• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.111-122
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• 2021

Objectives: There was a judgment of acquittal for the manufacturer SK Chemical and the vendor Aekyung regarding humidifier disinfectant (HD) containing 5-chloro-2-methylisothiazol-3(2H)-one/2-methylisothiazol-3(2H)-one (CMIT/MIT). The rationale used in this judgement is discussed here in the light of scientific consideration. Methods: The sentencing document for the judgements was obtained from the Korea Supreme Court Service. In particular, the judgements made by the court related to the risk of HD and external and internal exposure to CMIT/MIT are discussed based on scientific evidence. Results: Rendering a determination in a criminal trial of insufficient evidence of causation, the court dismissed the prosecution's motion that humidifier disinfectant-associated lung injuries (HDLI) and asthma were associated with the utilization of these products. However, CMIT/MIT, a strong sensitizing and corrosive substance, has been reported to be associated with brain toxicity, allergic contact dermatitis, and asthma. Furthermore, the judgment did not consider total consumption amounts or the cumulative dose of CMIT/MIT in the humidifier. Lastly, there are several cases supporting the fact that exposure to water-soluble substances including CMIT/MIT can cause lower respiratory tract diseases. In addition to cases of asthma among the workers exposed to CMIT/MIT, we identified lung injury victims who were exposed to HDs exclusively containing CMIT/MIT. Conclusions: We conclude that there is sufficient evidence supporting the assertion that HDs containing CMIT/MIT cause lung injuries, including asthma, contrary to the court's judgement.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.41
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• pp.199-227
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• 2015

In the twenty-first century, one of the most controversial issues concerns neoliberal policies and its results. In particular, since the mid-1980s, the United States and international financial institutions have imposed their programs on Latin American countries. The result is a deepening social inequality in Latin America that puts an emphasis on financial stability instead of social security. Consequently, social inequality is worsened and an imbalance in income distribution took place. Because of the flexibility of labor, the middle class is destroyed. For the poor person deprived of the opportunity to rise, violence is a common occurrence in daily life. Thus, in this context, Eduardo Galeano raises the necessity of a critique concerning the values that neoliberalism regards as important. Furthermore, Galeano is also wary of the "militarization of neoliberalism." This is because the neoliberal multinationals motivate a war without borders under the guise of peace. Neo-liberal policies also contribute to environmental pollution. However, environmental vandalism, which happens in partnership with large and international organizations, is not readily apparent to the public because those perpetrators wore a "green mask." Hence, Galeano assiduously endeavors to undercover the false consciousness hiding behind the green mask. Thus, in brief summary, Galeano represents in his works a depiction about Latin America where violence often happens in daily life.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.1-29
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• 2018

In the contemporary American cinematic landscape, there is a distinctive tendency to depict the disturbing ways in which characters with brain damages perceive, remember, and think about the world. Despite its attempts to examine the socio-political implications of these characters' subjectivities, the previous scholarship on this trend of film was limited in being either too pessimistically deterministic or too euphorically optimistic. Critically reading neuroscientific discourses on the brain-damaged subject from the perspective of Giorgio Agamben's critique of biopolitics, this paper explores how the contemporary American cinema of the impaired brain attempts to mediate the neurologically inexplicable affects of those subjects who are in the neurological state of exception and to express their experiences of a becoming-nonhuman. By closely reading Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and Alejandro $Gonz{\acute{a}}lez$ $I{\tilde{n}}{\acute{a}}rritu^{\prime}s$ Birdman in this regard, I show how the two films, by employing different sets of cinematic free indirect techniques, express the neurologically impaired subject's affective experience of a becoming-nonhuman animal in different ways, and thereby to a more or less extent act as 'profaned' neuro-biopolitical apparatuses.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.325-359
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• 2017

The works of a literary and cultural historian Franco Moretti are conspicuous in many ways. Trained in Marxism and Russian formalism, he participated in the construction of the New Left in England. Also, he interestingly interpreted the socialization of the individual through the genre of bildungsroman. Then, he shifted his research interest to the notion of world literature, and to explore its global scale, he developed his own quantitative approach combined with advanced computer technology in digital humanities. His recent publication reveals that Moretti conducted a social critique of the European bourgeois culture with his new quantitative method. His macroscopic view of literature and use of cutting-edge technology in his research inspire historians of Korean literature located in the so-called periphery of world literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the idea of world literature outlined by Franco Moretti by reviewing his method called "distant reading" and examples of such an approach. His distant reading is to construct a macroscopic archive through inclusion of forgotten works from literary history and to analyze morphological patterns that frequently appear in the archive. His book entitled Graphs, Maps, Trees is a collection of examples of which he applied distant reading. By delving into such cases, I will raise questions about Moretti's macroscopic perspective of world literature in conjunction with Korean literature. As located at the periphery of global circulation of literary knowledge, Korea appropriated Western genres, established its literary institutions, and developed book markets through modern newspapers and magazines. This experience of furthering modern literature through periodicals would provide another view to revisit Moretti's world literature.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.49
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• pp.181-199
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• 2017

