Abstract: The question of what to do about North Korean human rights (NKHR) has never been more divisive. Some have explained the division in terms of prioritizing certain rights or movement strategies over others. In this paper, I demonstrate that neither of these explanations is consistent with the last three decades of South Korean public discourse on NKHR. Applying a novel combination of semantic network and discourse analysis on 28,795 South Korean newspaper articles between 1990 and 2016, I arrive at the following argument. The division between NKHR partisans in South Korea is not based on particular stances towards human rights but rather support or opposition to US hegemony and intervention on the Korean peninsula. South Korean partisanship is worth studying as a specific aspect of the NKHR Movement, and because it reflects more generally on NKHR partisanship in the West. We in the NHKR community will be far more effective at improving the actual state of North Korean human rights if we first acknowledge and address our fundamental disagreements over US hegemony and intervention on the Korean peninsula. Lastly, this paper makes a methodological contribution to digital humanities. I use semantic network analysis to visualize partisan dynamics within a corpus of media articles spanning a quarter century. I then sample the most representative articles comprising key network features and use these to conduct a qualitative discourse analysis. It is my hope that future research in Korean Studies will benefit from this complementary application of digital and qualitative methods.
{"title":"Decamping the Partisans: US Hegemony and South Korea's Divisive Discourse on North Korean Human Rights","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908622","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The question of what to do about North Korean human rights (NKHR) has never been more divisive. Some have explained the division in terms of prioritizing certain rights or movement strategies over others. In this paper, I demonstrate that neither of these explanations is consistent with the last three decades of South Korean public discourse on NKHR. Applying a novel combination of semantic network and discourse analysis on 28,795 South Korean newspaper articles between 1990 and 2016, I arrive at the following argument. The division between NKHR partisans in South Korea is not based on particular stances towards human rights but rather support or opposition to US hegemony and intervention on the Korean peninsula. South Korean partisanship is worth studying as a specific aspect of the NKHR Movement, and because it reflects more generally on NKHR partisanship in the West. We in the NHKR community will be far more effective at improving the actual state of North Korean human rights if we first acknowledge and address our fundamental disagreements over US hegemony and intervention on the Korean peninsula. Lastly, this paper makes a methodological contribution to digital humanities. I use semantic network analysis to visualize partisan dynamics within a corpus of media articles spanning a quarter century. I then sample the most representative articles comprising key network features and use these to conduct a qualitative discourse analysis. It is my hope that future research in Korean Studies will benefit from this complementary application of digital and qualitative methods.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135957679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Editor's Note Cheehyung Harrison Kim The digital transformation of Korean studies in the past two decades has reshaped all areas of research, from conceptualization to publication, a change perhaps most profoundly felt in the humanities. In recognition and celebration of this transformation, this journal has assembled a special section on digital Korean studies. It is an outcome of a three-year-long project dexterously organized and guest-edited by Javier Cha and Barbara Wall, a process that included joyful workshops in Seoul and Copenhagen. The twelve special section articles deal with the diverse terrain of knowledge production in Korean studies made possible by groundbreaking digital and computational methods. The special section begins with Javier Cha and Barbara Wall's overview of the methodology pertaining to digital studies, along with the summary of the articles. Then Hyeok Hweon Kang and Michelle Suh's article introduces the marvelous search engine called Silloker, which they created to search across multiple digital archives on premodern Korea. A stellar demonstration of cross-cultural study is found in Shoufu Yin's paper on the comparative analysis of civil service examination topics in Korea and China between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Circulation and network are prominent themes in the special section. Sol Jung's fascinating study examines the market circulation of Korean tea bowls in sixteenth century Japan, while Barbara Wall and Dong Myong Lee's article makes a compelling inquiry into the numerous versions of the classic East Asian story The Journey to the West existing in Korea. The [End Page v] network of readers of the Tang poet Du Fu in late Chosŏn Korea is the focus of Jamie Jungmin Yoo, Kiho Sung, and Changhee Lee's captivating study. Network—in the form of poetry societies, in nineteenth century Chosŏn Korea—is also at the center of Jing Hu's illuminating piece. Discourse analysis is the primary method in two articles. Jacob Reidhead's highly