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In pre-modern Korea, paper was renowned for its white glossy surface and cloth-like strength, becoming an important item in both tributary exchanges and private trade. The unique material of the tak tree and related technical innovations, including toch'im, the repeated beating of just-produced paper that provides sizing and fulling effects, were crucial to this fame. However, the scholar-officials who integrated papermaking into the state production system in order to meet administrative and tributary needs initially made toch'im corvée and then penal labor, thereby dismissing it as simple toil. They were not alone, though, in denigrating a form of manual labor. Historiographies of modern science and technology are generally silent about such work, focusing instead on how we invented the human out of drudgery. However, papermakers in late Chosŏn Korea (the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) chose to identify their artisanship with toch'im and eventually succeeded in securing recognition for that technique as a highly paid specialty. By examining this skilling of toch'im, this paper seeks to change the historiographical silence about toil. It overcomes the archival silence that accompanies manual skills by tracing toch'im's contours through its changing locations and associations in society's changing social and material networks, revealing paper artisans' social techniques, or everyday politics that eventually dignified their laborious technique. Paper artisans' changing relationships with tak barks, tools and facilities, central and local authorities, farmers, merchants, and scholar-officials reveal how such social skilling was made in late Chosŏn Korea, where papermaking became a most successful industry. This tracing of toch'im re-situates creative toil and everyday politics of artisanal hands in the interconnected transformation of social relations, craft, and knowledge practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides the first comparative overview in English of Japanese colonial banks before World War II with an emphasis on their roles as banks of issue in Taiwan, Korea and Northeast China. It discusses at length similarities and differences in these banks’ note circulation patterns, in their note-reserve requirements and their actual application, and in their geographical spread and respective colonial mandates. There was some variation in Japanese bank note issuance in the colonial setting of Korea and Taiwan, in ‘Manchukuo’ and in those parts of China that remained nominally sovereign. But all Japanese colonial banks seem, in one way or another, to have astutely adjusted the spread of their note issue in order to control for flagging demand due to nationalist boycotts, or to conversely cash in on demand spurts for notes resulting from crises in the indigenous financial sector. The banks of issue under review here were theoretically subject to a 100 per cent reserve requirement, but the make-up of their metallic bullion reserve and the degree of their notes’ convertibility were very dissimilar, reflecting varying local conditions. Both in terms of reserve ratios, and note denominations—the banks prudently followed charter obligations that were devised by the Japanese Treasury but, at the same time, were reminiscent of the obligations that British overseas banks also had to abide by. Thus, the findings discussed here shed light on the inception and adaptability of Japanese colonial policy in the lead-up to the Pacific War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public's negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public's priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that "history" trumps security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This account of Koreans in the former Soviet Union describes important discoveries concerning a key hidden story of the Korean people and identity. The paper describes important aspects of Korean life in Central Asia that have been relatively undermined by many scholars in international relations and anthropology. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the history and meaning of the settlement of Korean people in Russia and Central Asia from a multitude of perspectives. Despite the size of the Korean population and its significant contributions to the building of Soviet society, very little has been written about Koreans in the former Soviet Union. In fact, the ethnic Korean group has been one of the largest minority groups in the former Soviet Union, representing an important element of both Soviet and post-Soviet political, social, ethnic, and economic history. This study revealed, once again, the tragic story of Stalin's deportation of Kan people in Russia and explored an intriguing analysis of the re-encounter of Korean and Turkish people after a millennium and their long, intimate cultural bond. In particular, this study demonstrated that the historical and cultural affinities between Koreans and Central Asians existed long before Stalin's deportation. Political, economic, social, and linguistic exchanges between Korean people and Turkic people are deeply rooted in the same mythology of Dangun, the legendary founder of the first Korean kingdom of Gojoseon. This reflects the dynamics of success of the Korean people in the former Soviet Union as well as their mutual interest in enhancing relations between Korea and the Turkic states and Siberian region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally shifted the way human beings interact, both as individuals and groups, in the face of such a widespread outbreak. This paper seeks to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on intergroup emotions and attitudes within an intractable intergroup conflict, specifically, through the lens of the Korean conflict. Using a two-wave, cross-sectional design, this study was able to track the profound psychological changes in intergroup emotions and attitudes both prior to the pandemic and during its onslaught. Results of these two wave representative samples show that South Korean citizens demonstrated higher levels of fear of their neighbors in North Korea after the outbreak of COVID-19 than before. In turn, this led to increased societal support of hostile government policies towards North Koreans. Conversely, the same participants exhibited higher levels of empathy towards North Koreans during the pandemic, which led to a higher willingness to collaborate with their outgroup. This dual effect on intergroup emotions