate whether phosphate-based geopolymers could satisfy the waste acceptance criteria established by Korean government. Geopolymers with 40 wt% BW did not exceed the criterion of compressive strength (3.445 MPa) after the water immersion and thermal cycling tests, whereas geopolymers containing 30 wt% BW still showed higher than 3.445 MPa after waste acceptance criteria tests. In particular, the compressive strength increased and the total porosity significantly decreased after the thermal cycling and gamma irradiation tests. The leachability index of boron calculated according to the ANSI/ANS 16.1 test was found to be higher than the criterion value (>6.0), and the controlling leaching mechanism was diffusion. The characteristic analyses indicated that water-soluble borate phases were leached from the geopolymer during the water immersion and leaching tests. However, the structurally incorporated 4-coordinated boron was also present as a sparingly soluble phase. Consequently, phosphate-based geopolymers can be used as stable binder materials to immobilize radioactive BW.

People see what they want to see: an EEG study.

This study explored selective exposure and confirmation bias in the choices participants made about which political videos to watch, and whether their political positions changed after they watched videos that either agreed with or opposed their positions on two controversial issues in South Korea: North Korea policy and social welfare policy. The participants completed questionnaires before and after they watched the videos, were asked to select thumbnails of videos before they watched any, and had their brain wave activity measured through electroencephalogram (EEG) as they watched both types of videos. The participants demonstrated selective exposure as they primarily selected video thumbnails with content that matched their political orientations, and they demonstrated confirmation bias as their questionnaire responses after they watched the videos indicated that their positions had hardened. There were also statistically significant differences in alpha, beta, sensory motor rhythm, low beta, mid beta, and fast alpha activity depending on the political orientation consistency between the participants and the videos. Future studies could expand this line of research beyond college students and beyond Asia, and longitudinal work could also be conducted to determine if the obtained patterns remain constant over time.

Islamophobia without Islam: Islamising the refugee issue in South Korea

ABSTRACT South Korea has never had a substantial population of ethnic Korean Muslims. Nevertheless, it has experienced significant growth in anti-Muslim racism in recent years. Considering that the literature on Islamophobia has largely focused on its evolution in Western countries, this study examines the rise of Islamophobia in South Korea, particularly after the arrival of Yemeni refugees in South Korea’s Jeju Island in 2018. With the media’s strong influence in framing public discourse, the recent government policy regarding the entry of Yemeni refugees has sparked considerable debate on human rights, public policies, and religion. Analysing the results and the influence of public petitions to the South Korean government and opinion polls conducted in 2018 on the Yemeni refugee situation, this study claims that the rise of Islamophobia in South Korea has transformed the refugee issue from one concerning human rights into one concerning religion. Islamophobia is likely to strengthen over time by influencing discussions of, or even Islamising, non-religious issues within the socio-political landscape of South Korea.

Heterogeneous public attitudes toward high-voltage power transmission lines and willingness to pay for undergrounding projects

On the path to carbon neutrality by 2050, the expansion and improvement of high-voltage power transmission lines (HV-PTL) is a critical and unavoidable energy issue that may become a potential source of public conflict. However, the discussion on this issue in South Korea has been insufficient. In this study, we analyzed public attitudes toward HV-PTLs and classified people into subgroups based on their common characteristics using latent class models. In addition, we used the contingent valuation method to estimate the public's willingness to pay (WTP) for the conversion of overhead lines to underground cables, focusing on the differences among the identified subgroups. According to the empirical analysis, people in South Korea can be divided into four classes based on their perceived need for resident participation in the decision-making process, perceived health risk, and perceived property loss risk. According to the WTP analysis using the spike model, the estimated mean and median WTP values were KRW 4184 (USD 3.8) and KRW 2632 (USD 2.4) per household per month, respectively. In addition, we found a significant difference in WTP by class. Those who perceived HV-PTL as risky were less willing to pay for undergrounding projects compared with those whose perceived risk was relatively low. This study contributes to the understanding of academics and policymakers on the relationship between public attitudes toward HV-PTL and overhead to underground conversion.

