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A Study on the Problem of Organic Image in the 20th Post-paintings (20세기 후기회화에 있어서 유기 이미지의 문제)

  • Park Ji-Sook
    • Journal of Science of Art and Design
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    • v.3
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    • pp.145-177
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    • 2001
  • The artist's interest has been captivated by ecological phenomena in Nature. Her keen captivation has then been focused into plastic art depicting the image of primitive life. The wide sweep of her work encompasses the totality of nature which consists of the human's subconscious power and imagination which she then portrays by organic images. These organic images are in contrast to scientific, mathematical and logical inference and consciousness. This research examines the character of the organic images in modern art by her analysis of some representative works by others. The image is an essential concept in the art which appeared in very different ways and in different perspectives. The image in the artwork appears to be the realistic expression until the early part of the 20th Century. Well into the 20th Century, it began being expressed in various ways such as combined images by imagination which is combined or rejected in the story of artwork. It also began being expressed by transferred images by changed original conditions. It is the main purpose of this research is to study of various expressions of organic images in the artwork of the Post-Modernism era. The character and meaning of organic image painting helps people to approach the human instinct more easily to find out the natural essence. It is also an objective of the organic image to tenderise our human sensibilities, thus helping us to regain vitality and recover our poor humanity in the barren wilderness of modern society. 'Life communion with nature' is a meeting point and common ground for Oriental Philosophy and organic image painting. Through this research, organic image painting is characterised in the four following ways : 1st) Organic image painting seeks regularity and perfection of outer shapes, in contrast to disordered and deformed nature, resulting in organic and biotic formalistic mode of plastic art. 2nd) Organic image painting seeks the formative. 3rd) Organic image painting pursues the priceless dignity of life by researching the formatted arrangement and figure, which contains primitive power of life. 4th) Organic image painting makes crystal clear the power of human and nature, which is a historic and biological phenomenon. This, in turn, exposes the humanistic view of the world from modern society best characterised in lost self-understanding, isolation and materialism. The representative organic image painting artists are Elizabeth Murray, Kusama Yayoi, and Niki do Saint Phalle. Elizabeth Murray used shaped canvas and a round construction of relief works. Kusama Yayoi used Automatistic expressionism originating from the realms of unconsciousness and which is represented by the mass and shape of a water drop. Niki do Saint Phalle shows the transcendence of universal life and anti-life to respect the dignity of life and the eco-friendliness relationship of human and nature in the post-modernism in art history. This is accomplished by surrealistic, symbolic, fantastic and humoristic expression. These three artists' works express the spirit of the organic image in contemporary art. It contains the stream of nature and life to seek not only the state of materialism in the reality, but also the harmonized world of nature and human which has almost lost the important meaning in modern times. Finally, this organic image is the plastic language of the majestic life. It is the romantic idea that the intimacy of nature and the universe and Surrealism, which emphasizes the unconsciousness , is the source of truth and spirit. Also it is influenced by primitive art and abstract art. According to this research, the subject 'Research About Organic Images' is not only an important element in the plastic arts from primitive society to the present, but is also fundamental to an true understanding of Post-Modernism.

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The relation between Movement working as a Grouping clue in Moving Picture and Semantic structure forming (동영상에서 그룹핑(grouping) 단서로 작용하는 움직임(Movement)과 의미구조 형성의 관계)

  • Lee, Soo-Jin
    • Archives of design research
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    • v.19 no.5 s.67
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    • pp.119-128
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    • 2006
  • The scale of visual expression has expanded from freeze frame to motion picture as media have developed. Moving pictures such as animation, movies, TV CM and GUI become formative elements whose movement is necessary compared to freeze frame as apparent movement phenomenon and unit structure such as short and scene appear. Therefore, of formative elements such as a shape, color, space, size and movement, movement is importantly distinguished in the moving image. The expression and form of image as a relationship between the signified and signifier explained by Saussure are accepted as a sign by mutual complement even though they limit the content. This makes it possible to infer that the formal feature of movement participates in the message content. To verify this, the result of moving picture visual perception experiment based on the gestalt grouping principle result shows that 70-80 percent of subjects think that 'movement' is the important grouping clue in perception. Movement affects the maintenance of the context of message content in the communication process when the meaning structure of moving picture is analyzed based on the structural feature. The identity can be maintained with if there is a movement with similar directive point even if the color and shape of people, things and background are changed. Second, the clarity of the content is elevated by a distinguished object as a figure by movement. Third, it acts as a knowledge representation which can predict similar movement process of next information processing. Forth, movement gives the content consistency even though more than two scenes have fast switch and complicated editing structure like cross-cutting. Movement becomes a clue which can make grouping information input by visual perception reaction. Also, it gives the order to the visual expression which can be used improperly by formation of structural frame of image message and has the effectiveness which elevates the clarity of signification. Moving picture has discourse with several mixed unit structures because it fundamentally contains time and the common and distinguished expression is needed by media-mix circumstances. Therefore, by the application of gestalt grouping principle to moving picture field, movement becomes the more distinguished than other formative elements and affects the formation of meaning structure. This study propose a viewpoint that develops structural formative beauty and new image expression in the media image field.