relevant study is a critical look at the changing discourse on North Korean human rights in contemporary South Korea. The politicization of the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea is adroitly scrutinized in Liora Sarfati and Guy Shababo's analysis of Facebook postings. In Benoit Berthelier's piece, North Korea's level of digitalization is compared with South Korea's digital processing system, with a call for cooperation between the two countries toward a unified digital future. While acknowledging the seismic influence of digital humanities, Javier Cha sheds light on current challenges arising from the immensity of digital materiality and big data. In the Epilogue, Wayne de Fremery pushes for greater theoretical contemplation with the notion of copying in digital computation as a way toward deep learning. Beyond the special section, the volume includes excellent research articles. Veli-Matti Karhulati, Katriina Heljakka, and Dongwon Jo have written a creative sociot
{"title":"Editor's Note","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908614","url":null,"abstract":"Editor's Note Cheehyung Harrison Kim The digital transformation of Korean studies in the past two decades has reshaped all areas of research, from conceptualization to publication, a change perhaps most profoundly felt in the humanities. In recognition and celebration of this transformation, this journal has assembled a special section on digital Korean studies. It is an outcome of a three-year-long project dexterously organized and guest-edited by Javier Cha and Barbara Wall, a process that included joyful workshops in Seoul and Copenhagen. The twelve special section articles deal with the diverse terrain of knowledge production in Korean studies made possible by groundbreaking digital and computational methods. The special section begins with Javier Cha and Barbara Wall's overview of the methodology pertaining to digital studies, along with the summary of the articles. Then Hyeok Hweon Kang and Michelle Suh's article introduces the marvelous search engine called Silloker, which they created to search across multiple digital archives on premodern Korea. A stellar demonstration of cross-cultural study is found in Shoufu Yin's paper on the comparative analysis of civil service examination topics in Korea and China between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Circulation and network are prominent themes in the special section. Sol Jung's fascinating study examines the market circulation of Korean tea bowls in sixteenth century Japan, while Barbara Wall and Dong Myong Lee's article makes a compelling inquiry into the numerous versions of the classic East Asian story The Journey to the West existing in Korea. The [End Page v] network of readers of the Tang poet Du Fu in late Chosŏn Korea is the focus of Jamie Jungmin Yoo, Kiho Sung, and Changhee Lee's captivating study. Network—in the form of poetry societies, in nineteenth century Chosŏn Korea—is also at the center of Jing Hu's illuminating piece. Discourse analysis is the primary method in two articles. Jacob Reidhead's highly relevant study is a critical look at the changing discourse on North Korean human rights in contemporary South Korea. The politicization of the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea is adroitly scrutinized in Liora Sarfati and Guy Shababo's analysis of Facebook postings. In Benoit Berthelier's piece, North Korea's level of digitalization is compared with South Korea's digital processing system, with a call for cooperation between the two countries toward a unified digital future. While acknowledging the seismic influence of digital humanities, Javier Cha sheds light on current challenges arising from the immensity of digital materiality and big data. In the Epilogue, Wayne de Fremery pushes for greater theoretical contemplation with the notion of copying in digital computation as a way toward deep learning. Beyond the special section, the volume includes excellent research articles. Veli-Matti Karhulati, Katriina Heljakka, and Dongwon Jo have written a creative sociot","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"299 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135957858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract: In 2014, the South Korean ferry, Sewŏl, sank. In sinking, it took with it 304 lives, as well as initiated broad public dissent that lasted several years. In this study, we investigate how online social media users employed and manipulated the emotions toward this disaster for political purposes. By the utilization of digital humanities methodologies (i.e., topic modeling and frequencies) on the data collected from selected Facebook accounts, we compared different strategies of online engagement with the intersection between mass death commemoration and political activism. In particular, we explored the delegitimization of President Pak Kŭn-hye, her impeachment, and the resultant elections in 2017. Quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that different social actors manipulated their audience's emotions through posts on their Facebook walls in a manner that politicized the more personal mournful discourse. These social actors associated the disaster with the president's ineptness, especially after her corruption was revealed in the November 2016 scandal. From that point onward, the online memorialization of the Sewŏl's victims became a weapon in the broader efforts to oust the president and to change the political system.
