Korean Art Research Articles

The social commentary of Squid Game: reflections on Korean art, space and inequality

This paper discusses how communal spaces of childhood activity in Korea are reimagined in the drama Squid Game as part of a social commentary on class and economy. Many spaces shown in Squid Game are nostalgic representations of common Korean playgrounds, parks, and urban neighborhoods. In the show, however, these spaces of delightful memory are transformed into gory places where the literalized violence of neoliberal capitalism plays out. I argue that the creators of the show participate in a history of understanding communal spaces as focal points of social structure and expression that have been crucial in Korea since the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897). The use of such spaces over centuries, including their reenvisioning in modern media, illustrates how political and economic relationships are intimately tied to constructions and perceptions of space. Through a detailed structural, visual, and semiotic analysis of the communal spaces of historical and modern urban Korea, and a comparison with the spaces in Squid Game, I argue that social spaces are intimately tied to social hierarchies and the long history of inequality in Korea.

Persuasi Rute Periferal Exo Sebagai Brand Ambassador Scarlett Whitening Terhadap Impulsive Buying

The popularity of K-Wave amongst Indonesian creates a competition for brands, resulting them competing to use Korean artists as brand ambassadors. This practice is widely adopted in business, particularly in the beauty industry, which is rapidly growing in Indonesia. This research aims to determine the effect of EXO's peripheral route persuasion as the brand ambassador of Scarlett Whitening on impulsive buying behavior. The study uses a quantitative approach to provide detailed statistical analysis on the influence of brand ambassadors on consumer impulsive buying. Data collected through an online questionnaire, distributed to 385 respondents who met the requirements of sample criteria. The results of the study indicate a significant positive influence of peripheral route persuasion on impulsive buying behavior. This means that the presence of EXO as a brand ambassador is effective in delivering marketing messages through the peripheral route, which includes elements such as likability and attractiveness, driving consumers to make impulsive purchases.

Creativity and collaborative performance of artists and STEM professionals

This study examines the relationship between creativity and performance in collaborations between artists and STEM professionals. It investigates the antecedent factors of the creativity of artists and STEM professionals and elaborates on the performance of temporal and imperfect organizational creativity. A survey was administered to 969 Korean artists and STEM professionals, of which data on 131 respondents with experience of art and STEM collaboration were used for the empirical analysis by applying a structural equation model. The results show that an individual's intrinsic motivation, and creative personality characteristic positively influence creativity collaborative performance. Intrinsic motivation and creative personality characteristics positively influenced collaborative performance by the mediation of creativity. Our study contributes to the literature by deepening our understanding of creativity and collaboration between artists and STEM professionals, particularly in temporary and imperfect organizational creativity, which has not been addressed in existing discussions of creativity. This confirms that artists and STEM professionals have common antecedent factors of creativity, and that the coexistence of scientific and artistic creativity has a positive impact on collaborative performance.

Минимум по корейскому. О книге Елены Хохловой «Главное в истории искусства Кореи»

The first Russian book in forty years summarizing the information on the history of Korean art was published by the MIF publishing house as part of the book series The Main Things in History. But is the art of Korea known to us enough to highlight the “main things” in it? The publisher clearly understands the audience of readers the product is intended for, and in serial publications it offers navigation designed for the usual quick search for introductory information; however, the requirements of brevity and ease of presentation prevail over scientific fundamentality. The competence of the author, Korean Art historian Elena Khokhlova, her passion for the material, and courage in the selection of ‘key monuments’ made it possible, even within constraints, to create a serious work that awakens interest in the Oriental culture and in the history of art in general.

