• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.163-183
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• 2012

This paper is one of those attempts to explore some possibility of agreement between feminist discourse and postcolonial discourses through the approach of postcolonial feminism in the reading of the controversial novel, So Far from the Bamboo Grove and Year of Impossible Goodbyes. So Far from the Bamboo Grove, when read from the perspective of postcolonial feminism, reveals 'domestic nationalism' of imperial narratives in which the violence of imperial history in Korea is hidden behind the picture of every day lives of an ordinary Japanese family and Japanese women. Furthermore, postcolonial feminist's perspective interprets Yoko family's nostalgia for their 'home,' Nanam in Korea, as 'imperialist nostalgia' working as a mask to hide the violent history of colonization of Empire. In this way, postcolonial feminist reading of the story detects the ways the narrative of Empire appropriates women, family image and even nostalgia for childhood. At the same time, this perspective explains the readers' empathy for Yoko family's suffering and the concerning women issues caused by wartime rape and sexual violence by defining Yoko as a woman of Japanese Empire, whose life of interstice between imperial men and colonial men cannot be free from violence of rape during anti colonial wars. Year of Impossible Goodbyes as a counter discourse does not overcome the traditional binary opposition of nationalism which quietens gender and class issues. As an attempt to fill in the interstice between the two perspectives of feminism and postcolonialism. postcolonial feminist reading turns out to be a valid tool for the reading of the two novels chosen here.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.115-124
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• 2008

My former thesis was about the present status of Korean film aesthetics of Korean blockbusters through the cultural hybridity. Now this thesis focuses on hybridity and tragedy in Korean blockbusters from the postcolonial perspectives. Typical examples are Shiri, JSA, Taegukgi containing a special Korean situation of division ideology and expressing an extremely Western style of production. These movies hardly provide any historical causes, critical explanation, or vision beyond the discourse of national tragedy. They simply supply sentimental feeling of sympathizing with the misfortune of heroes in the course of national suffering. Therefore, these movies shows limitation not to accomplish postcolonial resistance.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.51
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• pp.161-191
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• 2018

In the beginning of the 20th century, post-colonialism has directly raised questions about western-centered universalism. One of its main achievements is that the political liberation of a colonial society does not guarantee the social, economic and cultural liberation of a society. Therefore, the discourse of liberation in the Western society, in particular, Marxism, nationalism, feminism and postmodernism, cannot be directly applied to the non-Western society. As a result, Western and non-Western societies are unfortunately dreaming of different futures and liberation; therefore, a'geopolitical dialogue' is needed between them. However, the theorists' efforts for postcolonial liberation failed to distinguish themselves from the western-centric traditions. It is also true that they have, in conjunction with these traditions, established their own power. As we know, many of the postcolonial criticisms somehow had relations with the West. This study will re-read the postcolonial thought of $Aim{\acute{e}}$ $C{\acute{e}}saire$, the father of the so-called $N{\acute{e}}gritude$, as a 'non-western resistance discourse'. Through this process, we have a chance to reflect on $C{\acute{e}}saire$ and his postcolonial thoughts.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.20
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• pp.113-148
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• 2010

This paper examines the American role in shaping South Korean nation-building during the early Cold War by considering how the United States attempted to form South Korea's education and how Koreans responded to these efforts. It looks at education as an arena where "American" ideas such as democracy and liberalism were received, transformed, and utilized by Koreans. This study pays particular attention to the gap between American intentions and Korean expectations, as well as to the competition between American and Japanese systems, which explains the contradictory role America played in South Korean nation-building. In order to better assess the role of the United States in shaping South Korean education, this article considers the complex dynamics between the Japanese legacies, American influence, and Korean actors. Americans had exerted a great effect on Korean education since the beginning of their relationship. American missionaries, U.S. military government, and educational mission teams had all contributed to the expansion of educational opportunities for Koreans. Through the educational institutions that they established or helped establish, Americans tried to spread "their" ideas. In this process, Americans had to struggle with two obstacles: Korean nationalism and the legacies of Japanese colonialism. Many Koreans used American missionary schools for their own purposes and resisted U.S. military government's policies which ignored their desire for self-determination. American education missions had limited effect on Korean education due to the heterogeneous Japanese system that was still influencing South Korea even after liberation. The ways in which Americans have influenced the democratization of South Korea have not been simple. Although "American" democratic ideas reached Koreans through various routes, Koreans understood the "American" idea within their own historical context and in a way that fit their existing socio-political relations. Oftentimes suspicious of "American" democracy, Koreans developed their own concept of democracy. The overall American influence on Korean democratization, as well as on Korean education, was important but limited. While Americans helped Koreans build educational infrastructure and tried to transfer democratic ideas through it, Koreans actors and Japanese colonial legacies limited its impact.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.11
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• pp.45-55
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• 2006