{"title":"The Writing on the Wall: Affective Politicization of the Sewŏl Disaster on Facebook","authors":"Liora Sarfati, Guy Shababo","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908623","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In 2014, the South Korean ferry, Sewŏl, sank. In sinking, it took with it 304 lives, as well as initiated broad public dissent that lasted several years. In this study, we investigate how online social media users employed and manipulated the emotions toward this disaster for political purposes. By the utilization of digital humanities methodologies (i.e., topic modeling and frequencies) on the data collected from selected Facebook accounts, we compared different strategies of online engagement with the intersection between mass death commemoration and political activism. In particular, we explored the delegitimization of President Pak Kŭn-hye, her impeachment, and the resultant elections in 2017. Quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that different social actors manipulated their audience's emotions through posts on their Facebook walls in a manner that politicized the more personal mournful discourse. These social actors associated the disaster with the president's ineptness, especially after her corruption was revealed in the November 2016 scandal. From that point onward, the online memorialization of the Sewŏl's victims became a weapon in the broader efforts to oust the president and to change the political system.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"134 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135957877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reviewed by: Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul by Seo Young Park Jinwon Kim Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul, by Seo Young Park. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021. 186 pages. Once a symbol of the labor movement in the 1970s and '80s, where Chun Tail-il—a sewing worker and labor activist—immolated himself to death by calling for standard labor law compliance in 1970, the Dongdaemun [End Page 415] Market now seems to have lost its past memories of the nation's once industrial backbone—the manufacturing industry and its industrial warriors. The Dongdaemun Market is now well-known as a late-night shopping mecca at the heart of Seoul, attracting both locals and domestic and international tourists looking for "fast fashion" items, including uniquely-designed and/or imitation clothing, shoes, and handbags. Hosted and organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) twice a year, Seoul Fashion Week also brings vivid and trendy fashion vibes to the "creative" class, from designers to fashion models to entertainers. However, often overshadowed by the flamboyant lights of the night shopping district and fashion shows, the industrial "past" of the city still resonates in the Dongdaemun Market, from manufacturing factories to garment workers and wholesalers. In fact, the Dongdaemun Market is a unique space, reinforcing contradictory and paradoxical urban images, for example, the postindustrial present and industrial past, and imitation and creativity, intersect and coexist in the fast pace and rhythms. In Stitching the 24-Hour City, Park introduces and reminds readers of those who are often forgotten in the postindustrial urban discourses, but, who, in fact, create and recreate the space behind the scenes in the context of time and space—garment workers to wholesalers and retailers to market designers to labor activists in the rise and peak of the fast fashion industry. Research on the garment industry and the "fast fashion" industry is nothing new; scholars across the globe have paid attention to and analyzed various social issues around these industries, such as the gendered dynamics of the work, hazardous working conditions, labor exploitation, flexible production, ethical consumption, and environmental justice from boycotts against Forever 21 (a fast fashion brand) in L.A. to the Rana Plaza factory building collapse in Bangladesh. However, based on detailed fieldwork between 2008 and 2010 and periodically afterwards, Park uniquely and provocatively examines aspects of "sped-up" work, production, and circulation cycles in the industry with the rise of postindustrial spatial orders in South Korea through the knowledge economy and creative industry. More importantly, based on detailed participant observations and in-depth interviews, the author brings the local context from local histories and a sense of the time period to the fro