within intractable conflicts brings forth new avenues from which societies may be able to restrain the destructive influence of the COVID-19 threat on intergroup relations — as well as harvesting its constructive potential for reconciling warring intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public interests in coming futures of Korea continue to be increasing. Fears on uncertainties and pending challenges as well as demands on a new but Korea-own development model trigger a quantitative increase of futures research and relevant organizations in both public and private. The objective of this paper is to review history of futures studies and national development plan and strategy linked with foresight along with its challenges and recommendations. This paper identifies drawbacks and limits of Korea foresight such as misapplication of foresight as a strategic planning tool for modernization and economic development and its heavy reliance on government-led mid- and long-term planning. As a recommendation, an implementation of participatory and community-based foresight is introduced as a foundation for futures studies in Korea. A newly established research institute, the National Assembly Futures Institute, has to be an institutional passage to deliver opinions of the public, a capacity-building platform to increase the citizen's futures literacy, and a cooperative venue for facilitating a participation and dialogue between politicians, government officials, and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spinoza believed that minds were merely ideas, and 'ideas of ideas' held by bodies. Vygotsky presented it the other way around: bodies are minds that act on the environment and on themselves. In this paper, we combine these two perspectives to tackle three questions teachers, parents and adolescents themselves often have. First, what role do interests and concepts play? Second, what about emotion? Third, what does love have to do with sex? To answer, we analyse some telling classroom anecdotes, seek a synthesis of Spinoza's monism with Vygotsky's materialist version of Soviet 'sexual enlightenment' and undertake a linguistic analysis of recent sex education material in South Korea. We also offer a few sample lessons that take an expansive, Spinozian view of health/ethics and a Vygotskyan view of the adolescent transition from mere ideas of bodies to bodies of ideas such as profession, personality and partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both knowledge-based culture and knowledge management have emerged as prominent themes in business studies. Research on knowledge-based culture in knowledge management organizations is still in its infancy. This paper aims to identify the critical factors in knowledge-based culture, the knowledge process, and the relationship between the two by analyzing the relevant literature and the process of knowledge management implementation. The paper starts by describing knowledge-based culture and knowledge management and then systematically reviews the relevant research on knowledge, culture, and performance. We then present a model that integrates knowledge-based culture, knowledge process, and performance, synthesizing the relationships among their components through a structural equation model based on the AMOS statistical tool. We propose this model as an instrument for facilitating the development of strategic intent in implementing knowledge processes with a focus on cultural context in order to maximize learning and business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, there has been an increasing scholarly interest in understanding the development of psychiatry and mental health in non-Western worlds in the modern period. Several collective efforts have been made on the East Asian part, and this special issue has selected the examples of the countries of China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Articles have utilized social and political constructions of psychiatric discourse, as well as the use of case files to research patients' experiences in mental hospitals. Through these historiographies, connections and meanings of East Asian psychiatry are discussed in both global and local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean diet is heavily based on meat. This is connected to a discursive tradition that associates the consumption of specific animal products with medicinal virtues. When justifying the use of nonhuman animals as curative commodities, Koreans often engage with ideologies about zootherapy, pure blood and ethnicity beyond the human world. Furthermore, alongside civil and state society discourse about South Korea's 'uniqueness' as a nation (cf. concepts of jeong, uri, han, gi and Minjok literature), my participants also mobilized folk beliefs about care and necessary harm in the handling, treatment and processing of nonhuman animal bodies. Bringing together classic anthropological debates about primordial and instrumental ethnicity with a human geographical analysis of the shaping of East Asian post-industrial more-than-human landscapes, this paper examines civil society discourses about more-than-human interrelatedness, cultural uniqueness and bloodlines connected to dog meat consumption in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the need for supply-side analysis of inbound tourism and argues that reliance on demand-side only projections of market trends is insufficient. The paper discusses the results of a survey of 351 Korean visitors returning from Group Inclusive package holidays to Australia.Visitor characteristics and their reaction to their experiences in Australia were gathered and are assessed. Findings of the survey are analysed from the perspective of identifying and classifying visitor responses to the Australian tourism industry’s supply of visitor goods and services. Deficiencies such as language, transport deficiencies, itinerary construction and shopping are identified and discussed, and possible remedial measures highlighted. Findings indicate that these issues will need to be addressed if Australia’s expectations of continued large annual increases in Korean inbound tourism is to be maintained over the next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We examine how corporate social responsibility affects financial performance in the Korean market by examining a new set of data, the ESG score. Using panel regression models, we show that the ESG score is negatively related with a widely used measures of financial performance, ROA and Tobin's Q, unlike