• Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.41-59
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• 2022

Caodaism is a new religion from Vietnam which began in late 1925 and spread rapidly across the French colony of Indochina. With a broad syncretic aim, the new faith sought to revivify Vietnamese religious traditions whilst also incorporating religious, literary, and spiritist influences from France. Like Catholicism, Caodaism kept a strong focus on its monotheistic nature and today Caodaists are eager to label their religion a monotheism. It will be argued here, however, that the syncretic nature of this new faith complicates this claim to a significant degree. To make this argument, we will consider here the nature of God in Caodaism through two central texts from two important stages in the life of the religion. The first is the canonized Compilation of Divine Messages which collects a range of spirit messages from God and some other divine voices. These were received in the early years of the faith. The second is a collection of sermons from 1948/9 that takes Caodaist believers on a tour of heaven, and which is entitled The Divine Path to Eternal Life. It will be shown that in the first text, God speaks in the mode of a fully omnipotent and omniscient supreme being. In the second text, however, we are given a view of paradise that is much more akin to the court of a Jade Emperor within an East Asian milieu. In these realms, the personalities of other beings and redemptive mechanisms claim much of our attention, and seem to be a competing center of power to that of God. Furthermore, God's consort, the Divine Mother, takes on a range of sacred creative prerogatives that do something similar. Additionally, cadres of celestial administrators; buddhas, immortals, and saints help with the operation of a cosmos which spins on with guidance from its own laws. These laws form sacred mechanisms, such as cycles of reincarnation and judgement. These operate not in the purview of God, but as part of the very nature of the cosmos itself. In this context, the dualistic, polytheistic, and even automatic nature of Caodaism's cosmos will be considered in terms of the way in which they complicate this religion's monotheistic claims. To conclude, this article seeks to demonstrate the precise relevance of the term 'monotheism' for this religion.

• The Journal of Korean Obstetrics and Gynecology
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.63-84
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• 2024

Objectives: This study aims to understand the stress patterns and coping behaviors of women with infertility and to improve existing infertility stress assessment tools to develop a tool suited for Korean society. Methods: The study involved 10 women diagnosed with primary or secondary infertility. Data were collected through surveys and in-depth interviews. Participants were recruited voluntarily, and snowball sampling was used for additional recruitment. Data collection occurred from September 2023 to April 2024. Data analysis included Spearman's rank correlation, Mann-Whitney U test, and Kruskal-Wallis test. Interview results were analyzed using text mining and network analysis with Python 3.12. Results: There was a significant correlation between IVF/ICSI treatment and resilience scores, with non-IVF/ICSI groups showing higher resilience scores. Existing infertility stress assessment tools were generally useful but had limitations, such as discomfort with religious expressions and fixed gender roles, as well as issues with the number of items and response scales. Text mining of interview responses revealed key stress-related keywords including worry, depression, burden, pregnancy outcome, and health. Main stressors included uncertainty about pregnancy outcomes, physical discomfort during treatments, economic burdens, and emotional reactions from family and social relationships. Conclusions: This study identified the stress patterns of women with infertility through interviews. It showed the need for a new assessment tool to evaluate and support the complex stressors experienced by these women. Developing a comprehensive tool is essential for better understanding and managing the various stress factors faced by infertile women.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.481-494
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• 2020

This study examined consumer perceptions and consumer responses of Halal cosmetics and compared them with vegan cosmetics, which is a term similarly used. Twitter API of Python 3.7 was used to collect the keywords '#halalcosmetics' and '#vegancosmetics'. First, the main perception of consumers on Halal cosmetics focused on the original concept, image, expected efficacy, and factors to consider before purchase, religious keywords, labels and packaging for Halal cosmetics. Second, the main consumer perception of vegan cosmetics was the product concept, expected efficacy, factors to consider before purchase, related vegan industry, image, and vegan cosmetic components. Third, the consumer perceptions of Halal cosmetics and vegan cosmetics were similar in multiple ways, and both concepts included the Cruelty-free concept. Fourth, consumer satisfaction factors included cosmetics color, brand's consumer service, efficacy, smell, packaging design, reasonable price, effects, and formulation of cosmetics as well as satisfaction with Halal certification, and satisfaction of Vegan consumers. Consumer dissatisfaction factors included smell, flavor, delay in shipping, dissatisfaction with formulation, discrepancy between actual color and computer screen, concern and distrust about the use of prohibited ingredients for Halal products. This study examined consumer perceptions and reactions to Halal and vegan cosmetics to create basic knowledge for niche markets that are emerging as an ethical beauty consumption trend.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.804-821
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• 2023