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Restoring Omitted Sentence Constituents in Encyclopedia Documents Using Structural SVM (Structural SVM을 이용한 백과사전 문서 내 생략 문장성분 복원)

  • Hwang, Min-Kook;Kim, Youngtae;Ra, Dongyul;Lim, Soojong;Kim, Hyunki
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.131-150
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    • 2015
  • Omission of noun phrases for obligatory cases is a common phenomenon in sentences of Korean and Japanese, which is not observed in English. When an argument of a predicate can be filled with a noun phrase co-referential with the title, the argument is more easily omitted in Encyclopedia texts. The omitted noun phrase is called a zero anaphor or zero pronoun. Encyclopedias like Wikipedia are major source for information extraction by intelligent application systems such as information retrieval and question answering systems. However, omission of noun phrases makes the quality of information extraction poor. This paper deals with the problem of developing a system that can restore omitted noun phrases in encyclopedia documents. The problem that our system deals with is almost similar to zero anaphora resolution which is one of the important problems in natural language processing. A noun phrase existing in the text that can be used for restoration is called an antecedent. An antecedent must be co-referential with the zero anaphor. While the candidates for the antecedent are only noun phrases in the same text in case of zero anaphora resolution, the title is also a candidate in our problem. In our system, the first stage is in charge of detecting the zero anaphor. In the second stage, antecedent search is carried out by considering the candidates. If antecedent search fails, an attempt made, in the third stage, to use the title as the antecedent. The main characteristic of our system is to make use of a structural SVM for finding the antecedent. The noun phrases in the text that appear before the position of zero anaphor comprise the search space. The main technique used in the methods proposed in previous research works is to perform binary classification for all the noun phrases in the search space. The noun phrase classified to be an antecedent with highest confidence is selected as the antecedent. However, we propose in this paper that antecedent search is viewed as the problem of assigning the antecedent indicator labels to a sequence of noun phrases. In other words, sequence labeling is employed in antecedent search in the text. We are the first to suggest this idea. To perform sequence labeling, we suggest to use a structural SVM which receives a sequence of noun phrases as input and returns the sequence of labels as output. An output label takes one of two values: one indicating that the corresponding noun phrase is the antecedent and the other indicating that it is not. The structural SVM we used is based on the modified Pegasos algorithm which exploits a subgradient descent methodology used for optimization problems. To train and test our system we selected a set of Wikipedia texts and constructed the annotated corpus in which gold-standard answers are provided such as zero anaphors and their possible antecedents. Training examples are prepared using the annotated corpus and used to train the SVMs and test the system. For zero anaphor detection, sentences are parsed by a syntactic analyzer and subject or object cases omitted are identified. Thus performance of our system is dependent on that of the syntactic analyzer, which is a limitation of our system. When an antecedent is not found in the text, our system tries to use the title to restore the zero anaphor. This is based on binary classification using the regular SVM. The experiment showed that our system's performance is F1 = 68.58%. This means that state-of-the-art system can be developed with our technique. It is expected that future work that enables the system to utilize semantic information can lead to a significant performance improvement.

Analysis of the Effect of the Revised Ground Amplification Factor on the Macro Liquefaction Assessment Method (개정된 지반증폭계수의 Macro적 액상화 평가에 미치는 영향 분석)