extant studies arguing for the positive relationships. Among the three pillars of ESG performance, the social and governance scores robustly show negative relationships with ROA but the environmental score does not. The consideration of unique Korean governance structure, chaebol, does not change our findings. Our findings generally support the traditional view of corporations but argue against the stakeholder theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the key attributes and clusters of policies and systems of Korean Taekwondo based on Park Geun-Hye and Moon Jae-in's regime changes using big data, including 8,030 data points on social media over a period of 8 years. Frequency analysis, term frequency inverse document frequency analysis, and degree centrality analysis were performed using TEXTOM 4.5. In addition, a convergent and correlation analysis was performed using UCINET 6 to visualize related words and analyze clusters. Frequency, term frequency inverse document frequency, and degree centrality analyses revealed 30 high-order terms. A convergence of iterated correlations analysis of the derived words identified three common clusters: improvement, problem, and support. In addition, there were two distinct clusters in the Park Geun-hye government (research and sports policy), and three in the Moon Jae-in government (interview, thoughts, and athlete). The Korean government attempted to improve and address problems related to policies and systems for the development of Taekwondo. However, as Taekwondo policies and systems were implemented from different perspectives by each regime, systematic policies and systems could not be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While tensions over historical issues between Japan and South Korea have long served to impede US strategic goals in East Asia, mainstream International Relations theory has largely been unable to explain the stubborn persistence of such issues. Instead, I interpret East Asia's post-war history through the lens of Gramsci's concept of passive revolution, thereby situating the 'history problem' in the context of the dialectical relations between state (re)formation, geopolitical contestation and transnational capital accumulation in the post-war era. I argue that US intervention in 1945 was a process in which a set of state–society relations was established whereby democratising tendencies from below were repressed through the establishment of US-aligned capitalist regimes. This implied the partial restoration of certain aspects of the pre-1945 regimes in a manner that served to forestall any genuine coming to terms with past colonial history. Gramsci's concept of passive revolution thus provides a framework for rethinking how bilateral relations between countries can be explained with reference to the broader dynamics of geopolitical contestation, transnational capital accumulation and the dynamics of state–society contestation within national social formations. While existing empirical applications of passive revolution have typically focused on particular national instances of state formation and transformation, I argue that the concept can be utilised to analyse the region-wide processes whereby the US empire was established in the aftermath of the Second World War, and by extension, how supranational processes of passive revolution subsequently generated their own tensions and contradictions as manifested in contested bilateral relations between states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of exponential growth projections of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) market value, many companies are reluctant to adopt RFID and RFID vendors are complaining that the business is not growing as fast as expected. The existing challenges and deep skepticism that RFID is facing remains around the return on investment, the incompleteness of RFID technology, and the lack of trust in the result of performance improvement. To fill these voids identified in previous research, from the perspective of business productivity and efficiency, this paper investigates what factors affect RFID-driven task performance, based on the extended Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model. To empirically evaluate the proposed model, a total of 63 usable responses were collected from companies in Korea, and the data is analyzed by Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results obtained pointed out the importance of the fit between the technology and users’ tasks in achieving individual performance impact. Moreover, negative perceptions toward RFID have no direct effect on continuing RFID utilization. Knowing these factors, potential technology users are able to evaluate if it is reasonable to adopt RFID under certain conditions and at a certain point in time. Furthermore, they can attempt to actively influence these variables in order to reduce the failure probability of RFID deployments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to introduce and share globally Korea's experiences and practices regarding library policy and to bring new evidence to establish national library policy by introducing Korea's Five-Year Library Development Strategic Plan, as laid out by the Presidential Committee on Library and Information Policy in 2014. Serving as a centre for cultural community, the library of today contributes to the realization of happiness for every citizen by facilitating the public's participation in and boosting of opportunities for cultural activities. With a vision of 'The Library Creating Happy Life and Future', in 2014, the committee announced seven driving strategies, with twenty strategic tasks and ninety-two specific implementation tasks in the Second Library Development Strategic Plan. This plan has yielded fruitful results and has led to success in developing libraries in Korean society. Considering that the situation varies from one country to another, the plan introduced in this paper cannot be regarded as a one-sizefits-all model. Korea's practice, however, is well localized and well developed through collaborative work among several government bodies and stakeholders of libraries in Korea, so it is expected that this policy will provide a good example of a strategic plan for developing libraries in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Korean economy achieved rapid economic growth with equal income distribution for over three decades until the late 1990s when, in 1997, a financial crisis occurred. Mainstream economists