Citizen Engagement in Smart City Planning: The Case of Living Labs in South Korea

The smart city is recognized as a new city model for inclusive urban planning. Many local governments are making smart city plans to develop new policies that manage urban issues in South Korea. They identify issues through citizen surveys and decide which issues should be managed with priority. Some governments test developed policies based on citizen engagement. Most local governments use the living labs to encourage citizen engagement in smart city plans since these are public spaces where planners engage citizens to develop innovative and inclusive ideas. This study conducted a content analysis of smart city plans of local government. We analyzed the various approaches to the living lab and examined the stage of the planning process it is utilized in. Additionally, we identified the barrier to the living lab by interviewing people who participated in the smart city plan. According to the analysis, a barrier to citizen engagement exists in smart city plans; most citizen engagement is only used when planners develop ideas for setting visions and goals. It implies that citizen engagement occurs at a limited level in smart city plans and may cause planning to be less inclusive. We suggest that citizen engagement should be considered in the whole planning process to improve the inclusiveness of smart city plans and encourage sustainable citizen engagement.

The elderly's satisfaction with physical activity programs in senior welfare centers.

Healthcare for the aging population has become a crucial issue in South Korea to maintain the elderly's quality of life, and physical activity is of primary importance for older adults. This study evaluated the exercise characteristics and satisfaction of the elderly who participated in physical activity programs provided by senior welfare centers in South Korea. We surveyed 266 participants to learn the characteristics of the elderly's exercise participation and their satisfaction with instructors, exercise programs, and facilities provided by senior welfare centers. A total of 263 copies were analyzed using the SPSS 23.0 statistical software. The top three physical activity programs that the elderly participated in senior welfare centers were dancing (25.3%), gymnastics (24.8%), and table tennis/badminton (13.2%). There were significant differences in respondents' satisfaction according to sex, education level, spouse, family type, and monthly income per household (p < 0.05). The elderly were satisfied with programs (4.183 ± 0.483), facilities (3.881 ± 0.483), and instructors (3.604 ± 0.483) in order. Also, this study shows that user satisfaction differs depending on the demographic characteristics (gender, education, marital status, family type, economic status) and the characteristics of the exercise participation of the elderly (exercise duration, participation period). In conclusion, we presented the elderly's satisfaction with physical activity programs in senior welfare centers, suggesting that the elderly need physical activity programs according to their demographic and exercise characteristics.

채용비리와 근로계약 취소, 소급효 제한에 대한 연구 ―서울고등법원 2020.3.31. 선고 2019나2029554 판결을 중심으로―

Since 2017, when recruitment irregularities became a social issue in South Korea, specific legal concerns have arisen regarding how to address those involved in such irregularities.BR The Seoul High Court

Air Pollution Coverage, Anti-Chinese Sentiment, and Attitudes Towards Foreign Policy in South Korea.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11366-023-09849-z.

Development of air purifier operation guidelines using grey box models for the concentrations of particulate matter in elementary school classrooms.

Considering the hazardous effects of particulate matter (PM) exposure on students and teachers and the high PM concentration issue in South Korea, air purifiers have recently been installed in most classrooms to improve air quality. However, some on-site challenges, such as operational costs and noise, have been issues with the continuous operation of air purifiers. Therefore, a guideline is needed to dynamically predict the indoor PM concentration based on the changes in outdoor PM concentration and activate the air purifiers only when necessary. This study develops a grey-box model that uses measured data and physical differential equations to perform the given objective and verifies its accuracy using ASTM D5157. Modeling and analysis results have obtained information that can form the basis for developing guidelines to address PM issues in schools: The air purifier should be operated during periods where the predicted values exceed the limit in closed windows and the air purifier is not operating. It was also confirmed that the need for the operation of the air purifier varies between schools and classrooms under the same outdoor PM concentration. Indoor PM concentration increased significantly after students' simultaneous mass movement, necessitating air purifiers' operation before and after the events. The prefilter of the heater also aided in the removal of coarse PM. Additionally, the limitations and future development directions of the model were discussed.

Editorial Note

Editorial Note

Deliberative Effect and Opinion Changes: The Cases of Deliberative Polling on South Korea’s Nuclear Energy Policies

Deliberative polling has been widely used globally to enhance democracy and deliberation on key policy issues. This study analyzed deliberative effects and opinion changes for two cases of deliberative polling on nuclear energy policy issues in South Korea: whether to resume/discontinue Shin-Gori No.5·6 nuclear reactors and whether to construct a temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel. By using logistic models, it found out deliberative effect working for opinion changes on Shin-Gori No.5·6 nuclear reactors issue, but not significantly for opinion changes on the issue of spent nuclear fuel. In addition, this study analyzed whether deliberative effect has a direction of opinion changes. Deliberative effect seems to have no directional effect regarding Shin-Gori No.5·6 nuclear reactors issue, whereas having a directional effect towards ‘Yes’ for the spent nuclear fuel issue.