This study examines current trends and perceptions of veganism and vegan fashion in Korea, China, and the United States. Using big data tools Textom and Ucinet, we conducted cluster analysis between keywords. Further, frequency analysis using keyword extraction and CONCOR analysis obtained the following results. First, the nations' perceptions of veganism and vegan fashion differ significantly. Korea and the United States generally share a similar understanding of vegan fashion. Second, the industrial structures, such as products and businesses, impacted how Korea perceived veganism. Third, owing to its ongoing sociopolitical tensions, the United States views veganism as an ethical consumption method that ties into activism. In contrast, China views veganism as a healthy diet rather than a lifestyle and associates it with Buddhist vegetarianism. This perception is because of their religious history and culinary culture. Fundamentally, this study is meaningful for using big data to extract keywords related to vegan fashion in Korea, China, and the United States. This study deepens our understanding of vegan fashion by comparing perceptions across nations.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.39
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• pp.223-277
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• 2019

Based on the text reference from the Variety Theatre compiled and performed by the Jiaofang of the Ming Dynasty Palace, the characteristics of Zhongkui performance in the New Year Ceremony was analyzed focusing on the differentiation and diachronic change in aspect between court dance and civilian. In China's folk beliefs, 'Zhongkui' is regarded as a representative spirit of fighting against evil spirits. Relevant rituals and performing arts have been held mainly on New Year's Eve or the Dragon Boat Festival. Although extensive research has been conducted in various fields, the situation of Zhongkui performance was largely unnoticed, only generally addressed in China, even with the given fact that the Ming Dynasty's text reference of miscellaneous court dance was exclusively retained, Therefore, the analysis intends to propose Zhongkui performances of Calendaric Rituals in the aspect of its elements and differentiate the play handed down among people as a specific example. Through the text analysis of miscellaneous court dance, 'Imperial examination' and religious belief was regulated usuriously by a so-called edification expressed as imperial reign ideology extracted to an implementation situation, revealing that this court dance was characterized by a variety of performances including the 'Zhongkui'. The results of the following study intends to provide a positive foundation for not only the field of Chinese studies but also the field of Korean literature, theatre, dance, folklore, religion, anthropology and art.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.191-207
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• 2017

This paper employs entitymetrics analysis on the research works of Dong-ju Yun. He was a Korean poet who was studied by many researchers on his works, religion and life. We collected 1,076 papers about Dong-ju Yun and conducted various approaches including co-author citation analysis, topic modeling analysis to identify the topic trend in the study of Dong-ju Yun. Also we extracted entities like person's name and literature's title from abstract to examine the relationship among them. The result of this paper enables us to objectively identify the topic trend and infer implicit relationships between key concept associated with Dong-ju Yun based on text data. Moreover, we observed sub-research topics such as life, poem, aesthetic existence, comparative literature, literary translation, and religious beliefs. This paper shows how entitymetrics can be utilized to study intellectual structures in the humanities.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.89-111
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to examine the phenomenon of social participation among female baby boomers. The key research questions were asked in what kind of activities do female baby boomers engage as social participation? The in-depth interview was used with 11 female baby boomers who were born between 1955 to 1963. The interview text were analyzed by the qualitative study method. The findings are as follows. First, the most common type of social participation was having hobbies and leisure activities, and the other were participating in religious activities, learning activities, volunteer activities and on-line club activities. Second, social participation gave them meanings such as joy, satisfaction, and experiences of seeing the new world as well as opportunities to make up low sense of self-esteem formed in their young age. Third, they were considering it was time to change their social participation. The cases who were actively engaging in social participation considered old age as 'the process of reducing social participation'. Some other cases considered to 'share hobbies with spouse', and to 'achieve new goals and dreams'. The results showed that female baby boomers started their social participation in their middle ages when they became free from their children's education. The level of the involvement in social participation was reduced in their old age. Surprisingly, some interviewees planned to accomplish their dreams and goals that they haven't achieved yet. These differences among the cases could be attributed to the individual characteristics such as personality, birth order, economic and educational background, and to the social relationship.

• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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• v.64
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• pp.369-407
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• 2020

This article studies the spiritual formation of modern Christian women in the cases of Hwang Ester and Eo Yoon-Hee. I take McGrath's definition of Christian spirituality as my starting point, namely, "Christian spirituality concerns the queset for a fulfilled and authentic Christian existence, involving the bringing together of the fundamental ideas of Christianity and the whole experience of living on the basis of and within the scope of the Christian faith." I center the terms of Christian existence and whole experience of living from McGrath's text, and understand Christian existence to relate to being a disciple and whole experience of living to relate to being a citizen. This study looks at the life history of Hwang Ester and Eo Yun-Hee, and looked at the spirituality of these women with the focus on discipleship and citizenship. Thus, I find that, for modern Christian women, becoming a disciple is inseparable from becoming a citizen. Also, I can see that, in modern women's spirituality, being a true disciple leads to becoming a right citizen.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.282-300
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to explore what social media posts tell us about family life during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining the keywords and topics underlying posts on blogs and online forums. Our criteria for web crawling were (a) blog and forum posts on Naver and Daum, the top portal sites in Korea, (b) posts between February 23 and April 19, 2020, the period of the first heightened social distancing orders, and (c) inclusion of "COVID" and "family" or "COVID" and "home." We analyzed 351,734 posts using TF-IDF values and topic modeling based on latent Dirichlet allocation. We identified and named 22 topics including COVID-19 prevention, family infection, family health, dietary life and changes, religious life, stuck at home, postponed school year, family events, travel and vacations, concerns about family and friends, anxiety and stress, disaster and damage, COVID-19 warning text messages, family support policies, Shin-cheon-ji and Daegu. The results show that COVID-19 impacted various domains of family life including health, food, housing, religion, child care, education, rituals, and leisure as well as relationships and emotions.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.34
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• pp.141-169
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• 2020

This study focuses on the interpretation and transformation of "The Great Learning" within the Korean new religion, Daesoon Jinrihoe. Joseon Dynasty Korea was a member of the Chinese Character Cultural Sphere in East Asia. The examination and recruitment system of the Yuan Dynasty influenced the Joseon Dynasty for a long historical period. Zhu Xi's (朱熹) version of The Four Books were accepted and applied in imperial examinations during the Joseon Dynasty. The 18th century Confucian thinker, Jeong Yak-Yong (丁若鏞), overturned and rebuilt his own system for studying and interpreting The Four Books (四書學). Zhu Xi and Jeong Yak-Yong's systems of thought influenced Confucianism knowledge in that era. The historical figure deified as the Supreme God by Daesoon Jinrihoe, Kang Jeungsan (姜甑山), was trained in the study of The Four Books within that cultural and philosophical context, and this is especially evident in his interpretation and transmission of "The Great Learning." Kang Jeungsan regarding The Great Learning as deeply important. That text combined Confucian discourse on Principle, Mind, and Practice. In his interpretation, The Great Learning was also a medical and religious book that had holy and mysterious powers. In Mugeuk-do and Taegeuk-do (direct predecessors to Daesoon Jinrihoe), Jo Jeongsan interpreted the concept of Sincerity and Regularizing the Mind and incorporated them into doctrine as 'Sincerity, Respectfulness, and Faithfulness' and 'Guarding against Self-deception.' Park Wudang practiced and spread those doctrines to Korea, and Daesoon Jinrihoe devotees continue to follow those doctrines in present times.