• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.1
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• pp.109-144
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• 2003

Orientalness is a concept that expresses the collective identity of the Orient in relation to the West. The concept itself is mutable and defined by the relationship between the two regions at different points in time. Changes in the concept depend on a number of factors, such as cultural influence, the political balance of power between the two regions, and on the interpretative scheme that defines the relationship. In addition, the geographical notion of the concept evolves culturally, socially and politically. During this process, Oriental-ness becomes Oriental-ism at times. I will attempt to survey and measure the progression of Orientalness from its emergence in early 17th century to its subsequent transformation in modern Korea as reflected in art theory and art works. The recognition of the comparative characteristics of Oriental art began when the Orient was exposed to the art of the West in the late Ming dynasty during the early 17th century. The changes in the artistic climate in China affected the late Chosun. I will start with a brief introduction of this time and the birth of Orientalness. The concept gradually changed during the period of Enlightenment(開化期) towards the end of the 19th century, and during the colonial period( 1910-1945) it took on a new form. Establishment of the concept of "Orient"as a single, unifying concept spanning across cultures and national boundaries has been attributed to late Meiji period Japan, whose intention at that time is believed to have been to build a pan-Asia(亞細亞) empire with Japan at its commanding center. It has been stressed that the real motive behind the formation of one single cultural unit, where the shared common written language was Chinese and Confucianism and Taoism were the common metaphysical traditions, was to build one political unit. When the notion of a geographical unit of Asia was replaced by the concept of Asia as a cultural and political unit, a massive growth of interest and discourse were provoked around the concept of Orientalism. When Orientalism was being formulated, Korea automatically became member of "one Asia" when the country became colonized. For Koreans, the identity of the Orient had to be defined in cultural terms, as the political notion of a nation was non-existent at that time. The definition of identity was pursued at two levels, pan-Asian and local. If Orientalism was an elite discourse centered in pan-Asian philosophical and religious tradition, localized Orientalism was a popular discourse emphasizing locality as the byproduct of natural geographic condition. After the liberation in 1945 from colonial rule, a thrust of movement arose towards political nationalism. Two types of discourses on Orientalism, elite and popular, continued as central themes in art. Despite the effort to redefine the national identity by eradicating the cultural language of the colonial past, the past was enduring well into the present time. As discussed above, even when the painting themes were selected from Korean history, the tradition of using history painting as a manifestation of political policy to glorify the local identity had its founding during the Meiji period. The elevation of folk art to the level of high art also goes back to the colonial promotion of local color and local sentiment. Again, the succession of the past (colonial) ideal was defended as the tradition assumed a distinct modern shape that was abstract in style. The concept of the "Orient" is of relative and changing nature. It was formulated in relation to Western culture or civilization. Whatever the real motive of the adoption of them had been, the superiority of the Orient was emphasized at all times. The essence of the Orient was always perceived as the metaphysical tradition as a way to downgrade Western culture as materialistic. This view still prevails and the principle of Orient was always sought in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Even when Orientalism was employed by imperialist Japan in an effort to establish her position as the center of the Orient, the spiritual source was still in Chinese philosophy and religion. In art also, the Chinese literati tradition became the major platform for elite discourse. Orientalism was also defined locally, and the so-called local color was pursued in terms of theme and style. Thus trend continued despite the effort to eradicate the remnants of colonial culture long after liberation. These efforts are now being supported politically and also institutionalized to become the aesthetic ideal of the modern Korean art.

• Journal of Science of Art and Design
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• v.12
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• pp.65-96
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• 2007