몽골 문서보관소 자료를 통해 본 북한과 몽골의 문화교류

This study examined cultural exchange patterns between North Korea and Mongolia in the 1950s and 1960s based on materials from the Mongolian archives. The following characteristics emerged in the cultural exchange between North Korea and Mongolia at that time. First, In July 1952, a 72-member North Korean art troupe led by Choi Seung-hee visited Mongolia for two weeks to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Mongolian People's Revolution. This was a very unusual move, and Mongolia was the only country where North Korea dispatched a North Korean art troupe with Choi Seung-hee during the height of the war. Second, on May 14, 1956, North Korea and Mongolia signed the first cultural agreement and established a basic framework for cultural exchange. At that time, along with the cultural agreement, North Korea signed an economic and cultural agreement with a country with close economic support and political solidarity, and Mongolia, along with Soviet Union and China, was one of the countries that signed the agreement. This shows that in North Korea's external relations, Mongolia had the same friendly relationship with Soviet Union and China. Third, as the visit of Choi Seung-hee and Anmag(安漠) to Mongolia in the 1950s and 1960s is newly revealed, their activity in cultural exchange cooperation between North Korea and Mongolia stands out. When the Pacific War broke out in the early 1940s, Choi Seung-hee toured the front lines in Manchuria and Mongolia and gave consolation performances, and after defecting to North Korea, she taught Mongolian students studying abroad in Beijing. Anmag reached her peak together with her wife, Choi Seung-hee, when she ascended to the position of Minister of Culture and Propaganda in 1956, but visited Mongolia in January of that year, just before her purge in 1958. Anmag participated as a representative of North Korea to conclude the ‘Cultural Exchange Plan between North Korea and Mongolia’ in 1958 and planned various cultural cooperation projects between the two countries.

The Characteristics of Korean Artists in Pronouncing English Words on Korean Reality Shows: A Generative Phonology Perspective

The Characteristics of Korean Artists in Pronouncing English Words on Korean Reality Shows: A Generative Phonology Perspective

Honoring the Ancestors and Creator

Abstract Contemporary feminist scholars problematize the difficulties of creating meaningful political alliances between Indigenous and diasporic communities in settler states such as Canada and the United States. This essay uses a relational framework to trace how two feminist artists, one Indigenous and one diasporic, creatively resist the ongoing and uneven conditions of settler colonial capitalism. The essay examines artwork by Tannis Nielsen, a midcareer Indigenous artist with Métis, Anishnawbe, and Danish ancestry, and Rosa Sungjoo Park, an emerging diasporic Korean artist with landed status in Canada. Taken together, the artists’ works offer fruitful opportunities to think through difficult questions about power, history, and representation on Turtle Island. Both Nielsen and Park engage “pedagogies of the Sacred” to honor ancestral traditions and spiritual practices while disrupting binary narratives of tradition vs. modernity. I contend that their creative use of digital media draws on lived experience, embodied knowledge, and spirituality to refuse colonialism’s hyper-individualism and imagine alternative worlds.

THE PSEUDO HAPPINESS AS SONG STRATEGY’S SIMULACRA VERSUS PANOPTIC: BTS’S SONGS AND BTS MEMBERS

The reflections of joy in the lyrics are part of the singer's message tactic in his songs. Even so, with the overall packaging of the singer's appearance. The problem is when world-class singers sing self-motivating songs for their listeners, at the same time, life's troubles become familiar to the singer. Many articles also reported how severe depression, mental health, and suicide occurred in the lives of these artists. Demi Lovato, Shia, and Ariana Grande are some Western artists claiming to have experienced mental health problems. In the ranks of Korean artists, names such as Twice Jeongyeon, AOA Kwon Mina, HyunA, Red Velvet Wendy, and Super Junior Heechul are artists who have also experienced mental health problems and severe depression. The same thing happened to the BTS members. RM and Suga are two members who have admitted to experiencing depression and seeing life as an uphill struggle. This study aims to describe how BTS songs with the theme 'Love yourself' do not reflect the lives of BTS members under strict agency rules and fans' supervision. Ultimately, the theme of 'love yourself' is just a simulation strategy that generates 'false joy' for the members but has a substantial economic impact on the agency. This study uses the concepts of simulacra, panopticon, and duality reflection. At the same time, the research method is qualitative, with document study as a data collection technique. The unit of analysis is the text, namely the BTS song lyrics with the theme 'love yourself' and media reports about the members' lives. These two data are then compared and produce a simulacra picture because there is no reflection on what is being sung and what the members are experiencing. A life full of surveillance from fans and companies removes the privacy boundaries of the members who are – in the end – just a commodity for business turnover. It is where the irony occurs. The pseudo happiness experienced by these members generated many economic benefits for the agency. Increasing the number of listeners, purchasing merchandise, selling concert tickets, traffic on social media, and brand endorsements are essential aspects that can be monetized by the agency, which accompanies the fame of the songs sung by BTS. While living without romantic relationships, solitude, and loneliness, the prohibition of direct interaction via social media with fans are some things that fence off the members' lives and make them even more alienated from social life.

