• The Critical Review of Religion and Culture
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• no.29
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• pp.101-133
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• 2016

The term 'myth' is modern terminology. It was introduced to the East Asia from late 19th century to early 20th century. Under the rule of Japanese imperialism, some Japanese historians insisted that Dangun(檀君) has no relation with Kochoson(古朝鮮). Some Korean historians have refuted their conjecture. The arguments between Japanese and Korean historians bring about the motives of making the concept of Shinwa(神話) The purpose of this study is to investigate the historical procedures of making myth of Homogeneous Korean as a case study of "teaching religion". For the scholar the historic beginning is to be distinguished from later myths of origins. The scholars, particularly among the historians of China, Japan and Korea take it as the beginning of the history to investigate myths, for the ending parts of narratives are in themselves involved in a social constructs in order to give legitimacy to the story. It is apparent to satisfy for the current social demands of the nation-states building. It is also an act of casting and projecting their national values into the far distant past which is considered to be authentic and authorative. The western term 'myth' had been made up in Japanese historical context in order to build "nation-state concept". In Korea, the myth of homogeneous ethnicity of Koreans had been also reconstructed as modern myth during the late 19th and the early 20th century. We can call it the invention of the tradition accordingly.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.267-302
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• 2019

Oral literature can largely be categorized into myth, legend, and folktales, which are stories orally transmitted from the prehistoric times. The purpose of this study is to compare the discourse on the oral literature of the East and the West from a cultural studies viewpoint by focusing on its "symbolic systems," particularly "figures of speech," or "tropic traits", in order to utilize this oral literature as a resource in the study of Northeast Asian culture. Undergoing modernization, the symbolic meaning of oral literature has been demythologized both in the West and in Northeast Asia. Of course, oral literature, verbally transmitted over a long period of time, has naturally been changed over time and even "contaminated" in a sense by losing its original archaic archetype while it was textualized with letters during the early period of the modernization process. Nevertheless, the principle of "resemblance" and "similarity" between nature/universe and human/humanity, which has been stripped away in modernity, can still be found in oral literature with its mythic power. For this reason, the study of oral literature in the West has attempted to restore the lost magical power within it, particularly in myth. As such, this study delves into the symbolism of the mythic thought of Northeast Asian countries, namely Korea, China, and Japan, which has been lost in the course of their compressed modernization, in relation to the tropic figures of their oral literatures.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.41
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• pp.553-578
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• 2015

The Korean society was forcefully merged with the invasion of Japan in 20th century, and traditional culture of Korea was damaged severely by colonization from Japan. After liberation, Korean society experienced drastic social change with Korean War, and industrial economy and democratic system developed as modernization and democratization occurred. However, Korean traditional culture dissolved more severely as Korean society developed industrial economy and democracy. As criticism of existing Western center of society and the emphasis of cultural identity of non-western regions and third-world, world society preferred exchange of culture of diverse nations and people with each other in advent of postmodernism thoughts in mid-late 20th century. If the cultural identity of Korea was dissolving meanwhile, it was needed to be recovered again. Despite the research in Korean history, language, art, architecture was performed to recover cultural identity of Korea, it did not go in-depth with Korean mythology, for Korean mythology is considered as superstition or savage. Mythology shows subconscious group psychology of people who live in certain specific region. Studying Korean mythology is one of the ways to rediscover cultural identity of Korea. In order for Korean mythology to be known to many people, its stories should be told by media. There were movies, plays, drama, and novels produced based on existing Korean mythology as introduction, then these mythical stories are appear in subculture contents such as recent comics, animation, webtoon, games, and light novels. Then population of game players and webtoon readers increased as dissemination of PC and smart phones, and increasing market scale of subculture contents increased a population of consumers of comics, animation, and light novel. Consumers of sub-culture contents were interested as many of these contents were created, base on Korean mythology. Therefore, this paper is written as research on Korean mythology and its signification in sub-cultural contents which were produced base on Korean mythology.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.28
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• pp.43-76
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• 2005

This study focused on the wedding ceremony. It was considered as important social text containing cultural codes of Korean society related gender system. Using the concepts of 'Myths', introduced by Barthes, this study analysed every procedure of wedding ceremony prevailed contemporary Korea. Romantic Love, creation of the ideology system of Western bourgeois and peculiar Confucian ideas about gender structure in Korean patriarchy system are both important frames determined wedding culture in Korea society. Thus this study divided wedding ceremony into displaying sphere and non-displaying sphere. Then, displaying sphere was framed by myth of romantic love, but non-displaying sphere was framed by traditional Confucian ideas. And, the transformation of contemporary wedding ceremony has the nature of kitsch, related the radical change of Korean class structure, also it worked as myth reveled up the unequality of present gender system.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.54-55
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• 2000

근대 사회의 보편적인 건축의 언어를 창출하려던 모더니즘의 신화가 무너지고 난 후에, 새로운 보편적 건축양식을 찾아보려는 노력은 현재까지 계속되어오고 있으나 현대건축에서 공유할 수 있는 보편적 건축어휘는 부재한 상황이다. 현대의 건축가들은 각자의 건축적 언어체계를 만들어내려는 노력과 더불어 여러 방면의 건축적 실험을 통해 새로운 건축의 규범을 정의하려는 노력에도 경주하고 있다. (중략)

