• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.68 no.2
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• pp.53-77
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• 2016

This research is performed to verify a suggestive understanding and undertone on radical social workers's balanced practical experiences responding to the current situation to discover the new practical way of Korean social work so as to overcome the limitation of the above mentioned microscopic approach. It focuses on Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological study and further relating areas to provide information on Radical Social Workers'(RSW) social work practical and specific experiences and fundamental implication. This research has been participated with 9 RSWs, led the past democratic movement, have participated with this research. The data covers 84 meaningful units, 24 exposed topics, and 7 essential themes. The essential themes are as follow; lifting a latch into prepared changes, unavoidable destiny, drive for change from the bottom, collaborated forces of minority groups, changing the oppressive laws and institutions to more favorable ones for minorities, being patient and waiting required as birds breaking eggs to become a bird. Based on the collected data, Researchers discuss the main features and issues of our instituted social work practices.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.63 no.3
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• pp.239-260
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• 2011

It is very interesting phenomenon that despite a broad consensus on the need for social worker to take cultural aspects into professional practice, thus to be a culturally competent, a number of materials criticising the concept of cultural competence have emerged in these days simultaneously. The main purpose of the study is to clarify such phenomenon, which means that this article is trying to analyze the contents of such critical discourse on cultural competence and the validity of those contents. The result of the study finds out that most of the arguments can be categorized into three aspects: epistemological, ethical, ontological, and that most of the main ideas of the critical discourses have been borrowed from a branch of critical social work theories, especially highly influenced from Foucault and Derrida. This article argues that critical discourses have some significant problems which make a conflict with traditional values and tenets in social work as a human service profession. First, epistemologically, the critical discourse fails to differentiate the matter of discovery from that of justification, which brings the cultural competence to the brink of agnosticism. Second, ethically, insisting that there should be no foundational criteria for cultural hierarchy in term of rightness or goodness, the critical discourses reveal their intrinsic limitations in solving ethical dilemmas and conflict in real world, which can be considered as a kind of evasion of responsibility in disguise of cultural relativism. Third, in practical vein, critical discourses are largely in effective in specifying the concrete model to realize their own ideas, and furthermore they unintentionally promote context-blind perspectives that eclipses the significance of structural and systematical impacts on the cultural identity.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.5-44
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• 2010

The main purpose of this study is to critically examine the existing theoretical as well as analytical scope of 'sexual minority' in Social Welfare, and to (re)construct and expand it incorporating feminist theories on sexuality. The body of literature on sexual minority or homosexuality in social welfare in Korea as well as in the West can be characterized as two distinct features: first, medical discourse leaning on pathological perspective which perceives homosexuality as a disease or defect, homosexual as a pervert; and second, human rights perspective premised upon the idea of diversity and multi-culturalism, both which are anchoring at 'essentialism.' Based upon the understanding of sexuality as a social construct, we argue that feminist insight on sexuality can lead to reconceptualizing homosexuality and reorienting theories and practices in social welfare. From radical feminism to postmodern queer theories, feminists have developed diverse ideas and complex theories on sexuality and homosexuality, including the concept of 'compulsory heterosexuality,' 'lesbianism as political resistance,' and 'performative gender.' For feminists, particularly, sexuality which is constructed in the complex power matrix of dominations to producing and maintaining inequalities and discriminations is not merely a distinctive variable, but one of the important organizational principles such as gender, class, race, age, and nationality. This epistemological principle will hopefully shed lights on alternative 'knowledge' on homosexuality in social welfare, and lead to significant contribution to its critical expansion in theory and practice.