• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.40
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• pp.303-336
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• 2022

'Otherness' is a major philosophical concept in modern Western thought. It has been a force through which the concept of a subject's rights emerged. This paper focuses on Emmanuel Levinas' discussion of 'otherness.' Levinas emphasizes our ethical responsibility for others, which is meaningful in that it can be applied as a paradigm of communication for use in modern society. In the context of modern times and multicultural societies, it is important to recognize the diversity of others and to promote coexistence. Coexistence at this time should be 'unifying' rather than subject-centered. This paper attempts to understand this narrative. An epic is a cognitive process that constitutes the fundamental desires and experiences of humans. Humans try to project and understand themselves through narratives. The possibility of coexistence with others can be examined by analyzing otherness as found within those narratives. Therefore, this paper suggests the possibility and direction of coexistence by analyzing the storytelling that establishes relationships by shaping characters in Guillermo del Toro's film, Shape of Water.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.117-144
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• 2020

The film Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018) is one of the most noted Korean films in recent years as a work that unfolds an elaborate narrative in a delicate visualization. This film is a multi-vocal text in which different types of characters appear and scattered objective facts and ambiguous subjective desires are intertwined, so it is a text that has room for diverse interpretations. This article attempts to read Burning as an ethical discourse centered on the protagonist Jong-su, noting that the film raises universal and significant ethical issues that transcend the specific social and historical conditions of a contemporary Korean youth. I would like to examine the situation in which Jong-su is facing and his reaction to it, above all, from the perspective of Jong-su's ethical awakening and leap forward. Jong-su, a young South Korean non-regular man living in the present, encounters and connects with Hae-mi and Ben and attempts to understand the mysteries of the world. His trajectory, which the film shows closely, inevitably intersects the social and historical dimension of confusion and frustration of a young man graduated from the Department of Creative Writing, the reality of family dissolution and the individual psychological dimension of the sudden disappearance of his lover Hae-mi. Burning is a magistrate film that depicts Jong-su as an ethical subject oriented toward 'communal togetherness' while confronting the world and exploring its mysteries despite all his unfavorable conditions, such as his social position of the precariat youth and the epistemological uncertainty of reality perception. It is read as a story of his painful growth, in which Jong-su is becoming a 'writer', who once was a helpless non-regular delivery worker.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.455-472
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• 2016

This paper aims to theoretically discuss the re-conceptualization of the school geography curriculum towards global citizenship education. To achieve this goal, post-structural global citizenship is introduced as an alternative notion of global citizenship by revealing some limits of the existing postcolonial global citizenship studies for global justice. Based upon Carr's(1996) idea of curriculum typology, three major curriculum perspectives are theoretically evaluated to see if they implicitly or explicitly undermine the citizenship of global 'others' ethically and politically. Post-structuralist ideas are then suggested as an alternative approach. With reference to this standpoint, this paper concludes by providing practical implications for a more just school geography curriculum towards global citizenship.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.138-148
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• 2021

In this paper, the basic narrative of The Sweet Home is the story that the residents of the apartment fight and survive the monsters in the isolated circumstances from the outside. This paper analysed the narrative and revealed the characteristics of the NETFLIX drama, The Sweet Home, and dealt with the ethics of contagion, core issue of the drama. Firstly, in the drama Sweet Home, the boundary between the men and the monsters collapses from the contagion. The drama shows the aspects of the apocalyptical world through the optical images, and reveals the main contagion cause is the desire and fury of the human to dominate the others. In the drama, we can see the duality that the characters sometimes stand in solidarity with, and often abuse the others. This story reflects the times after 2000s that the boundary between the man and the monster eclipses. Secondly, the drama shows that the ethics of the others popping up after the contagion is violent and thus can go to the totalitarianism. When the residents are shot by the troopers of the nation, the governmental authority shows its brutality. In this situation, the residents recognize their past behaviors and embrace the others. However, in the point that the characters' selfless behaviors could cover up the complaints and the fury of young generations after 2000s, The Sweet Home is a problematic drama.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.129
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• pp.341-366
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• 2014

This Thesis analyzes the two forms of Confucian Golden Rule(Shu恕) that were proposed by Zhu Xi朱熹 and Dai Zhen戴震 each other, and researches their ethical significances. Zhu Xi don't regards Shu as universal ethics by itself, while Dai Zhen identify Shu as the ground of universal ethics, According to this thesis, Zhu Xi thought that Shu has a danger of immoral misusage in some situation because Shu is so simplistic form of identification. Because this, Zhu Xi, for the purpose of blocking arbitrary misusage of Shu and holding universality of ethics, suggests that moral sincerity(Zhong忠) of subject is necessary to practice of Shu. Dai Zhen, however, criticizes Zhu Xi's Ethical Structure. In Dai Zhen's view, Zhu xi's idea that the subject has to establish his own morality through Zhong before practice Shu cannot make him escape from subjectivity necessarily. In this point, Dai Zhen revive Shu. His Shu concept means the reciprocity of human desires to each other. But Dai Zhen's idea, as Zhu Xi worried, has a danger of immoral misusage in some situation. On this problem, this thesis elucidates that Dai Zhen' desire concept is not individual various desires but is common basic desires of existence, thereby attests that Dai Zhen's Shu is safe from immoral misusage. This thesis claim that even if Zhu Xi's and Dai Zhen's position is so different, the ethical aims of two scholars is same. They both attempted to overcome the evil of subjectivism and to procure universality of ethics, furthermore to accomplish social fairness. Consequently, this thesis claims that two scholars both walked in same way because both wanted to establish the universality of Shu and to pursue realization of social fairness.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.32
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• pp.277-308
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to show that there are textual similarities between philosophy of Zhuangzi(莊子) and what Jacques Derrida' concepts such as 'differance', 'trace', and 'play', etc. Through our comparative study, we have established a philosophical affinity between Taoist thinking of Zhuangzi and Derridian deconstructive thinking. Zhuangzi and Derrida deconstruct all kinds of traditional and metaphysical thoughts. Zhuangzi's saying of "There is Tao(道) for Thievery(盜)". I call this philosophical tendency 'the logic of cohabitation and coexistence' of the Taoist philosophy. Derrida and Zhuangzi suggest that the logic of cohabitation and coexistence recognizes and affirms differences between opposites. In these thoughts of double affirmation, there is no violence of dichotomous thinking. In other words, their ways of thinking challenge the value system that suggests a single truth, and propose that all human values necessarily carry half-values. They give us to create an enjoyable play-space for human beings in this world. Zhuangzi's suggestions for moral theory provide us with a chance for making question as what is the better life with the others, with a fresh and new perspectives to understand differently the human beings along the category of universe in the 21st century.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.128-150
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• 2013