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.42
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• pp.47-68
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• 2016

This paper closely examines Popol Vuh, regarded as the Bible of the Mayans, from the perspective of the Deep Ecology. Deep ecology is a concept born out of the criticisms on the existing environmental movements as superficial, and encourages the moral and ethical change of the man's attitude towards the nature, inevitably becoming "metaphysical" in character. As such the Deep ecology advocates the break away from the anthropocentricism, the dichotomous thinking and the rationalism of the modern times. Popol Vuh is a text that contains such concepts and it requires an analysis from the Deep ecological perspective beyond the existing framework of the study that simply focuses on mythological elements.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.8
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• pp.49-56
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• 2006

Urban cmmunity films have achieved the industrial modern society's idiosyncrasy Popular films have achieved the industrial growth through city as the completion of modernization. They also have represented the social meaning of urban space, and have expanded 'their political space' This filmic challenge showed diverse negative factors which were the poor's economical difficulties, the relative robbery of their education and job, and adhered class in city through developing the urban space with were hidden beyond modernity's splendor.

• Korean Association for Visual Culture
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• v.17
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• pp.65-92
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• 2011

This thesis investigates the complex functions of the magic lantern in illusionism and enlightment which was the most popular visual media and the direct ancestor of cinema. Especially, the thesis focuses on the characteristics of magic lantern's images which had been varied with the scientific and technological development. During the early period of the magic lantern, from the late 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, it frightened viewers by showing magic images with ghosts and spectres, 'phantasmagoria', and wondered with images of natural catastropes and interesting stories like fables and fairy tales, which fulfilled the entertainment function. Since the mid 19th century the magic lantern began to show not only pictures of the 'scientific themes' on the earth, nature and human, but also them of the ethnological on the far, exotic worlds like Africa, Amazon and Syberia etc. from the European perspective. These contents conducted the educative function and contributed to the process of Enlightment to the peoples in the pre-modern age. The two functions of the magic lantern such as entertainment and education had been neither historically followed, nor clearly divided, but the one was predominant according to the development of lantern techniques as well as the changes of the world view and the culture of the time. The entertainment function of the magic lantern based on the visual fantacy did exist in the late 19th century further, and also in the late industrial society, even in the age of highly developed science and technology, viewers want rather 're-enchantment' by illusionism than facts and truths on the reality. This is an essential characteristic of the moving image media, as it had already been presented in the images of the magic lantern.

• Journal of Korean Historical Folklife
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• no.27
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• pp.267-361
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• 2008

This article traces how the modern Chinese "nation" was constructed as an "imagined community" around Huang-ti (the Yellow Emperor) in late Qing. Huang-ti was a legendary figure in ancient China and the imperial courts monopolized the worship of him. Many late Qing intellectuals appropriated this symbolic figure and, through a set of discursive strategies of "framing, voice and narrative structure," transformed him into a privileged symbol for modern Chinese national identity. What Huang-ti could offer was, however, no more than a "public face" for the imagined new national community, or in other words, a formal structure without substantial contents. No consensus appeared on whom the Chinese nation should include and where the Chinese nation should draw its boundaries. The anti-Manchu revolutionaries emphasized the primordial attachment of blood and considered modern China an exclusive community of Huang-ti's descent. The constitutional reformers sought to stretch the boundaries to include the ethnic groups other than the Han. Some minority intellectuals, particularly the Manchu ones, re-constructed the historic memory of their ethnic origin around Huang-ti. The quarrels among intellectuals of different political persuasion testify how Huang-ti as the most powerful cultural symbol became a site for contests and negotiations in the late Qing process of national construction.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.50
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• pp.171-200
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• 2016

The full-scaled study of Joseon conducted by Japan in the 1910s was part of its colonial policy, while the native Joseon studies against it contained political aspiration to recover the national rights and independence. Accordingly, the conceptual meaning of 'Joseon' varied according to its subject of speech. The establishment of modern nation-state failed along with the extinction of Korean Empire, but 'Joseon' was newly discovered within national ideology. It became a historical concept in which the experience of the past and the expectation toward the future could be united. The so-called 'Joseon Studies' was only limited to intellectuals in the academic circle, but 'Joseon' embraced the articulations from more various social agents. Furthermore, it is only natural that 'Joseon Studies' should be interpreted within the historical semantics of 'Joseon', considering the connection between concept and discourse. In his The History of Joseon Civilization, An Hwak encompassed the history from the times of ancient mythology to the contemporary times under the banner of 'Joseon'. Opposing Japanese distortion of history carried out in the name of historical positivism, he idealized Joseon history as comparable to that of the Western democracy. He extended the study of 'Joseon' into culture at large, foreshadowing a kind of Joseon philosophy. In his An Overview of Joseon Philosophical Ideas, the first description of 'Joseon philosophy' as an independent field, he proposed philosophy as one of three sources of pride in Joseon and asserted its uniqueness and originality compared to the West. It was an attempt to grasp the peculiarity of Joseon ideas from a perspective of the history of universal human civilization. He considered 'Jong'(倧) as an ideological foundation held from the ancient to the modern times, and the acceptance of Buddhism and Confucianism as beneficial to 'Joseon philosophy'. The birth of 'Joseon philosophy', the modern transformation of the traditional knowledge system, was an intellectual experiment to apply traditional knowledge to the modern disciplinary classification system.