One of the most lasting and influential projects for radical reform of Korean universities is a discourse on networking national and public universities. The discourse, proposed with a level equalization of universities as its ideological basis has raised various discussions and suggestions in the past 20 years. It was proposed as a fundamental solution to the 'disastrous' hierarchical structure of universities and 'hellish' entrance exam competition. This paper aims at reexamining the efficacy of its ideological proposition and its practicability at the present time in reference to such foreign cases, which have worked as model cases for this discourse: the reformation of the University of Paris and the California master plan for higher education in the 1960s. The two different contexts, however, should be considered in applying the cases to Korean university reform. 1) The foreign cases of united universities were formed 'naturally' in the expanding phases of higher education while the Korean project pursued 'artificially' in the midst of reconstructing process. 2) The foreign cases had an overall influence on education in general as most of the universities in those countries were public or national, while the effect of Korean project will be very limited as most of the university students attend private universities. Besides those differences, the new situations surrounding universities such as globalized competitiveness and technological innovation is making the idea of standardization of universities obsolete. Korean university reform should not be centered on the integration of universities but on their characterization and enhance the specific strengths of each group of universities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.389-403
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• 2019

This study aims to analyze criteria and characteristics for preservice elementary teachers' critiques of their peers' inquiry-based instruction. This study reviews critiques written by 31 preservice elementary teachers enrolled in an elementary school science inquiry methods course wherein the teachers designed and implemented inquiry-based instruction. These preservice teachers participated in inquiry-based instruction as if they were elementary students and then evaluated their peers' instruction. Analysis of the critiques reveals that preservice teachers evaluated their peers' instruction on the following criteria: instruction context, science content, teaching strategies, students, instructional goals, non-verbal attitude, and assessment. Their beliefs about teaching science inquiry were reflected in the critiques. Additionally, it was found that four orientation for teaching inquiry-didactic, academic rigor, activity-driven, inquiry orientation-reflected in critiques; some of critiques held more than one of these orientations. And they did not merely criticize but suggested alternatives to general teaching strategies; furthermore, of inquiry-instruction specific teaching strategies. They showed higher epistemic understanding of inquiry-based instruction after mid-term demonstrations. The evidence demonstrated that the proportion of critiques specifically about inquiry-based instruction increased after the mid-term demonstrations. Moreover, the post mid-term critiques emphasized interaction between students as well as understanding of the nature of science. These findings could provide implication for teaching inquiry and criticizing others' instruction as part of elementary school science courses in preservice elementary teacher education.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.258-273
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• 2019

Bilbao, Spain, made a mark as a example of the regional revitalization by culture and tourism. Korean Government have a perspective that culture and tourism could be an alternative to the regional crisis of manufacturing in 2018. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the locational specificity and the revival strategies for the regional development of Bilbao in a structural context. This could provide implications to the regional crisis of Korea. The main results are summarized as follows. Firstly, the local government of Bilbao has taken an active role, using not only its political and financial autonomy but also its locational advantage as an important nodal region of transnational trade networks in Europe. Secondly, Bilbao was able to sustain its regional revitalization initiatives for a long period by facilitating public-private partnership system. Finally, despite the effectiveness of the mega project and place marketing, low job security and the polarization of the service sector have emerged as a problem at the same time. Still, the deindustrialization of Bilbao could be possible due to the various services including knowledge-based services and financial services as well as culture and tourism.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.73-97
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• 2010