{"title":"Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul by Seo Young Park (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908633","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul by Seo Young Park Jinwon Kim Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul, by Seo Young Park. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021. 186 pages. Once a symbol of the labor movement in the 1970s and '80s, where Chun Tail-il—a sewing worker and labor activist—immolated himself to death by calling for standard labor law compliance in 1970, the Dongdaemun [End Page 415] Market now seems to have lost its past memories of the nation's once industrial backbone—the manufacturing industry and its industrial warriors. The Dongdaemun Market is now well-known as a late-night shopping mecca at the heart of Seoul, attracting both locals and domestic and international tourists looking for \"fast fashion\" items, including uniquely-designed and/or imitation clothing, shoes, and handbags. Hosted and organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) twice a year, Seoul Fashion Week also brings vivid and trendy fashion vibes to the \"creative\" class, from designers to fashion models to entertainers. However, often overshadowed by the flamboyant lights of the night shopping district and fashion shows, the industrial \"past\" of the city still resonates in the Dongdaemun Market, from manufacturing factories to garment workers and wholesalers. In fact, the Dongdaemun Market is a unique space, reinforcing contradictory and paradoxical urban images, for example, the postindustrial present and industrial past, and imitation and creativity, intersect and coexist in the fast pace and rhythms. In Stitching the 24-Hour City, Park introduces and reminds readers of those who are often forgotten in the postindustrial urban discourses, but, who, in fact, create and recreate the space behind the scenes in the context of time and space—garment workers to wholesalers and retailers to market designers to labor activists in the rise and peak of the fast fashion industry. Research on the garment industry and the \"fast fashion\" industry is nothing new; scholars across the globe have paid attention to and analyzed various social issues around these industries, such as the gendered dynamics of the work, hazardous working conditions, labor exploitation, flexible production, ethical consumption, and environmental justice from boycotts against Forever 21 (a fast fashion brand) in L.A. to the Rana Plaza factory building collapse in Bangladesh. However, based on detailed fieldwork between 2008 and 2010 and periodically afterwards, Park uniquely and provocatively examines aspects of \"sped-up\" work, production, and circulation cycles in the industry with the rise of postindustrial spatial orders in South Korea through the knowledge economy and creative industry. More importantly, based on detailed participant observations and in-depth interviews, the author brings the local context from local histories and a sense of the time period to the fro","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"71 10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135957688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reviewed by: Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea by Ingu Hwang Benjamin A. Engel Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea, by Ingu Hwang. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 337 pages. 55.00 hardcover. In Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea, Ingu Hwang draws needed attention to the transnational nature of South Korea's democratization movement. In part because of lackluster support from the US government, which Hwang is keen to highlight, South Korean democratization is understood as a movement which succeeded through the struggle of the Korean people. While Hwang does not challenge this perception, he does show how the movement "mobilized, adapted, and indigenized" the international vocabulary of human rights in the 1970s and 1980s as well as argue that non-state actors in Korea contributed to transforming the global human rights landscape (p. 10). Proceeding chronologically and starting in 1972 with the proclamation of the Yushin Constitution, Hwang is arguably at his best as he traces the establishment of AI (Amnesty International) Korea and the emergence of ecumenical activist groups, most notably the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), as major actors in the Korean Democracy Movement. In particular, Hwang's description, in Chapters 1 and 2, of how AI Korea was able to gradually break loose of AI's principle of maintaining political neutrality and not only waded into the waters of political activism but dragged AI itself along with it was an important example of the periphery impacting the center. Later chapters demonstrate how democracy activists in South Korea adopted the vernacular of the international human rights movement to state its grievances towards the authoritarian Korean regimes and work with non-state actors abroad to make their demands widely known. For example, Korean organizations began to aggressively adopt the language of torture in 1975 helping to spark an AI fact-finding mission (pp. 88–96). Anger at the Korean government's continued practice of torturing imprisoned activists would later be the catalyst that brought down the Chun regime in 1987 after the death of Park Chong-chŏl (p. 248). In tandem with these unique insights into the transnational nature of the South Korean democracy movement, Hwang also discusses how the United States and South Korean governments developed policies to counteract growing pressures from civil society. Regarding the US government's response to transnational demands that it more forcefully pressure the Park Chung Hee and later Chun Doo Hwan regimes to [End Page 419] observe human rights values, Hwang argues that the United States adopted a strategy of "quiet diplomacy" to placate critics while ensuring US security interests and regime security in Korea (pp. 11–12). This strategy, Hwang asserts, was consistent throughout the 1970s and 1980s, even during the Carter administration. However, Hwang's overall argumen