Today, the modern art is extremely diverse. It is denying its own boundary through chaos, extreme, abjection. In fact the diversity of the modern art can be best described as questioning and challenging to the essence of the reality, rather than the artistic pursuit of the beauties. The pursuit of the reality has been a long lasting discourse since the ancient. Through the history, the reality (referent) and representation (image) has been complementing and disposing each other in a relationship of a meaningful construction until the modern times. The limit of modernistic self-reference and the emergence of the figure leads to the emergence of Post-modernism in a trend of experimenting new visual arts. The return to the figure is clearly distinguished from existing representation's system and it brought new meanings to approaches and interpretations of the reality. In the case of Pop arts of 1960's and the following the modern sculptures, which is covered by this thesis, I put an emphasis on the diversification of those via changed strategies on the reality. In a situation where the reality is dictated by signified, the modern arts can no longer stay on a classic concept of representation, rather it pursuits new system and diverse strategies. I provide three types of strategic characters of the reality and the diversification of reality: the transition of the reality. These three types can be used as a frame work, which is supporting new aspects of the modern arts in reflecting on existing system. Therefore, the reason of categorizing is to distinguish modernistic arts and post modernistic arts, and to propose new post-modernistic discourses. Adapting J.F, Lyotard's view, absence is used to trace down the diversification of the reality thorough the sublime on the deconstruction of the mega discourses and the relationship of representation. Based on H. Faster's theory of the appropriation, the appropriation is used to exemplify the strategies of visual arts are in variations and being delayed. Lastly, in the transition, J. Baudrilliard's simulacre is used in terms of the concept of post modernistic representation. Based on the core of his theories, the deconstruction of existing concepts and simulation as the post modernistic representation, and the world of hyperreality based on simulacre are explained. These allows us to deny that representation is the expression of reality through mimesis. My aim is to work on the definition of the arts and representation in the modern era, and go further from there in order to clarify meaning and extension of the modern sculptures. Now two artists are reviewed based on their own art works: George Seagal; Jeff Koons. They are selected among numerous artists from the Post Modern era. Epic contents and emphasis on daily life of Seagal's works show good examples to artists from Pop Arts and following time period and may have served as a start point for Postmodernism. Indeed, he tried to show a newly defined relationship between art works and daily life experience. On the other hand, J.Koons used the strategies of fabrication and appropriation, which shows characteristics of the postmodernism. Through his four individual exhibitions, he shows the diversification of the reality based on art works as fetishistic merchandises, and newly defined concept of Ready-made since M Duchamp. Lastly, the diversification of the reality is analyzed again in context of my art works. I focused on the return to the figure among a variety of trends of late 20 th century modern sculpture. It showed the post modernistic point of view on the reality. Post modernistic diversified strategies are adopted as a method of distinguishing each art works via the diversification of the reality. This is the result of contemporary social and cultural situations.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.5-16
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• 2009

Against the backdrop of the increasing trend towards economic globalisation, many international firms are indicating that decisions on how to enter foreign markets remains one of the key strategic challenges confronting them. Despite the rich body of literature on the topic, the fact that these challenges have continued to dominate global marketing strategy discourses point to someevident lacunae. Accordingly, this paper considers the variables, categorised in terms of firm contexts (standardisation, market research, competition, structure, competitive advantage) and host country-contexts (economic development, cultural differences, regulation and political risk), which influence the degree of involvement of UK companies in overseas markets. Following hypotheses were drawn from literature review: H1: The greater the level of competition, the higher the degree of involvement in the overseas market. H2: The more centralised the firm's organisation structure, the higher the degree of involvement in the overseas market. H3a: The adoption of a low cost-approach to competitive advantage will lead to a higher degree of involvement. H3b: The adoption of an innovation-approach to competitive advantage will lead to a higher degree of involvement. H3c: The adoption of a market research approach to competitive advantages will lead to a higher degree of involvement. H3d: The adoption of a breadth of strategic target-approach to competitive advantage will lead to a lower degree of involvement. H4: The higher the degree of standardisation of the international marketing mix the higher the degree of involvement. H5: The greater the degree of economic development in the host market, the higher the degree of involvement. H6: The greater the cultural differences between home and host countries, the lower the degree of involvement. H7: The greater the difference in regulations between the home country and the host country, the lower the degree of involvement. H8: The higher the political risk in the host country, the lower the degree of involvement. A questionnaire instrument was constructed using, wherever possible, validated measures of the concepts to serve the aims of this study. Following two sets of mailings, 112 usable completed questionnaires were returned. Correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze data. Statistically, the paper suggests that factors relating to the level of competition, competitive advantages and economic development are strong in influencing foreign market involvements. On the other hand, unexpectedly, cultural factors (especially individualism/collectivism and low and high power distance dimensions) proved to have weak moderating effects. The reason for this, in part, is due to the pervading forces of globalisation and the attendant effect on global marketing. This paper has contributed to the general literature in a way that point to two mainimplications. First, with respect to research on national systems, the study may hold out some important lessons especially for developing nations. Most of these nations are known to be actively seeking to understand what it takes to attract foreign direct investment, expand domestic market and move their economies from the margin to the mainstream global economy. Second, it should be realised that competitive conditions remain in constant flux (even in mature industries and mature economies). This implies that a range of home country factors may be as important as host country factors in explaining firms' strategic moves and the degree of foreign market involvement. Further research can consider the impact of the home country environment on foreign market involvement decisions. Such an investigation will potentially provide further perspectives not only on the influence of national origin but also how home country effects are confounded with industry effects.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.44
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• pp.411-430
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• 2016