Two-step model based on XGBoost for predicting artwork prices in auction markets

Art markets globally have grown, making artwork an investment of note. Precise valuation is pivotal for optimal returns. We introduce a two-step model with a two-level regressor, utilizing extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) for accurate artwork price prediction. The model encompasses a price-class classifier and regressors for individual categories. This captures diverse factor influences, combining predictions to reduce misclassification risks. Visual features further enhance accuracy through the second-step two-level regressor. Experiments on Korean art auction data demonstrate the superiority of our two-step model with the two-level regressor over one-step and two-step alternatives, as well as the hedonic pricing model. While visual features affected one- and two-step models’ training, they boosted performance when integrated into the second-level decision tree, reducing first-level residuals. This emphasizes the two-level regressor’s efficacy in incorporating visual elements for artwork valuation. Our study highlights the potential of our approach in the field of artwork valuation.

Pengaruh Girl Group Twice sebagai Brand Ambassador Scarlett Whitening terhadap Keputusan Pembelian Konsumen melalui Mediasi Brand Image

One of the company's strategies in influencing consumer purchasing decisions is by using brand ambassadors. Scarlett Whitening is one of the beauty care products from Indonesia that uses the brand ambassador of Korean artists, namely the Girl Group Twice. This study uses the Theory of Source Credibility. The purpose of this study was to analyse the effect of Girl Group Twice as the brand ambassador of Scarlett Whitening beauty products on consumer purchasing decisions through brand image mediation in Pekanbaru. The research method used is explanatory quantitative. The population of this study are consumers who have purchased Scarlett Whitening beauty products whose numbers are unknown so that the sampling technique used is convenience sampling. Based on the sample determination table from Isaac and Michael, the sample in this study was 272 respondents. The results showed that the Twice brand ambassador had an effect on brand image of 34.5%, brand ambassadors had an effect on purchasing decisions by 30.5%, and brand image had an effect on purchasing decisions by 37.5%. Based on the sobel test, the sobel test statistic value obtained is tcount 6.454> ttable 1.96 with a significance level of 5%. It can be concluded that the Girl Group Twice as a brand ambassador is significant in influencing consumer purchasing decisions for Scarlett Whitening products through brand image.

중등학교 가창 제재곡과 지도방법에 관한 실태 분석

In recent music classes in secondary schools, singing activities are not well performed, and the proportion of classes is decreasing. The purpose of this study is to understand the reasons and issues related to this trend and explore solutions by analyzing the current state, perceptions, and demands of vocal repertoire and teaching methods in secondary schools singing education. To achieve this goal, various literatures on singing class vocal repertoire and teaching methods were reviewed, and based on this, a survey tool was developed to find out the actual condition and demand of singing class vocal repertoire and teaching methods, and a survey was conducted on middle and high school music teachers nationwide, and statistics on the responses of 67 respondents were analyzed.
 As a result of the analysis, secondary school music teachers were strongly aware of the necessity of singing education. However, in actual music classes, singing classes were allocated as the third priority after instrumental and listening classes, resulting in a decrease in singing education. As singing class vocal repertoire, both art songs and popular music were used in the same ratio, but there was a preference for Korean art songs in the art song category and Korean popular songs in the popular music category. The main contents dealt with when teaching art songs were vocalization and breathing, but in the case of popular music, the focus was on the content of the lyrics and background knowledge.

중등학교 가창 제재곡과 지도방법에 관한 실태 분석

In recent music classes in secondary schools, singing activities are not well performed, and the proportion of classes is decreasing. The purpose of this study is to understand the reasons and issues related to this trend and explore solutions by analyzing the current state, perceptions, and demands of vocal repertoire and teaching methods in secondary schools singing education. To achieve this goal, various literatures on singing class vocal repertoire and teaching methods were reviewed, and based on this, a survey tool was developed to find out the actual condition and demand of singing class vocal repertoire and teaching methods, and a survey was conducted on middle and high school music teachers nationwide, and statistics on the responses of 67 respondents were analyzed.
 As a result of the analysis, secondary school music teachers were strongly aware of the necessity of singing education. However, in actual music classes, singing classes were allocated as the third priority after instrumental and listening classes, resulting in a decrease in singing education. As singing class vocal repertoire, both art songs and popular music were used in the same ratio, but there was a preference for Korean art songs in the art song category and Korean popular songs in the popular music category. The main contents dealt with when teaching art songs were vocalization and breathing, but in the case of popular music, the focus was on the content of the lyrics and background knowledge.