《韩国的人权与跨国民主》本杰明·a·恩格尔《韩国的人权与跨国民主》,黄英古著。费城:宾夕法尼亚大学出版社,2022。337页。55.00精装书。黄禹锡在《韩国的人权与跨国民主主义》一书中,对韩国民主化运动的跨国性质给予了必要的关注。黄禹锡强调的是,美国政府的支持力度不够,因此,韩国民主化被理解为“通过国民的斗争取得成功的运动”。虽然黄禹锡没有挑战这种看法,但他确实展示了该运动如何在20世纪70年代和80年代“动员、适应和本土化”国际人权词汇,并认为韩国的非国家行为体为改变全球人权格局做出了贡献(第10页)。按照时间顺序,从1972年维新宪法的颁布开始,黄禹锡追溯了韩国大赦国际(Amnesty International)的成立和大公主义活动团体的出现,其中最著名的是韩国教会全国委员会(National Council of Churches in Korea, NCCK),它们是韩国民主运动的主要参与者。特别是,黄禹锡在第一章和第二章中描述了人工智能韩国如何能够逐渐摆脱人工智能保持政治中立的原则,不仅涉足政治激进主义的水域,还将人工智能本身拖入其中,这是外围影响中心的一个重要例子。后面的章节展示了韩国的民主活动人士如何采用国际人权运动的术语来表达他们对韩国独裁政权的不满,并与国外的非国家行为体合作,使他们的要求广为人知。例如,韩国组织在1975年开始积极采用酷刑的语言,这有助于引发人工智能实况调查任务(第88-96页)。对韩国政府继续折磨被监禁的活动人士的愤怒后来成为1987年朴槿惠去世后全氏政权垮台的催化剂Chong-chŏl(第248页)。与这些对韩国民主运动的跨国性质的独特见解相结合,Hwang还讨论了美国和韩国政府如何制定政策来抵消来自公民社会日益增长的压力。关于美国政府对跨国要求的回应,即它更有力地向朴正熙和后来的全斗焕政权施压,要求他们遵守人权价值观,Hwang认为,美国采取了一种“安静外交”的战略,以安抚批评者,同时确保美国的安全利益和政权在韩国的安全(第11-12页)。黄禹锡主张,这一战略在整个20世纪70年代和80年代,甚至在卡特政府时期都是一致的。然而,如果黄禹锡注意到美国政策的变化,而不是一直坚持使用无声的外交手段,那么他关于跨国行动主义在韩国民主运动中的重要性的总体论点就会得到加强。1972年,理查德•尼克松(Richard Nixon)总统宣布维新政权成立,美国最初的反应是完全漠不关心;没有任何努力阻止颁布公然专制的维新宪法。但到了1975-76年,正如黄禹锡所示,就连亨利·基辛格也愿意在人权问题上向朴正熙施压(第102-103页,第125-126页)。我认为,如果没有跨国活动人士的压力,美国对韩国人权政策的这种发展是不可能的。此外,黄禹锡也可以通过强调尼克松和福特政府内部对人权政策的堕落,来展示跨国运动主义的影响。莎拉·辛德在她的专著《从塞尔玛到莫斯科》的第四章中展示了菲利普·哈比卜和唐纳德·拉纳德如何在国务院敦促基辛格解决朴正熙政权侵犯人权的问题。黄禹锡对“安静外交”的关注的另一个方面是,人权和民主主义之间的区别,这在文本中似乎是隐含的,但没有直接提到。黄教安批评卡特政府把重点放在释放政治犯上,这使得朴槿惠……
{"title":"Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea by Ingu Hwang (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908634","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea by Ingu Hwang Benjamin A. Engel Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea, by Ingu Hwang. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 337 pages. 55.00 hardcover. In Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea, Ingu Hwang draws needed attention to the transnational nature of South Korea's democratization movement. In part because of lackluster support from the US government, which Hwang is keen to highlight, South Korean democratization is understood as a movement which succeeded through the struggle of the Korean people. While Hwang does not challenge this perception, he does show how the movement \"mobilized, adapted, and indigenized\" the international vocabulary of human rights in the 1970s and 1980s as well as argue that non-state actors in Korea contributed to transforming the global human rights landscape (p. 10). Proceeding chronologically and starting in 1972 with the proclamation of the Yushin Constitution, Hwang is arguably at his best as he traces the establishment of AI (Amnesty International) Korea and the emergence of ecumenical activist groups, most notably the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), as major actors in the Korean Democracy Movement. In particular, Hwang's description, in Chapters 1 and 2, of how AI Korea was able to gradually break loose of AI's principle of maintaining political neutrality and not only waded into the waters of political activism but dragged AI itself along with it was an important example of the periphery impacting the center. Later chapters demonstrate how democracy activists in South Korea adopted the vernacular of the international human rights movement to state its grievances towards the authoritarian Korean regimes and work with non-state actors abroad to make their demands widely known. For example, Korean organizations began to aggressively adopt the language of torture in 1975 helping to spark an AI fact-finding mission (pp. 88–96). Anger at the Korean government's continued practice of torturing imprisoned activists would later be the catalyst that brought down the Chun regime in 1987 after the death of Park Chong-chŏl (p. 248). In tandem with these unique insights into the transnational nature of the South Korean democracy movement, Hwang also discusses how the United States and South Korean governments developed policies to counteract growing pressures from civil society. Regarding the US government's response to transnational demands that it more forcefully pressure the Park Chung Hee and later Chun Doo Hwan regimes to [End Page 419] observe human rights values, Hwang argues that the United States adopted a strategy of \"quiet diplomacy\" to placate critics while ensuring US security interests and regime security in Korea (pp. 11–12). This strategy, Hwang asserts, was consistent throughout the 1970s and 1980s, even during the Carter administration. However, Hwang's overall argumen","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135958076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract: The digital world is marked by