  • Baek, Woo-Hyun;Choi, Jae-Soon
    • Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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    • v.36 no.2
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    • pp.5-15
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    • 2020
  • The liquefaction phenomenon that occurred during the Pohang earthquake (ML=5.4) brought new awareness to the people about the risk of liquefaction caused by the earthquake. Liquefaction hazard maps with 2 km grid made in 2014 used more than 100,000 borehole data for the whole country, and regions without soil investigation data were produced using interpolation. In the mapping of macro liquefaction hazard for the whole country, the site amplification effect and the ground water level 0 m were considered. Recently, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (2018) published a new site classification method and amplification coefficient of the common standard for seismic design. Therefore, it is necessary to rewrite the liquefaction hazard map reflecting the revised amplification coefficient. In this study, the results of site classification according to the average shear wave velocity in soils before and after revision were compared in the whole country. Also, liquefaction assessment results were compared in Gangseo-gu, Busan. At this time, two ground accelerations corresponding to the 500 and 1,000 years of return period and two ground water table, 5 m for the average condition and 0 m the extreme condition were applied. In the drawing of liquefaction hazard map, a 500 m grid was applied to secure a resolution higher than the previous 2 km grid. As a result, the ground conditions that were classified as SC and SD grounds based on the existing site classification standard were reclassified as S2, S3, and S4 through the revised site classification standard. Also, the result of the Liquefaction assessments with a return period of 500 years and 1,000 years resulted in a relatively overestimation of the LPI applied with the ground amplification factor before revision. And the results of this study have a great influence on the liquefaction assessment, which is the basis of the creation of the regional liquefaction hazard map using the amplification factor.

Relationships between Collective Intelligence Quality, Its Determinants, and Usefulness: A Comparative Study between Wiki Service and Q&A Service in Perspective of Korean Users (집단지성의 품질, 그 결정요인, 유용성의 관계: 수용자 관점에서 한국의 위키서비스와 Q&A 서비스의 비교)

  • Joo, Jaehun;Normatov, Ismatilla R.
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.22 no.4
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    • pp.75-99
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    • 2012
  • Innovation can come from inside or outside organizations. Recently, organizations have begun turning to external knowledge more often, through various forms of collective intelligence (CI) as collaborative platform to solve complex problems. Several factors facilitate this CI utilization phenomenon. First, with the rapid development of Internet and social media, numerous web applications have become available to millions of the Internet users over the past few decades. Web 2.0 and social media have become innovative web applications that provide an environment for human social interaction and collaboration. Second, the diffusion of simple and easy-to-use technologies that enable users to interact and design web applications without programming skills have led to vast, previously unknown amounts of user-generated content. Finally, the Internet has enabled communities to connect and collaborate, creating a virtual world of CI. In this study, web enabled CI is defined as a composed ability of individuals who are acting as a single cognitive unit to achieve common goals, think reasonably, solve problems, make decisions, carry out complex tasks, and develop creative ideas collectively through participation and collaboration on the web. Although CI plays a critical role in organizational innovation and collaboration, the dubious quality of CI is still problem that is difficult to solve. In general, the quality level of content collected from the crowd is lower than that from professionals. Thus, it is important to identify determinants of CI quality and to analyze the relationship between CI quality and its usefulness. However, there is a lack of empirical study on the quality factors of web-enabled CI. There exist a variety of web enabled CI sites such as Threadless, iStockphoto or InnoCentive, Wikipedia, and Youtube. One of the most successful forms of web-enabled CI is the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, accessible all over the world. Another one example is Naver KnowledgeiN, a typical and popular CI site offering question and answer (Q&A) services. It is necessary to study whether or not different types of CI have a different effect on CI quality and its usefulness. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to answer to following research questions: ${\bullet}$ What determinants are important to CI quality? ${\bullet}$ What is the relationship between CI quality factors and the usefulness of web-enabled CI? ${\bullet}$ Does CI type have a moderating effect on the relationship between CI quality, its determinants, and CI usefulness? Online survey using Google Docs with email and Kakao Talk was conducted for collecting data from Wikipedia and Naver KnowledgeiN users. A totoal of 490 valid responses were collected, where users of Wikipedia were 220 while users of Naver KnowledgeiN were 270. Expertise of contributors, community size, and diversity of contributors were identified as core determinants of perceived CI quality. Perceived CI quality has significantly influenced perceived CI usefulness from a user's perspective. For improving CI quality, it is believed that organizations should ensure proper crowd size, facilitate CI contributors' diversity and attract as many expert contributors as possible. Hypotheses that CI type plays a role of moderator were partially supported. First, the relationship between expertise of contributors and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The expertise of contributors played a more important role in CI quality in the case of Q&A services such as Knowledge iN compared to wiki services such as Wikipedia. This implies that Q&A service requires more expertise and experiences in particular areas rather than the case of Wiki service to improve service quality. Second, the relationship between community size and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The community size has a greater effect on CI quality in case of Wiki service than that of Q&A service. The number of contributors in Wikipeda is important because Wiki is an encyclopedia service which is edited and revised repeatedly from many contributors while the answer given in Naver Knowledge iN can not be corrected by others. Finally, CI quality has a greater effect on its usefulness in case of Wiki service rather than Q&A service. In this paper, we suggested implications for practitioners and theorists. Organizations offering services based on collective intelligence try to improve expertise of contributeros, to increase the number of contributors, and to facilitate participation of various contributors.