and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) attributed this crisis to the problem of East Asian crony capitalism. The Korean government accepted this perspective and implemented neoliberal economic restructuring and financial opening after the crisis. However, James Crotty argued that the crisis in Korea was a result of haphazard financial opening and the withdrawal of state intervention. Most importantly, he extensively criticized the post-crisis economic reform in Korea imposed by the IMF. He believed that it would lead to lower economic growth and higher inequality, and he advised Koreans to oppose it. This article examines Crotty's argument about the Korean economy and how the latter changed in the 21st century. JEL classification: F34, H12, O19, O53 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to extend the knowledge of the behaviour and attitudes towards open access publishing through a survey that focusses on the attitudes and behaviours of academic researchers in Korea working in medicine and healthcare. Issues covered include: use of and intentions regarding OAP, and perceptions regarding advantages and disadvantages of OAP, journal article publication services, peer review, and re-use. A significant proportion of the articles (mean 58%) published by this group are published gold open access, consistent with the push in Korea towards international impact for their research. Researchers were more positive about the benefits of OAP than they were negative about its disadvantages. Analysis of responses on the basis of gender, and experience in publishing, showed some significant differences in attitudes to some statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the absence of high trust social capital has not prevented firms from performing well in economies with the dirigiste tradition. Despite low general trust, France and Korea have recorded sound growth rates and innovation performance, thus contradicting the central argument of social capital theory. Drawing on the dirigiste tradition, we suggest that elite networks of France and Korea are an idiosyncratic form of social capital, nurtured through their institutional arrangements such as low trust, concentrated power relations and state-run elite education. The elite networks enhance the coordination efficiency of economic relations through state activism, constituting an alternative to high trust social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the multiplex and complex nature of popular culture in developing nations in the midst of globalization by comparatively analyzing two cultural icons of Korean society: a Texas Ranger pitcher, Chanho Park, and a rock musician, Taiji Seo. Being in two different areas of culture, they represent two extremes. While Park symbolizes conservatism and adaptation, Seo stands for deviation and progressiveness. They, however, share some similarities. They are similar not only in their sociocultural functions and influences, but also in their contradictions. In addition, if these two figures are put into the discussion of power relations at global level, dependent aspects of cultural process emerge. The ultimate similarity between Park and Seo is that they are essentially the 'cultural products' of post-industrial capitalistic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to evaluate the causal relationship between long-term outdoor air pollutants and incidence of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) using the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort (NHIS-NSC) database. We included 292,091 subjects from the general population who had previously not been diagnosed with PAD by the NHIS-NSC between 2008 and 2014. Hourly air pollutant data (particulate and gaseous) and climate data were collected. Correlation analysis of the collected data confirmed the relationship between air pollution and PAD incidence. For 1,836,965.4 person-years, incident cases of PAD were observed in 5243 subjects (285.4/100,000 person-years). In the Cox proportional hazard analysis, exposure to long-term average concentration of sulfur dioxide (SO2) [hazard ratio (HR), 1.686; (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.108–2.565) for.01ppm] and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) [HR, 1.200; (95% CI, 1.077–1.336) for.01 ppm] significantly increased the risk of PAD occurrence after the adjustment for several variables. This study demonstrated that SO2 and NO2 exposure are independent predictors of PAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, several governments have adopted various forms of green stimulus policies (GSP) to manage environmental challenges and revitalize their national economies during crises. However, research on the varieties of GSPs within a country and the possible drivers of this diversity remain scarce. This study qualitatively compares the green growth and green new deal policies adopted under two different administrations in South Korea. Although both GSPs share similar components, they vary in their focus on nuclear energy and international cooperation. This study postulates that these differences are associated with the degree to which each administration saw GSP through the lens of a developmental state. Besides providing a comparative tool for examining GSPs and their elements, this research contributes to GSP research in a non-Western developed-country setting by highlighting how domestic factors shape the nature and composition of GSPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines mainstream news media framings of North Korea and the inter-Korean relationship in the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, focusing on the role that the media played in privileging particular understandings of nationalism, conflict and reconciliation. Print news articles from South Korea and English-speaking western nations were collected and analyzed. The results illustrate notable differences between South Korean and western media coverage of North Korea’s involvement and the inter-Korean relationship. Western representations of North Korea featured discussions of controversies pertaining to the North Korean government, and often deemphasized or dismissed athletes’ efforts. South Korean coverage included few reflections on socio-political problems related to North Korea, but highlighted athletic accomplishments. Emphasis on division was also found more often in western coverage of the inter-Korean relationship as compared to South Korean coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated whether or not drinking behavior