#MeToo movement in Korean arts & culture sector and gender mainstreaming strategies in cultural policy

ABSTRACT This study examines how the #MeToo movement in the Korean arts and culture world has changed the Korean government’s cultural and gender equality policies. First, I discuss the gendered power structure of the Korean arts and culture sector, focusing on the issues raised by this movement in terms of the specificity of the sector, which is a dominant discourse of cultural policy. Second, by exploring that newly organized activist groups through the movement played a significant role as gender governance, I examined how this gender governance overcame the limitations of government gender mainstreaming strategies and reconciled the specificity of the arts and culture sector with gender mainstreaming strategies under the conflicted political circumstances and government policy-making process. It resulted in the ‘mainstreaming of gender equality as an inalienable right of artists’ in the new Artist’ Status and Rights Guarantee Act, beyond the mere reliance on the existing gender mainstreaming tools.

Korean Pansori Vocal Note Transcription Using Attention-Based Segmentation and Viterbi Decoding

In this paper, first, we delved into the experiment by comparing various attention mechanisms in the semantic pixel-wise segmentation framework to perform frame-level transcription tasks. Second, the Viterbi algorithm was utilized by transferring the knowledge of the frame-level transcription model to obtain the vocal notes of Korean Pansori. We considered a semantic pixel-wise segmentation framework for frame-level transcription as the source task and a Viterbi algorithm-based Korean Pansori note-level transcription as the target task. The primary goal of this paper was to transcribe the vocal notes of Pansori music, a traditional Korean art form. To achieve this goal, the initial step involved conducting the experiments with the source task, where a trained model was employed for vocal melody extraction. To achieve the desired vocal note transcription for the target task, the Viterbi algorithm was utilized with the frame-level transcription model. By leveraging this approach, we sought to accurately transcribe the vocal notes present in Pansori performances. The effectiveness of our attention-based segmentation methods for frame-level transcription in the source task has been compared with various algorithms using the vocal melody task of the MedleyDB dataset, enabling us to measure the voicing recall, voicing false alarm, raw pitch accuracy, raw chroma accuracy, and overall accuracy. The results of our experiments highlight the significance of attention mechanisms for enhancing the performance of frame-level music transcription models. We also conducted a visual and subjective comparison to evaluate the results of the target task for vocal note transcription. Since there was no ground truth vocal note for Pansori, this analysis provides valuable insights into the preservation and appreciation of this culturally rich art form.

Fear of Missing Out: A Scale Development with Focus on Hallyu Phenomenon

Hallyu that is marked by the proliferation of entering South Korean culture into Indonesia has become a phenomenon for especially young Indonesian people. This culture includes Korean films and dramas, Korean music and songs, as well as the use of South Korean artists as brand ambassadors for local products. The influence of South Korean culture thoughtfully results in psychological changes of the generation Z in Indonesia especially those who are in the development from adolescence to adulthood. The purpose of this research is to develop a measurement scale on the aspects that are considered to have a significant influence on the psychological condition of fear of being outdated in young women of the generation Z in Indonesia. This research started by looking for the results of relevant studies. Upon the collection of the references, items that were tested for validity and reliability were formulated. The pre-test was conducted by involving 50 young women of the generation Z in Indonesia. After being declared valid and reliable, further tests was conducted to find indicators that have high loading factor values by involving 100 respondents. The study results in three constructs comprising interest on the Korean culture, social circle acceptance, and intention to consume Korean cultural products. Business people can use the questionnaire for increasing the sales figure.

Cultural and National Elements in the Works of Contemporary South Korean Artists

The subject of this study is current projects (installations, paintings, sculptures, performances) by contemporary South Korean artists that contain symbols, elements or cultural artifacts related to the local identity of the country. The article attempts to identify the main themes, motifs and techniques that are used in Korean contemporary art to emphasize the issues of the nation's self-identification within the global themes and problems of the modern world. To achieve this goal, the main South Korean artists recognized by the world art community (Kimsuja, So Do Ho, Lee Soo Kyung, Kwang Yong Chan, Pak Chang Kyung, Ham Kyuna, Yoon Seongnam) are singled out, whose work is directly related to the traditional cultural elements of their country. Their projects, themes and techniques are explored from the point of view of the interaction of global and local processes in modern society. The relevance of the work lies in an attempt to identify the unique processes taking place in contemporary South Korean art. Point studies of Asian artistic culture often include either the study of the creative path of individual artists, or the consideration of the main trends and trends. In this paper, an attempt is made to look at South Korean art from the point of view of topics and technologies that are inherent only in local Korean culture, and to identify points of contact with global issues and problems. This is the scientific novelty of the study. A number of contemporary South Korean artists create works of art based on their life experiences, directly related to the traditions of their country. Themes related to the search and reflection of cultural identity and self-identification arise in their works. The work uses both general scientific research methods: analytical and comparative, and a special method of art history: structural-functional.