This paper is to examine the interrelationship between morality (or ethics) and geography and education in terms of the moral and ethical dimension embedded moral turn in geography. Since the 1970s, the geography have morally turned with stressing realization of social relevance and justice through interest on moral issues such as the spatial inequality and human welfare in the world of difference. This moral turn in geography has formed the area of moral geography, and emphasized the ethics of care and responsibility of human and nature with warning of immoral geographies of others and nature in the world of difference with the recent trend of postmodernism. For morally careful geography teaching, it is now good time that geography educators need to think the moral turn in geography education. If geography education is willing to contribute to make a better world, it needs to reflect more morally on geography curriculum and instruction in terms of the ethics of care and responsibility.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.361-389
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• 2017

This essay examines 'precarity politics' by Judith Butler, a well-known gender theorist and queer philosopher, in Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015) focused on concepts as unchosen cohabitation of Hannah Arendt and unwilled proximity of Emmanuel Levinas. Butler's precarity politics is the condition of our dispossessed political beings with fundamental vulnerability and interdependency that cannot choose with whom we will live on this Earth. Butler's political ethics is twofold: on one hand, she examines significance of 'action'' the most significant vita activa in the public area, and 'plurality'' the condition-not only the necessary condition but the possible condition-for a political life suggested by Hannah Arendt in Human Condition; on the other hand, Butler reflects upon global precarity based on a diasporic precarious life in the social world towards freedom and equality. Unchosen cohabitation of plural humans on Earth, and global pervasion of precarity, that indicates "politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death," so called "differential distribution of precariousness," are practical possibilities of ethical and equal cohabitation of different ethnic groups in the social world. Ethical obligations or ethical demand to respond to others' suffering in distance and proximity originated from precarity politics, mentioned in Precarious Life, Parting Ways, and Frames of War, could be non-foundational joint of plural people living together globally. We should presume the 'reversibility' of distance and proximity in others' suffering, based on responsiveness and responsibility of others, if we want to stay attuned to the pain of others we never chose to live together. That is the significance of Butler's 'precarity politics' with 'ethical obligation' to accept 'unchosen plurality' of living population on Earth, and 'reversibility between of distance and proximity,' in her 'new plural and embodied body politics' or 'new corporeal ontology', through human primary vulnerability, fundamental interdependency, being exposed and responsive to suffering of others.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.30
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• pp.259-282
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• 2010

Ethical value of Confucianism seeks to realize the ideal of life to the reality, through ethical life. It is discussed based on myself, which is the main ethical agent, in relationship with the others. These traditional values include universality in the homogeneous aspect such as humanism that has been commonly sought by the human race, or awe toward the absolute one. 'Pursuit of universality in the Korean context' ultimately seeks 'Korean ethics', that prevailed in Korea, based on the Korean traditional culture. Therefore, we should comprehensively understand this universality and diversity, so called 'us'. Through the understanding, we should play an active role of culture creators as noble persons that realize fraternity, along with respect to each culture. Studies on traditional ethics will not only be an important opportunity to look at the history and current status of ethics, but also it will be a cornerstone to understand the Korean mind-set based on the Korean culture. Recently, establishing Korean identity and recovery of ethics damaged due to anomie of value are key social issues. Studies on traditional value are not separated from this issue. If our adolescents are able to correctly understand the traditional ethics and pursue a life recreating it, they will be able to enjoy healthier life, contributing to a healthier society.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.41
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• pp.223-246
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• 2014

The main concern of classical Confucianism, which has Kongzi as its main thinker, is how one can attain moral perfection. In this respect, all of the Confucian teachings can be characterized as an attempt to expound the nature of sages or gentlemen who are believed to attain moral perfection. In Confucianism, de 德 (moral virtue) refers to moral principles or the attributes of things, and it also signifies moral qualities and abilities of humans which are believed to be bestowed by the moral source. Kongzi substantiated the details and practical methods of de, through his teachings of ren as its internal principle and li as its external form. in this way, he put a special emphasis on moral practicality of de. To study Kongzi's practical moral teachings focusing on de can be understood as a reflection on current educational issues.