large asymmetries in the volume of content available between different languages. As a direct corollary, this inequality also exists, amplified, in the number of resources (labeled and unlabeled datasets, pretrained models, academic research) available for the computational analysis of these languages or what is generally called natural language processing (NLP). NLP literature divides languages between high- and low-resource languages. Thanks to early private and public investment in the field, the Korean language is generally considered to be a high-resource language. Yet, the good fortunes of Korean in the age of machine learning obscure the divided state of the language, as recensions of available resources and research solely focus on the standard language of South Korea, thus making it the sole representant of an otherwise diverse linguistic family that includes the Northern standard language as well as regional and diasporic dialects. This paper shows that the resources developed for the South Korean language do not necessarily transfer to the North Korean language. However, it also argues that this does not make North Korean a low-resource language. On one hand, South Korean resources can be augmented with North Korean data to achieve better performance. On the other, North Korean has more resources than commonly assumed. Retracing the long history of NLP research in North Korea, the paper shows that a large number of datasets and research exists for the North Korean language even if they are not easily available. The paper concludes by exploring the possibility of "unified" language models and underscoring the need for active NLP research collaboration across the Korean peninsula.
{"title":"Division and the Digital Language Divide: A Critical Perspective on Natural Language Processing Resources for the South and North Korean Languages","authors":"Benoit Berthelier","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908624","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908624","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The digital world is marked by large asymmetries in the volume of content available between different languages. As a direct corollary, this inequality also exists, amplified, in the number of resources (labeled and unlabeled datasets, pretrained models, academic research) available for the computational analysis of these languages or what is generally called natural language processing (NLP). NLP literature divides languages between high- and low-resource languages. Thanks to early private and public investment in the field, the Korean language is generally considered to be a high-resource language. Yet, the good fortunes of Korean in the age of machine learning obscure the divided state of the language, as recensions of available resources and research solely focus on the standard language of South Korea, thus making it the sole representant of an otherwise diverse linguistic family that includes the Northern standard language as well as regional and diasporic dialects. This paper shows that the resources developed for the South Korean language do not necessarily transfer to the North Korean language. However, it also argues that this does not make North Korean a low-resource language. On one hand, South Korean resources can be augmented with North Korean data to achieve better performance. On the other, North Korean has more resources than commonly assumed. Retracing the long history of NLP research in North Korea, the paper shows that a large number of datasets and research exists for the North Korean language even if they are not easily available. The paper concludes by exploring the possibility of \"unified\" language models and underscoring the need for active NLP research collaboration across the Korean peninsula.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135957676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract: How does a reader give a text meaning? In what ways do we understand the operations of encounters between a text and a reader? Focusing on the materiality of reading, this study aims to understand how anonymous readers in late Chosŏn Korea read the poetry of Du Fu, a renowned literary canon from China. To identify the meaning of the texts as constituted by the readers, we look at both the texts and the readers' practices by identifying the readers' prior knowledge of the text that has been embedded and coded in their reading notes, and by analyzing the relationship between the notes and the main body of poetry. Through this analysis, this paper shows that the reading of texts was performed through constant interactions with interpretive traditions and cultural legacies. Through their practices of reading, consequently, they reveal which communities of interpretation they distinctively belong to. To identify the invisible patterns of the exegetical traditions in their reading practices, we particularly apply methods in digital humanities, such as citation network analysis, which is an effective tool to recognize the structure of relationships among the notes, poems, and many other factors of the texts.