Representation of destitution may be considered as an expression of a social desire toward forging a bond or solidarity with the impoverished. However, political and ethical demands of the solidarity force the formulaic framework structuring the form of representation to its limits. The thesis aims to examine the responses to such demands within the tradition of modernist literature that can be traced from Charles Baudelaire, Knut Hamsun to Franz Kafka and that somehow culminates with Samuel Beckett, and to analyze how the issue of destitution that weaves through Beckett's works criticizes and inherits such a heritage. Whereas destitution in 19th century Realism is structurally fixed and its potential for change is inherently excluded, for these writers, destitution is no longer the state of rigid reality in which any possibility is limited. It is destitution as an imperative that calls for exploitation of possibilities that can be recuperated from the impoverished condition of destitution. What these writers consistently resist against is destitution that leads to compensation and reward. Since occupying a superior position toward the other as the subject of description or sympathy can be seen as one form of profit or reward, they have persistently pursued absolute solitariness and austere conditions rather than prematurely simulating a sense of solidarity and community. The ultimate goal of destitution as an imperative is to pursue destitution in order to worsen it by identifying and then excluding and expending possessions and assets to a state of penury. This is a paradoxical process that opens up the realm of possibilities of destitution and redefines it as abundance and wealth. Destitution for Beckett as seen in the writers above is the objective of literature. But, what he focuses on is to amplify the shreds of economic world that still remain in a state of poverty and to reveal extreme poverty as a state of odd affluence and to transform it into a pursuit of accumulation and profit. One of his famous axioms, "less is more", contains the essence of such a paradoxical strategy. In a sense, such approach is a twist on the strategy that identifies and uses any remaining potential hidden in destitution as was pursued by other writers. It also expands on the imagination of the destitute described by Hamsun. But Hamsun and Beckett are diametrical opposites. Unlike Hamsun, Beckett does not link imagination with a sense of guilt. Imagination is not intended to overcome the destitute reality nor to culminate in artistic martyrdom as in the case of Kafka's hunger artist. The imagination of the impoverished in Beckett is simply a hilarious game and not an escape that ends in a sense of guilt. This game formulates a "rhetorical question" or derision at the ironical situation where the pursuit of hunger and art as the disinterestedness has been turned into symbolic capital. It is inherently a fundamental critique at the aestheticization of destitution that has been pursued by Modernism. Beckett's efforts at divulging falsehood inherent in non-profit acts such as charity, donation and hospitality are dissections of social fictions in which aestheticization of destitution remains a part of the whole.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.193-204
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• 2021

Objectives: In January 2021, the former heads of the manufacturer SK Chemical and the vendor Aekyung were acquitted for manufacturing and selling humidifier disinfectant (HD) containing 5-chloro-2-methylisothiazol-3(2H)-one/2-methylisothiazol-3(2H)-one (CMIT/MIT). In this article, we analyzed the rationale used in this judgement in the light of scientific consideration. Methods: The sentencing document for the judgements was obtained from the Korea Supreme Court Service. In particular, the judgements made by the court related to the toxicological and individual association with HD perspectives were discussed based on scientific evidence. Results: The ruling stated that the necessary conditions for causality between CMIT/MIT and such diseases were not met based on the fact that asthma and lung damage were not found in the inhalation exposure animal experiments. The judgment overlooked the inevitable limitations of using animal experiments for verifying health effects in humans, which are often inconsistent with the observations in animals. Among 11 governmentaffirmed lung injury cases with CMIT/MIT usage, three patients' humidifier disinfectant-associated lung injury (HDLI) pathology proved that CMIT/MIT could cause lung injury similar to that caused by PHMG and PGH. In addition, five children showed decreased lung function related to damage caused by humidifier disinfectant exposure. Conclusions: We conclude that there is sufficient evidence supporting the assertion that HDs containing CMIT/MIT cause lung injuries, including asthma, contrary to the court's decision.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.94
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• pp.107-136
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• 2011

Throughout its short history, the discourses of philosophy of technology has been centered around two issues, namely the recovery of human autonomy in technological society and the pursuit of sustainable development. Following the basic subject matters of the discipline, this article suggests to examine the possibility of the 'ethical engineering design,' meaning that ethical consideration should be included in engineering design. This proposal is based on the critique that philosophy of technology has so far focused on the external approach to the problem of technology, neglecting the active role of engineers. By paying attention to engineering design, however, philosophy of technology can offer a more realistic solution for the problems of the technological society. The first section shows the context of the current discussion by surveying the brief history of philosophy of technology. The thesis of engineering design in philosophy of technology will be presented in the second section, together with supporting reasons. The third section will examine theories and efforts that raised the issue of engineering design in the past. They have been suggested in different contexts, but when put together, they can be used for the justification of the current proposal. The fourth section will deal with the possible critiques of this proposal, which will be followed by suggestions for engineers themselves.