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The Future of Radio and its Role in the Era of Smart Media (스마트미디어 시대 속 라디오의 미래와 역할 고찰)

  • KWON, Youngsung;SONG, Haeryong
    • Trans-
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    • v.1
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    • pp.117-139
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    • 2016
  • Radio, the first broadcasting medium in history, is also the first mobile medium that meets the currently mobile ecology based on mobile communications network. As a result, it is easily approachable to consumers, can easily engage individual consumers, and its program contents have a huge appealing power to individual listeners, allowing it to form intimacy with audiences at the closest distance. However, the listening rating of radio has decreased greatly because it has experienced various changes by many other competitive media such as TV and internet and it has been influenced by relative constant hypothesis. Also, radio now faces a bigger competition due to the emergence of smartphone. In this circumstance, radio showed movements to evolve into a digital radio that presents improved sound, strengthened reception power, and increased number of channels, but it suddenly changed to DMB and portable multimedia DMB is having huge problems in its marketability due to smartphone. Yet, the listening rating of analogue radio broadcasting that remained unchanged was 13.99% in 2014, an increase by 47% from 2011, and the percentage of listeners under the age of 18 increased by 2.4 times from 2011 to 2014, which was a unique and interesting phenomenon. Accordingly, this paper compared the characteristics of internet and radio that have the traits of daily life, information, individuality, participatory, adventurousness, alternative media, expertise, and sound media. The paper then examined the listening method of radio, in which the direct groundwave antenna reception through a vehicular device is the most common form during the use of transportation means. Finally, it sought to investigate the future of radio based on the understanding of the increase in radio listening ratings, especially by comparing it to the characteristics of smart generation that focus on smartphone and the internet The study results demonstrated that entertainment and amusements are attempting at changes while they used to be obtained selectively by the smart generation from fragmentary information. In addition, radio is expected to become an influential medium in the future through its advantages of 'selected information' and reliability. However, considering such possibilities, radio needs to build the expertise and reliability of broadcasting contents much more at the same time as its digitalization, and it will be able to have its own competitiveness by focusing on various experiences and cultural exposures.

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Comparison of Estradiol Results according to Manufacturer (제조회사에 따른 Estradiol 결과값의 비교)

  • Kim, Dae-Woon;Shin, Hee-Jung;You, Tae-Min;Noh, Gyeong-Woon;Kim, Hyun-Joo
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.101-105
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    • 2011
  • Purpose: Estradiol in the menstrual cycle and ovulation induction as an important test of currently national nuclear medicine laboratory in the normal patients and patients with infertility tests are being performed. For the diagnosis of menopause is an important test with follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and Luteinizing hormone (LH). Currently participating in external quality control of the nation's hospitals that is 54 percent of 37 hospitals, 20 hospitals have been using A's reagent. The kit's test results are highly different from other kit comes with the test results of specimens have been found. And for the phenomenon is to study the problem. Materials and Methods: Estraiol test were referred to our hospital which results of samples as more than 100pg/ml 75 specimens measured by radioimmunoassay(RIA) test with company A company B company C company D Kit, Chemiluminescent assay (CMIA) to examine and compare to the results from april to August in 2010. Results: Kit for each manufacturing company as measured by the results obtained using the average value of the correlation coefficient (R2) and A company 0.8906 B 0.9527 C 0.9547 and D company correlation coefficient of 0.873 showed a good correlation that measuring the results of A company high concentrations when Company B Company C Company D with CMIA test concentrations measured low results that the two cases were discovered specimens. Conclusion: Most of the test results of 75 samples came up with a similar trend, but two cases were reported in the patients very differently. A company result reported higher than 700 pg/ml, while the rest of other test results report was approximately 10 pg/ml. The common point of two samples more than 50 years patients are estimated to be diagnosed with cancer in postmenopausal patients receiving treatment and levels of FSH were found to be greater than 50 mIU/ml. Did not identify the exact cause. I suggest if you are using A company kit that need to again check when Estradiol result and follicle stimulating hormone results is higher.