{"title":"Intertextual Du Fu: A Study of Citation Network Analysis","authors":"Jamie Jungmin Yoo, Kiho Sung, Changhee Lee","doi":"10.1353/ks.2023.a908621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2023.a908621","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: How does a reader give a text meaning? In what ways do we understand the operations of encounters between a text and a reader? Focusing on the materiality of reading, this study aims to understand how anonymous readers in late Chosŏn Korea read the poetry of Du Fu, a renowned literary canon from China. To identify the meaning of the texts as constituted by the readers, we look at both the texts and the readers' practices by identifying the readers' prior knowledge of the text that has been embedded and coded in their reading notes, and by analyzing the relationship between the notes and the main body of poetry. Through this analysis, this paper shows that the reading of texts was performed through constant interactions with interpretive traditions and cultural legacies. Through their practices of reading, consequently, they reveal which communities of interpretation they distinctively belong to. To identify the invisible patterns of the exegetical traditions in their reading practices, we particularly apply methods in digital humanities, such as citation network analysis, which is an effective tool to recognize the structure of relationships among the notes, poems, and many other factors of the texts.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135957863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article introduces Korean gay space, place, and identity in Japan, as revealed in Tokyo’s Korean gay bars that emerged at the start of Japan’s Korean Wave in the 2000s. It focuses on the intersections of race and sexuality in interactions among the actors that produce and consume these establishments, exposing racialized spaces of desire besides those limited to white Westernness. It presents an overview of Korean gay identity against the backdrop of Koreaphobia in Japan and homophobia among zainichi, along with an examination of the Korean Wave, its impact on the queer diaspora, and the gay commodification of Koreanness. The study comparatively analyzes racial groupings in the bar, seeking clarity on the representations of self and other among gay Koreans and with gay Japanese. A series of conclusions are made: (1) Korean gay men’s experience in Japan is shaped by having to contend with separate closets for race and sexuality, compounded by racism and homophobia from within their own communities dissociated from “Japan.” (2) The Korean Wave has created a new category of desire among gay men through a middle ground or third space around a borderless, hybridized community of communities. (3) Korean gay bars simultaneously function as consumer spaces for what the author terms “proximate opposites” with Japanese, and as community centers for racially one yet ideologically divided Koreans. The study sets out to recover and preserve a history that would otherwise have been lost from memory with decades of scholarly inattention to its existence.
{"title":"Riding the Wave to Ni-Chome: Tokyo’s Korean Gay Bars in the 2000s","authors":"Albert Graves","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0038","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces Korean gay space, place, and identity in Japan, as revealed in Tokyo’s Korean gay bars that emerged at the start of Japan’s Korean Wave in the 2000s. It focuses on the intersections of race and sexuality in interactions among the actors that produce and consume these establishments, exposing racialized spaces of desire besides those limited to white Westernness. It presents an overview of Korean gay identity against the backdrop of Koreaphobia in Japan and homophobia among zainichi, along with an examination of the Korean Wave, its impact on the queer diaspora, and the gay commodification of Koreanness. The study comparatively analyzes racial groupings in the bar, seeking clarity on the representations of self and other among gay Koreans and with gay Japanese. A series of conclusions are made: (1) Korean gay men’s experience in Japan is shaped by having to contend with separate closets for race and sexuality, compounded by racism and homophobia from within their own communities dissociated from “Japan.” (2) The Korean Wave has created a new category of desire among gay men through a middle ground or third space around a borderless, hybridized community of communities. (3) Korean gay bars simultaneously function as consumer spaces for what the author terms “proximate opposites” with Japanese, and as community centers for racially one yet ideologically divided Koreans. The study sets out to recover and preserve a history that would otherwise have been lost from memory with decades of scholarly inattention to its existence.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84677861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The claw crane—an arcade game that invites its players to remotely grab a prize with a “claw”—has undergone a long process of development from an eye-catching “steam shovel” to a calculated gambling machine across amusement arcades, train stations, and traveling carnivals. Recently, the claw crane has become a common transmedia object in various consumer outlets around the world, serving today’s “kidults” who are willing to play and be playful with toys as grownups. Especially in South Korea, the claw crane now rewards its players with cutified character plushies, which arguably reflects and resonates with the local sociocultural conventions. In this mixed-methods study, we deconstruct the claw crane as a historical artifact that promotes diverse forms of human interaction and engagement in the techno-cultural and social context of South Korea. The claw crane (or in South Korea, rather the “toy crane”) is investigated by means of historical design analysis, a review of contemporary South Korean media texts, and field observations in Seoul. We suggest the claw crane to serve as a multipurpose medium for playful interactions beyond the act of play itself—and in South Korea, having become a means for playful courting and emotional support, which at times of anxiety, stress, and uncertainty may contribute to one’s confidence and belief in the future.