One of central issues in the Literature and Science discourses during the Victorian era is the relation of physiology to psychology. Many thinkers tackle the question of whether or not psychic phenomena can be reducible to their physiological bases. For instance, Victorian physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter claims that there should be a boundary between physiological and psychological qualities. Yet, his contemporary writer Grant Allen contends for the reduction of psychology into physiology. In the essay, I discuss Grant Allen's work Physiological Aesthetics (1877) so as to eventually problematize his physiological reductionism. I especially highlight the paradox of his physiological aesthetics. In order to clarify my argument, I introduce two concepts: evolutionary aesthetics and physiological reductionism. On the one hand, Allen argues for the development of aesthetic appreciation. The gradual evolution from gaudy to serene colors, for instance, reflects the fine differentiation of sensory organs. He believes that the existence of varied aesthetic pleasures corresponds to the evolution of sensory nerve structures. Nonetheless, Allen ironically gives more weight to the commonality of aesthetic experiences than to this teleological ordering of aesthetic experiences. He argues that there is no fundamental difference among humans in terms of their aesthetic assessments. Furthermore, there is even no essential distinction among plants, animals, and humans in light of their aesthetic appraisals, he states firmly. Although he asserts the gradual advance of aesthetic feelings caused by the intricacy of nervous systems, he simultaneously trivializes the evolution of aesthetic appraisal. In the essay, I highlight this paradox in Allen's physiological aesthetics. It should be underscored, lamentably enough, that Allen seeks biological purity by erasing fine lines among physiology, psychology, and sociality. He estranges aesthetic experiences from subjective variations and their socio-cultural contexts. He makes great efforts to eliminate individual differences and socio-cultural specificities in order to extremely biologize aesthetic experiences. Hence, Allen's physiological aesthetics is marked as the politics of physiological purification.

• Archives of design research
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• v.20 no.3 s.71
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• pp.73-84
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• 2007

This research takes an introspective and critical approach to the college level visual communication design education in Korea. As such, the changes of the college-level visual communication design curriculum in Korea are analyzed. Selected were 3 major design schools which have a relatively long design educational history in Korea. Those 3 schools are Hongik University, Seoul National University and Ewha University. The curricula were categorized and its changes were followed. The faculty members of those 3 schools were also analyzed. The college level design education began from 1946 at Seoul National University. The Koreas design education was influenced from the Japanese Design curriculum and then the American design curriculum from the beginning. The Korean design educators accepted those new design educational paradigm without any criticism, and it is now structurized in our design educational system. It caused the curriculum with practice-centered classes mostly, and the function centered design education without understanding of socio-cultural environments. The Korean design education needs more liberal arts which will lead us to more discourses about ourselves, and needs to employ more local design educators to solve the intellectual skewness in the Korean academic society in the field of Design.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.553-568
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• 2018

Popular music is a spce where intrinsic desires and values of young people are well exposed in its process of production and consumption. Previous discussions of Korean youth and youth culture have been proceeding mainly in the sense of their resistances to older generation. However, this is limited in that it neglects the inherent microscopic characteristics of youth culture. The purpose of this study is to investigate what the signs and discourses of youth generation make and share in popular music, and how it relates to social context through the 'Mimesis' theory. As a result, the songs of the 1990s remarkably showed the resistance to the old generation in its narrative structure and have signs which expresses repression and uniformity. On the other hand, the songs of the 2010s have many fragmented signs which has been reconstructed into individualized discourse structure. It is assumed that the songs have been able to gain a lot of empathy and popularity from the young generation by visualizing emotions and desires experienced by themselves in the social context. Through this study, it suggests to pay attention to the sensitivity, desire and creativity of young people in music in the social and cultural context of the time.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.50
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• pp.131-151
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• 2018