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A Study on Repetition and Multiplicite of Superhero Comics (슈퍼히어로 코믹의 반복과 다양체적 형식에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Seh-Hyuck
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.28
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    • pp.27-53
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    • 2012
  • American superhero comics are being produced in numerous different forms for multiple, and cross-platform media. In cinema, films based on superhero comics top the list of all time box office records. The same phenomenon of the 'Invasion of Superhero' is duplicated in Korean box office 2012, however, the korean fans are not familiar with the superheroes from the publication which provides the original source of characters and stories for other superhero related media products. Based on observing the multiple and vastness of world building characteristics of superhero comic, this paper attempts to associate the continuous creative nature and the infinite repetition of superheroes and comic texts with the identity of superhero on ontological level. First, chapter 2 examines how one superhero exists in multiple and different worlds individually by utilizing the concept of 'multi-universe' or 'multiverse' in comic texts. Initially, duplicating a superhero on multiple settings and series destroyed continuity and allowed contradiction and paradox confused narrative as a whole, but it also gave chances for comics to be more vibrant and experimental with their stories and characters. Chapter 3 analyzes the superhero comic texts in the light of repetition, concept developed by french philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and make the argument that the superheroes and texts are not repeated to generate surplus of source for economic utilitarian purposes, but it is, first and foremost, a repetition of creativeness and capability. Many concepts introduced by Deleuze in his early masterpiece, $\acute{e}$rence et R$\acute{e}$p$\acute{e}$tition> are taken to support this argument. Mainly, his critical views on generality of the identity and his effort to replace the Plato's system of representation with vibrant creative, and renewal energy of r$\acute{e}$p$\acute{e}$tition. According to Deleuze, repetition is similar concept, if not identical, to what Nietzsche called the 'eternal return' which allows the return of the Overhuman or the Superhuman, and he extends his idea that the returning Overhuman is the singular simulacre which opposes the generalization of identity, in the likes of Plato's Idea. Thus, the superhero's identity is ever changing, ever returning, and ever renewing Overhuman. The superhero must be repeated to fully actualize his/her existence. Also, based on Deleuze's reading of Bergson's texts on the Virtual, the superhero, for example Superman, is actualization of his/her multiplisit$\acute{e}$, the internally multiple, and differentiated variations from itself. These every Supermans' multiplisit$\acute{e}$ shares common memory, past, and duration, thus the Virtual of Superman. Superman becomes himself only by actualizing the movement and differentiation from these multiplisit$\acute{e}$ in his virtual on the surface of reality. On chapter 4, a popular Korean comic book character Oh, Hae-Sung's r$\acute{e}$p$\acute{e}$tition and multiplist$\acute{e}$ are analyzed, and makes comparison to that of Superman to distinguish the repetition from r$\acute{e}$p$\acute{e}$tition, and multiplicit$\acute{e}$ from diversity.

THE ECOLOGY, PHYTOGEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOBOTANY OF GINSENG

  • Hu Shiu Ying
    • Proceedings of the Ginseng society Conference
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    • 1978.09a
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    • pp.149-157
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    • 1978
  • Ginseng is the English common name for the species in the genus Panax. This article gives a broad botanical review including the morphological characteristics, ecological amplitude, and the ethnobotanical aspect of the genus Panax. The species of Panax are adapted for life in rich loose soil of partially shaded forest floor with the deciduous trees such as linden, oak, maple, ash, alder, birch, beech, hickory, etc. forming the canopy. Like their associated trees, all ginsengs are deciduous. They require annual climatic changes, plenty of water in summer, and a period of dormancy in winter. The plant body of ginseng consists of an underground rhizome and an aerial shoot. The rhizome has a terminal bud, prominent leafscars and a fleshy root in some species. It is perennial. The aerial shoot is herbaceous and annual. It consists of a single slender stem with a whorl of digitately compound leaves and a terminal umbel bearing fleshy red fruits after flowering. The yearly cycle of death and renascence of the aerial shoot is a natural phenomenon in ginseng. The species of Panax occur in eastern North America and eastern Asia, including the eastern portion of the Himalayan region. Such a bicentric generic distributional pattern indicates a close floristic relationship of the eastern sides of two great continental masses in the northern hemisphere. It is well documented that genera with this type of disjunct distribution are of great antiquity. Many of them have fossil remains in Tertiary deposits. In this respect, the species of Panax may be regarded as living fossils. The distribution of the species, and the center of morphological diversification are explained with maps and other illustrations. Chemical constituents confirm the conclusion derived from morphological characters that eastern Asia is the center of species concentration of Panax. In eastern North America two species occur between longitude $70^{\circ}-97^{\circ}$ Wand latitude $34^{\circ}-47^{\circ}$ N. In eastern Asia the range of the genus extends from longitude $85^{\circ}$ E in Nepal to $140^{\circ}$ E in Japan, and from latitude $22^{\circ}$ N in the hills of Tonkin of North Vietnam to $48^{\circ}$ N in eastern Siberia. The species in eastern North America all have fleshy roots, and many of the species in eastern Asia have creeping stolons with enlarged nodes or stout horizontal rhizomes as storage organs in place of fleshy roots. People living in close harmony with nature in the homeland of various species of Panax have used the stout rhizomes or the fleshy roots of different wild forms of ginseng for medicine since time immemorial. Those who live in the center morphological diversity are specific both in the application of names for the identification of species in their communication and in the use of different roots as remedies to relieve pain, to cure diseases, or to correct physiological disorders. Now, natural resources of wild plants with medicinal virtue are extremely limited. In order to meet the market demand, three species have been intensively cultivated in limited areas. These species are American ginseng (P. quinquefolius) in northeastern United States, ginseng (P. ginseng) in northeastern Asia, particularly in Korea, and Sanchi (P. wangianus) in southwestern China, especially in Yunnan. At present hybridization and selection for better quality, higher yield, and more effective chemical contents have not received due attention in ginseng culture. Proper steps in this direction should be taken immediately, so that our generation may create a richer legacy to hand down to the future. Meanwhile, all wild plants of all species in all lands should be declared as endangered taxa, and they should be protected from further uprooting so that a. fuller gene pool may be conserved for the. genus Panax.