{"title":"From Claw Crane to Toy Crane: Catching, Courting, and Gambling in South Korea","authors":"Veli-Matti Karhulahti, K. Heljakka, Dongwon Jo","doi":"10.1353/ks.2018.0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2018.0037","url":null,"abstract":"The claw crane—an arcade game that invites its players to remotely grab a prize with a “claw”—has undergone a long process of development from an eye-catching “steam shovel” to a calculated gambling machine across amusement arcades, train stations, and traveling carnivals. Recently, the claw crane has become a common transmedia object in various consumer outlets around the world, serving today’s “kidults” who are willing to play and be playful with toys as grownups. Especially in South Korea, the claw crane now rewards its players with cutified character plushies, which arguably reflects and resonates with the local sociocultural conventions. In this mixed-methods study, we deconstruct the claw crane as a historical artifact that promotes diverse forms of human interaction and engagement in the techno-cultural and social context of South Korea. The claw crane (or in South Korea, rather the “toy crane”) is investigated by means of historical design analysis, a review of contemporary South Korean media texts, and field observations in Seoul. We suggest the claw crane to serve as a multipurpose medium for playful interactions beyond the act of play itself—and in South Korea, having become a means for playful courting and emotional support, which at times of anxiety, stress, and uncertainty may contribute to one’s confidence and belief in the future.","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88632801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since its founding in 1948, the North Korean state has devoted considerable resources to the development of ideological and historical narratives across media to imbue its people with the ethos of collectivity through spectacle. Especially noteworthy is how sound has functioned to resuscitate the memory of the Korean War and in the process unify those of disparate generations and occupations into a coherent national community. Adopting an intermedial analytical lens, and informed by participant observation undertaken in Pyongyang, this paper examines three retellings of the Battle of Incheon (1950): the 1952 short story "Burning Island," the 1982 film Wolmi Island, and the 2017 revolutionary opera Three Days of Wolmi Island. While the short story used the sounds of explosions to trigger a shared sense memory of the Korean War, the film used music and sound to universalize the heroic role of the Wolmi Island defenders across all sectors of society, and idealize self-sacrifice in a new era. Then, as tensions between the United States and the DPRK reached a boiling point in 2017, North Korea revived the story as a revolutionary opera to remind all citizens of the devastation of the Korean War, and their obligation to defend the nation from imperial aggression. In examining the transference of sound across these media, we shed light on how North Korean writers and artists have employed various forms of sonic culture in increasingly affective ways to enhance an in-group mentality and emphasize the need for unwavering commitment to the Korean Workers' Party.
{"title":"From McArthur's Landing to Trump's Fire and Fury: Sonic Depictions of Struggle and Sacrifice in a North Korean Short Story, Film, and Opera","authors":"Alexandra Leonzini, Peter Moody","doi":"10.1353/ks.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ks.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Since its founding in 1948, the North Korean state has devoted considerable resources to the development of ideological and historical narratives across media to imbue its people with the ethos of collectivity through spectacle. Especially noteworthy is how sound has functioned to resuscitate the memory of the Korean War and in the process unify those of disparate generations and occupations into a coherent national community. Adopting an intermedial analytical lens, and informed by participant observation undertaken in Pyongyang, this paper examines three retellings of the Battle of Incheon (1950): the 1952 short story \"Burning Island,\" the 1982 film <i>Wolmi Island</i>, and the 2017 revolutionary opera <i>Three Days of Wolmi Island</i>. While the short story used the sounds of explosions to trigger a shared sense memory of the Korean War, the film used music and sound to universalize the heroic role of the Wolmi Island defenders across all sectors of society, and idealize self-sacrifice in a new era. Then, as tensions between the United States and the DPRK reached a boiling point in 2017, North Korea revived the story as a revolutionary opera to remind all citizens of the devastation of the Korean War, and their obligation to defend the nation from imperial aggression. In examining the transference of sound across these media, we shed light on how North Korean writers and artists have employed various forms of sonic culture in increasingly <i>affective</i> ways to enhance an in-group mentality and emphasize the need for unwavering commitment to the Korean Workers' Party.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":43382,"journal":{"name":"Korean Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138534626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}