Notwithstanding various discourses among scholars on the unique characteristics of comics, in Korea there is nevertheless a scarcity of quality research on the subject. Therefore, to promote quality research, it is important to consider how to best use source materials in the field of comics scholarship. Source materials can generally be categorized into three types: pre-existing comics, scholar-generated comics and user-generated comics. For this study, user-generated comics are the primary source materials, specifically comics created by mothers of children with disabilities. It is intended that this research will contribute to the future direction of education for mothers who suffer from a relative sense of alienation as the primary caregivers of children with special needs. Although therapeutic arts and cultural programs make a tremendous difference in the lives of these mothers, teaching methodology and educational opportunities are extremely limited. Furthermore, existing scholarship focuses primarily on either the psychological transformation of the individual or a phenomenological approach for parents to understand and deal with the problematic behavior of children with disabilities. However, this research does little to help improve learning programs for these parents. Against this backdrop, this research sets out to consider the potentiality and effectiveness of using comics in the education of mothers of children with disabilities. These mothers, by creating comics, develop better awareness of themselves in a positive and enriching way. It is therefore hoped that this research provides a useful analysis for developing the potentiality and effectiveness of these programs.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.701-717
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• 2017

Criticism is related with recognition activity which is interpreting and evaluating the text based on the particular criteria. It reflects the awareness system of a particular time-period in that it is a work of social meanings beyond individual impressions. However, the standards of criticism have changed, like the awareness system has changed as economy, culture or technology has evolved. The emergence of SNS has influenced the field of popular culture. It improves the role and participation of the public in criticism. Moreover, it breaks the previous paradigm of production and consumption in cultural industry. These changes bring not only the positive ones, such as improvement of diversity and freedom of criticism, but also the negative one, confusion of values due to the absence of criteria. This study mainly concerned debates and discourses of SNS on , a new song of IU, and focused on changes of aesthetic evaluations of culture performer, producer and audience. Especially, the authors tried to find out how such new technology has changed the criticism, and how it has influenced on our aesthetic consciousness.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.77
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• pp.111-136
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• 2016

This paper focuses on the national "flagging" as a current affair, important phenomenon. National flags, it sees, take over varous places, control the surrounding space, and even dictate everybody's perspective by being visualized everywhere anytime. It investigates the issue of national flags and their hoisting poles as a sort of apparatuses that interpellate me as well as us into patriotic 'gookmin'. The placement, arrangement of national flag poles around the country continued throughout 2015 and particularly speeded up in October of the year is regarded as a key symbolic, symptomatic sign to read the transformation of political conjuncture. Preparing a radically conjuncturist cultural study about the changing reality, the researcher will see the flagging poles as a phenomenal result, outcoming of certain intent and plan for reconstructing the political actuality. More precisely, he will interpretate the tall omni-present poles of national flags as a dispositif of appearing the neoliberal/neoconservative capitalist state, as a apparatus of constituting and expressing the masses' psycho-ideological condition of today. The researcher, who perceives the national flag poles as a kind of ISAs. will first review the increased flagging phenomenon and related media discourses. Next, he will critically investigate the 'love our country' 'national flagging' movements organized by the above and operated from the bottom. Then, he will focus more on the very tall national flag poles built and seen around the country. Finally, he will conclude the study with a critical remark, touching briefly the case of controversy over setting a pole in the center of Seoul city square.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.77
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• pp.255-288
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• 2016

Korean mass media has represented foreigners in their documentaries, entertainment shows, situational comedies, and dramas for long time, while the representations created plenty of controversies. Alleged West-oriented racism found from various televison programs may be one of them. Recently, however, more Korean television shows began to incorporate the ideas of multi-culturalism. This paper is an attempt to explore how television audiences interpret multi-culturalism reflected in the media. More specifically, this is a case study of JTBC's , a show featuring foreigners debating on various topics regarding Korean culture. Particularly, it focuses on disputes over the producers' decision to play 'Kimigayo' (the national anthem of Japan, which is also considered as a symbol of Japanese militaristic past) when introduced a new Japanese panel. Critical discourse analysis was adoped as the main research method, and researchers found that audiences draw certain guidelines in accepting multi-cultural aspects. If and when these aspects overstep the line, they tend to abandon it without hesitance. In the case of 'Kimigayo,' it was ethno-centrism and/or anti-Japanes sentiments which made multi-culturalsim much weaker. It does not mean that multi-culturalism was replaced-or defeated-by nationalism, but show the 'vulnerability' of multi-culturalsim. Multi-culturalism is not as concretely rooted in Korean society as many people have claimed or hoped. The research has its own limitations as a case study, but it is hoped to stimulate other researchers to keep their eyes on media and multi-culturalsim in Korea.