Korean blockbusters are the works finished by the dialectic of the meeting and collision of two cultures or H. Bhabha's cultural hybridization. They represent things Korean and Western, and yet their borders are demolished to create a new complicated mixture. Typical examples are Swiri, JSA Silmido Taegukgi Whinalimyu, containing a special Korean situation of division ideology and expressing an extremely Western style of production. This thesis will study the present status of Korean film aesthetics through the cultural hybridity.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.46
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• pp.37-74
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• 2009

This research is an attempt to investigate cultural identity at the international level. Asia is one of the weakest communities in the world due to discrepancies in terms of political, economic, social and cultural aspects. Additionally, Asia has never been independent in communication flows since imperialist history until the Korean wave emerged at the turn of this century. The Korean wave reflects complex power embedded in postcolonial world in addition to cultural commonality among Asian audiences. I have conducted audience researches on Korean drama fandom in Japan and China. I adopt Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to interpret identity issues of Asian media audiences. Particularly, Deleuze and Guattari's theories are useful to scrutinize group identity of Asian community. Additionally, I refer to theories of nationalism.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.149-167
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• 2008

Korea has persisted in the notion of "ethnic nationalism." That is "one race, one people, one language" as a homogeneous entity. This social ideal of unity prevails, even in overseas Korean communities formed by voluntary and involuntary displacement in the turmoil of modern history: communities made intermittent with the Japanese colonial occupation and with postcolonial encounters with the West. Given that the Korean people suffered from the trauma of deprivation of the language caused by the loss of the nation, nation has been equated with the language. Accordingly, "these bearers of a homeland" are also firm Korean language holders. The linguistic patriotism of unity based on the intertwining of "mother tongue" and "father country" has become prevalent in the collective memory of the people of the Korean diaspora. Korean American literature has grappled with this concept of the national history of Korea and the Korean language. The aesthetics of Korean American literature has been marked by an influx of literary resources of 'Korea' in sensibilities and structure of feelings; Korean myth, folk lore, songs, humor, traditional stories, manners, customs and historic moments. An experimental use of the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, written down as pronounced, provides an ethnic flavor in the midst of the English texts. Despite its national framework of mind, however, Korean American literature as an interstitial art reveals a keen awareness of inbetweenness, and transnational hybrid identities. By exploring the complex interrelationships of cultural and linguistic boundary-crossing practices in Korean American literature, this paper argues that the poetics of the Korean diaspora challenges the closed structure of identity formation, and offers a transnational sphere to deconstruct a rigidly demarcated national ideology of "one race, one people, one language," for the world literary history.

• Women's Studies Review
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.73-109
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• 2010

The cultural pluralism on which more and more emphasis is put in the globalized cultural environment, takes local identity as a crucial index for the cultural exchange on the global level, but at the same time it results in transforming individual regions/places into a homogeneous space, as it forces the local identity itself to fit into the standardized global perspective. In this context I focus on two art projects that are related to 'Dongducheon', a town that houses the U. S. Second Infantry Division. These projects attract specific attention due to the fact that Dongducheon is a significant place with very 'thick' cultural identity: it reveals that modernization in Korea took place in intersection of nationalism, patriarchy and gender/sexuality postcolonial (military) culture. With these two Dongducheon related art projects (Donglyung Kim) and (Eunyoung Jeong) as excellent examples of site-specific art practice, this paper asks what it means to keep the historicity of disappearing local space/place in the global era. And how is it possible to 'represent' an extremely gendered/sexualized place like Dongducheon. This should be examined from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Since emancipation from Japanese occupation Dongducheon has been an island or an outside space in the nation-state Korea. This becomes more complicated, as now mostly women from the Philippines or former Soviet countries are working in the nightclubs in Doungducheon. and are feminist activist experiments to make the place with its residents to be seen and heard in proper a way of mourning, recognition and communication. shows the 'new' kijich'on women as those who are daring to be on an 'Odyssey' for a better life as they run everyday life in Dongducheon, working in clubs, doing laundry, bearing children, going to mass; tries to help them to be heard and felt, while it gathers sounds on the street or at mass and shows the doors or narrow alleys which lead to the their rooms. It aims to mourn the dead kijich'on women and to represent the precarious life of the present migrant kijich'on women, as it shows no faces.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.14
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• pp.125-158
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• 2012

After liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, there was the three-year period of United States Army Military Government in Korea. In 1948, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Republic of Korea were established in the north and south of the Korean Peninsula. The Republic of Korea is now a modern state set in the southern part of the Korean. We usually refer to Koreans as people who belong to the Republic of Korea. Can we say that is true exactly? Why make of this an obsolete question? The period from 1945 when Korea was emancipated from Japanese colonial rule to 1948 when the Republic of Korea was established has not been a focus of modern Korean history. This three years remains empty in Korean history and makes the concept of 'Korean' we usually consider ambiguous, and prompts careful attention to the silence of 'some Koreans' forced to live against their will in the blurred boundaries between nation and people. This dissertation regards 'Koreans' who came to live in the border of nations, especially 'Korean-Japanese third generation women artists'who are marginalized both Japan and Korea. It questions the category of 'Korean women's art' that has so far been considered, based on the concept of territory, and presents a new perspective for viewing 'Korean women's art'. Almost no study on Korean-Japanese women's art has been conducted, based on research on Korean diaspora, and no systematic historical records exist. Even data-collection is limited due to the political situation of South and North in confrontation. Representation of the Mother Country on the Artworks by First and Second-Generation Korean-Japanese(Zainich) Women Artists after Liberation since 1945 was published in 2011 is the only dissertation in which Korean-Japanese women artists, and early artistic activities. That research is based on press releases and interviews obtained through Japan. This thesis concentrates on the world of Korean-Japanese third generation women artists such as Kim Jung-sook, Kim Ae-soon, and Han Sung-nam, permanent residents in Japan who still have Korean nationality. The three Korean-Japanese third generation women artists whose art world is reviewed in this thesis would like to reveal their voices as minorities in Japan and Korea, resisting power and the universal concepts of nation, people and identity. Questioning the general notions of 'Korean women' and 'Korean women's art'considered within the Korean Peninsula, they explore their identity as Korean women outside the Korean territory from a post-territorial perspective and have a new understanding of the minority's diversity and difference through their eyes as marginal women living outside the mainstream of Korean and Japanese society. This is associated with recent post-colonial critical viewpoints reconsidering myths of universalism and transcendental aesthetic measures. In the 1980s and 1990s art museums and galleries in New York tried a critical shift in aesthetic discourse on contemporary art history, analyzed how power relationships among such elements as gender, sexuality, race, nationalism. Ghost of Ethnicity: Rethinking Art Discourses of the 1940s and 1980s by Lisa Bloom is an obvious presentation about the post-colonial discourse. Lisa Bloom rethinks the diversity of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender each artist and critic has, she began a new discussion on artists who were anti-establishment artists alienated by mainstream society. As migration rapidly increased through globalism lead by the United States the aspects of diaspora experience emerges as critical issues in interpreting contemporary culture. As a new concept of art with hybrid cultural backgrounds exists, each artist's cultural identity and specificity should be viewed and interpreted in a sociopolitical context. A criticism started considering the distinct characteristics of each individual's historical experience and cultural identity, and paying attention to experience of the third world artist, especially women artists, confronting the power of modernist discourses from a perspective of the white male subject. Considering recent international contemporary art, the Korean-Japanese third generation women artists who clarify their cultural identity as minority living in the border between Korea and Japan may present a new direction for contemporary Korean art. Their art world derives from their diaspora experience on colonial trauma historically. Their works made us to see that it is also associated with postcolonial critical perspective in the recent contemporary art stream. And it reminds us of rethinking the diversity of the minority living outside mainstream society. Thus, this should be considered as one of the features in the context of Korean women's art.