Rethinking the 20th-Century Korean Embroidery from Gender Perspectives

The rupture in the history of Korean embroidery is generally perceived as a severance from the traditional embroidery, made due to the Japanese colonial rule. However, it cannot be denied that the narrative of modern and contemporary Korean art history, mainly constructed around artistic movements and groups, also played a major part. The dispute encompasses the fundamental question of whether embroidery can be seen as a form of fine art from the perspective of modernist aesthetics, and the matter of hierarchy between different crafts. Also inherent are the tensions between contradictory values such as tradition and modernity, Western or Japanese and Eastern or Korean, abstract and figurative, and others peculiar to Korea, and the effects of such binary oppositions are closely related to gender problems. This paper re-examines, from gender perspectives, the chronological history of embroidery since the late 19th century, which had been placed on the periphery of Korean art history until now. In the traditional society, embroidery was produced and enjoyed privately, but moved into the public sphere through education and exhibitions for women during modernization. In the process, in order to be recognized as a form of pure art, embroidery gave up its unique characteristics as craft and took on the formative language of paintings. In the years immediately after liberation from Japanese colonial rule, which was the era of eradication of Japanese influences, establishment of national identity, and industrialization, embroidery was divided into abstract embroidery understood as more masculine, and traditional embroidery considered more feminine. Korean embroidery artists in the 20<sup>th</sup> century, as women experiencing particular historical contexts, worked with confidence in the artistic value of embroidery due to or despite their specific circumstances.

Visualizing Buddhism Today

Abstract Since Buddhism appeared around the fifth century BCE, it has established itself as a discipline that gives philosophical teachings to many people beyond religion. After the twentieth century, Buddhism has gone beyond being a representative ideology of the East and continues to be a social and cultural inspiration for many people worldwide. By focusing on the artworks of three Korean artists, Jeong Hwa Choi, Kimsooja, and Do Ho Suh, this study explores in detail how Buddhism inspires artists to visualize self-reflection and transnational identity and how traditional Buddhism contributes to the universalization, conceptualization, and communication of contemporary art. It also discusses how Buddhism is being reinterpreted and visualized by contemporary artists today, becoming a work of art for the public, not art for the few. Their artworks, inspired by Buddhism, show how contemporary art shows humanist, participatory, empathic, diverse, and global aspects and conveys multilayered messages.

A psychological-semiotic approach to cultural translation: A case study of translational performance text and translated cultural identity

Cultural translation promotes cross-cultural synthetization and hybridization. Against the backdrop of cultural assimilation and inherent conceptual contestation of different languages, the cultural meaning of the source performance text is interpreted and reconstructed by specific cultural translator who intentionally creates the aesthetic value and significance for a specific target readership/audience. Drawing on Valsiner’s cultural psychology and Marais’ notion of representamen translation, this paper focuses on an exemplary example of a cross-cultural stardom-fandom exchange regarding the Korean artist Lee Joon Gi, who produces his translational performance texts of the source Chinese performance texts for his target Chinese audience. The psychological-semiotic approach to Translation Studies also explores the issue of translated cultural identity within cultural translation. Thus, the concept of translational performance text is proposed as Lee is deemed as both cultural translator and translated cultural product simultaneously. On the one hand, by incorporating non-linguistic semiotic process-phenomena into the conventional linguistic-biased Translation Studies, Translation Studies could be nurtured promisingly with cultural psychology and semiotics for interdisciplinary progress. On the other hand, a translational perspective enhances the understanding of the profound psychological-semiotic aspect of cultural translation pertaining to the production of entertainment jouissance within cultural translation.

1960년대 미니멀리즘의 공간 개념과 공간 재인식을 위한 설치 미술 교육 프로그램 개발

In the history of modern art, the concept of 'space' has been emphasized and treated as a very important element. Among the various artistic trends that emerged in the 1960s, this research focuses on minimalism, analyzing the various interpretations of space in minimalism. Minimalism replaced the pure space of mod-ernism with an experiential space, inviting the viewer to experience the artwork through their bodies. Furthermore, this research examines the installation art works of two Korean artists, Park Yeojoo and Kang Eunhye, and proposes an installation art education program for spatial reawakening. The significance of this research is to examine and interpret the changing perception of 'space' in American art in the 1960s, and to specifically identify the contribution of minimalism to the redefinition of the concept of 'space' in art history.