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Flexible Specialization: A New Paradigm for Modern Industrial Society ? (柔軟的 專門化(Flexible Specialization) : 현대 産業社會의 새로운 패러다임 ?)

  • Lee, Deog-An
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.28 no.2
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    • pp.148-162
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    • 1993
  • There is much speculation that modern capi-talist society is undergoing fundamental and qualitative chnge towards flexible specialization. The purpose of this study is to examine this hypothesis. This paper focusses on: the idea of flexible specialization; the significance of this transition; industrial district; and the implicati-ons of this new production system for Korean industrial space. Main arguments of this study are as follows: First, as all different groups of researchers apply the idea of flexible specialization according to their own specifications, the current debate on this topic is not much fruitful. Not surpri-singly, the concept of flexible specialization has overlapped with subocontracting. This intergration of subcontracting into flexible specialization systems, however, is inappropriate because the two concepts have different historical contexts. The other cause of this controversy is its inherent weekness, conceptual ambiguity. Thus, today's flexibility becomes tomorrow's rigidity. Secondly, transition towards flexible speciali-zation has only been partially achieved even in advanced capitalist countries. The application of dualistic explanatory framework, such as rigidity versus flexibiity, mass production versus small-lot multi-product production, and de-skilling versus re-skilling, has resulted in great exaggeration of the transformation, from Fordism to post-Fordism. There is no intermediary part between two places. Considering that the workers allocated to the Fordist mass production assembly line are not as large as one might imagine, the shift from mass to flexible production has only limited implications for the transformation of capitalist economy. Thirdly, 'industrial district' contorversy has contributed to highlighting the importance of small firms and areas as production space. The agglomeration of small firms in specific areas is common in Korea, but it is quite different from the industrial district based on flexible specialization. The Korean phenomenon stems from close interactions with its major parent firm rather than interactions between flexible, specialized, autonomous and technology-intensive smll firms. Most Korean subcontractors are still low-skilled, labour-intensive, and heavily dependent on their mojor parent firms. Thus, the assertion that the Seoul Metropolitan Area adopts flexible specialization has no base. Fourthly, the main concern of flexible speciali zation is small firms. However, the corporate organization that needs product diversification and technological specialization is oligopolistic large corporations typified by multinational corporations. It is because of this that most of these organizations are adoptiong Fordist mass production methods. The problem of product diversification will be resolved naturally if economic internationalization progresses further. What is more important for business success is the quality and price competitiveness of firms rather than product diversification. Lastly, in order to dispel further misunderst-anding on this issue, it is imparative that the conceptual ambiguity is resolved most urgently. This study recommends adoption of more speci-fied and direct terminology (such as, factory automation, computer design, out-sourcing, the exploitation of part-time labor, job redesign) rather than that of ideological ones (such as, Taylorism, Fordism, neo-Taylorism, neo-Fordism, post-fordism, flexible specialization, peripheral post-Fordism). As the debates on this topic just started, we still have long way to go until consensus is reached.

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