• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.100-119
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• 2016

The concept of "original form" and the principle of "maintaining the original form" take center stage in conservation, management, and promotion of the domestic heritage. Introduced in the 20th century, there were little discussion or deliberation about the concept of "original form" therefore it remains a vague and somewhat abstract notion subject to individual interpretation. Without a specified practical meaning, "maintaining the original form" became the fundamental principle for heritage conservation and management in the 1999 version of the Cultural Heritage Protection Act, engendering difficulties in applying the principle in practice. Conceived as an important first step toward resolving the issues stemming from the indistinct concept of "original form," this paper explores the process through which the concept was introduced to Korea and then established and developed as a legal principle for heritage conservation, management, and promotion. While the examination of the related documents and various cases shows that the development of the concept of "original form" has centered on specific periods and architectural styles, this essay explicates that the notion "original form" is commonly used as a term referring to the form at the earliest possible temporality. It also explains that this view emanates from perceiving heritages not as multivalent objects, but as a material object that exclusively carries aesthetic and, more importantly, historical value, and that comes from the history awareness of the times. This essay suggests that the concept "original form" should be reestablished with full consideration of the diverse values of heritage and diverse forms through which heritage can be expressed. After reviewing the feasibility and practicality of the concept a set of concrete guidelines should be presented for application in practice.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.