Abstract: Tasan defined liberty as an individual's freedom to choose without interference from others. In his works, political liberty at the grassroots level implied that people could choose their ruler, while economic liberty implied that they could choose prosperous villages, meaning freedom of movement. This paper explores these types of liberty in Tasan's works. Thus far, most scholars have argued that peoples' election of rulers is similar to modern democracy (Cho, 1976; B.J. Ahn, 1999). In particular, Han (2002) claimed that consensus in a community in Tasan's "Tang non" (The Roots of Royal Authority), is similar to Locke's modern democracy. Other scholars have argued that Tasan does not represent modern democracy ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: A series of devotional podcasts on Catholic daily gospel deliver readings of letters written in the mid-nineteenth century by Ch'oe Yangŏp, one of Korea's first priests. One podcast ends on a cliffhanger: the reader announces that the next will be about "a girl named Barbara, who, like nuns [under persecution], had to give up her life to guard her virginity" ("Letters", 2010). Listeners might expect a story about a woman threatened with forced marriage or rape by some heathen persecutor, and then killed by the persecutor. But the story that follows confounds this standard trope. The threat to young Barbara's vow of celibacy is not simply a heathen persecutor, nor is it an outside agent that kills her. It is, in ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The ritual controversy (yesong 禮訟) in seventeenth-century Korea is an interesting but intractable topic in Korean studies. Although it was once recognized as a representative example of factional strife in the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910), it has become an important reference for the examination of Confucian intellectuals in the seventeenth century. In recent years, the idea of constitutionalism—in this sense constraining a king who would otherwise be a despot—has contributed to an alternative interpretation of the controversy. Yet an important question regarding constitutionalism remains unsolved: the constitutional thought of Song Siyŏl (宋時烈, 1607–1689), who was one of the most controversial figures in Korean ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: On August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, respectively. Among the Atomic Bomb Victims or hibakusha were Koreans, who are said to account for as much as ten percent of all hibakusha (Ichiba, 2005:27–29). On April 1970, a cenotaph was erected to honor Korean hibakusha along the Honkawa riverbank, just across from the Peace Memorial Park in central Hiroshima (figures 1 and 2). It was named the Cenotaph for Korean Atomic Bomb Victims (Kankoku-jin Genbaku Giseisha Ireihi), and was erected following an initiative developed by local Japanese-resident Koreans, or zainichi Koreans, most of whom were associated with the Republic of Korea (ROK).In the 1980s, the cenotaph came to be ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: South Korea's economic strength vis-à-vis its Asian neighbors, its pursuit of cheap labor, and its restrictions on immigration have created veritable ecosystems of undocumented labor and immigrant spouses at the margins of South Korean society. In Decentering Citizenship: Gender, Labor and Migration Rights in South Korea, Hae Yeon Choo provides an in-depth look at this phenomenon and the struggles of these laborers—especially Filipina workers—through approximately two years' worth of fieldwork and interviews with the women, along with the Korean non-governmental organizations (NGOs), churches, labor activists, and other agents that support them. Decentering Citizenship eschews the top-down viewpoint of ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Jieun Baek's North Korea's Hidden Revolution examines how media flows secretly into and out of North Korea, as well as how this information affects North Korean society. Baek illuminates how networks of citizens take enormous risks as they disseminate and consume illegal content including foreign films, TV shows, books, and news. The author discusses the ways in which forbidden information is spread through gossip, freedom balloons, radio, and USBs. Baek utilizes in-depth interviews with ten North Korean defectors, and cites a variety of academic sources, news websites, governmental documents, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The author argues that foreign media "may be instrumental in someday bringing ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In early December 2016, Gwanghwamun Square, the center of Seoul, drew more than a million people. Outraged and stunned by President Park Geun Hye's corruption scandal, ordinary citizens held candles and demanded her immediate resignation. The candlelight protests had been held every Saturday evening for months, and eventually succeeded in helping to oust President Park. These protests were extraordinary in many ways: Not only were they peaceful, festive, and family-friendly, but these protests also became a site of diverse cultural activities that expressed their anger against Park with innovative and creative signs and slogans, political parodies, and music performances. This historic moment in South Korea served ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Jin Y. Park's book presents new horizons for the study of women and Buddhism through the life and thoughts of a Korean Zen Buddhist nun, Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971). Women's role and participation in Buddhism have been subjected to biases and distortions in society, with the move to religion often being labeled as failure or escapism. The Buddhist community and scholarship have also neglected women as the agents of history. This skewed perception has been partly corrected by recent studies of Buddhist nuns, but nuns' pre-monastic lives in society are still seen as holding little value. Against this backdrop, Park transforms the dissonances between women and Buddhism into strings of resonance, interaction, and synergy. It ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Eunjung Kim in Curative Violence lays bare the disavowal of debility, chronic illness, and disability in South Korea from the period of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945) to the contemporary present. She accomplishes this by tracing the construction of what she calls the "imperative to cure" which requires the erasure of markers of difference and is fueled by heteronormative and nation-building mandates. Examining lived experiences, legislation, public discourse, and representations of disability in literary and cinematic texts situated firmly in the historical moments in which they emerge, Kim reconsiders cure as "a set of political, moral, economic, emotional, and ambivalent transactions," (p. 41) questioning its ... Read More Keywords: Korea; Chŏng, Yag-yong,; Catholic Church; Women; Ch'oe, Yang-ŏp,; Heads of state; Confucianism; Atomic bomb victims; Women foreign workers; Mass media and culture; Internet and youth; Kim, Ir-yŏp,; People with disabilities PubDate: 2018-06-05T00:00:00-05:00