changed among Korean adult smokers after a 114% cigarette tax hike in 2015. Data were drawn from waves 9 to 12 (collected yearly from 2014 to 2017) of the nationally representative longitudinal study, the Korean Welfare Panel Study. Korean adults who were ≥19 years comprised the analysis sample (N = 10 875). We applied a difference-in-differences approach to compare drinking behavior before and after the tax increase among three groups (i.e., quitters, continued smokers, and nonsmokers). We found that alcohol drinking significantly decreased among those who quit smoking after the tax increase, compared with nonsmokers (P =.022). Our findings support that a cigarette tax increase may have the beneficial spillover influence of reduction in drinking as well as smoking if the tax increase can induce smokers to quit, but such positive spillover influence may be short-term or null for continued smokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the policies of development cooperation promoted by Japan and Korea in Central Asia, focussing on the roles of discourses treating Japan and Korea as potential non-Western models for the region's development and modernisation in their relations with Central Asian states. We trace the evolution of relevant developmental approaches made by Japan and Korea, analysing discourses and practices of sharing experiences, as well as the key drivers behind those shifts, and we seek to locate these changes in the larger context of regional political economy and international relations. Furthermore, the article seeks to address the ideational and normative aspects of Japanese and Korean development cooperation in Central Asia. We conclude with a recap comparison of Japan's and Korea's sharing of development experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through international student mobility programs, such as Global Korea Scholarship (GKS), countries aim to influence international students' beliefs about and attitudes toward the host country. In this article, we explore GKS's role in bringing international students to the country and analyze changes in GKS students' and alumni's affective and cognitive evaluation of Korea after coming to the country. We compare results based on students' and alumni's length of stay, gender, and economic development level of their home country. Our findings suggest that after coming to Korea, GKS recipients evaluate Korea more positively in both affective and cognitive dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the Korean biotechnology sector with an analytical framework of National Innovation System (NIS). We examine whether newly industrializing economies (NIEs) can catch up with advanced economies in newly-emerging, knowledge-intensive industries such as biotechnology. We demonstrate that Korea is emerging as a key player in the global biotechnology scene in terms of R&D activities, catching up with other advanced countries, such as Japan, and keeping pace with regional competitors like Taiwan, Singapore and China. While the substantial increase in innovation capabilities lends support to the plausibility of the catching-up view, we also find that improvements and adaptations need to be made in transferring knowledge effectively from public to private sector and in commercializing biotechnology with the institutional support of private funding. Our study highlights the mechanisms by which collective competence of managing knowledge creation and diffusion is facilitated in a developing economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we take a postcolonial management approach to exploring the lingering significance of postcolonial imagery in shaping legal disputes between host country and foreign multinational corporations. We apply a critical discourse analysis to the Korea versus Orbotech industrial espionage lawsuit, in which the Korean government accused a foreign multinational corporation of leaking its 'national core technology'. Through this analysis we demonstrate how industrial espionage discourse was used to fight Korea's negative reputation as a technological imitator, associate Korea with global technological leaders, and disassociate itself from other 'imitators'. In response, Orbotech's industrial espionage discourse has aimed to reproduce Korea's imitator stigma. Our findings highlight the continual role of the imagined North/South and West/rest symbolic boundaries in constructing global business hierarchies even when the marginalized party—Korea—has already moved to the elite economies club. While international management studies rarely address industrial espionage beyond its technical meaning, we underline the embeddedness of industrial espionage as a discourse in maintaining and disrupting the geopolitical business landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aimed to develop a simplified version of the Korean Workaholism Scale (KOWS) by determining the reliability and validity of the Workaholism Analysis Questionnaire (WAQ) initially created by Aziz et al. The original scale of the WAQ was translated into Korean and then administered to 4,242 working people from a broad range of economic sectors. The nation-wide sample was a representative one from the 17th wave Korean Labor and Income Panel Study in 2014. The main body comprises two steps. First, through an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) as well as a reliability analysis, along with content validity examination among experts, thirteen items from the original WAQ were eliminated. The EFA yielded a four-factor solution with four items established in compulsive dependency (CD), four in illusion of control (IC), four in endurance of conflicts (EC), and four in withdrawal symptoms (WS). This process provided a succinct and convenient measure of workaholism, the KOWS with 16 items. The reliability coefficient (α) of the new scale was.90, and the split-half reliability coefficient was.72. Secondly, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed by way of structural equation modeling to validate the new construct. This KOWS showed adequate convergent validity (AVE >.5), construct reliability (CR >.7), as well as discriminant validity (AVE > ρ2). Between four subscales of the KOWS and affective commitment (AC) to organizations there proved meager correlation. In conclusion, the KOWS with 16-item psychometric properties is a valid and reliable tool to measure workaholism in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the relative lack of media comparison studies within Asian contexts, theoretical frameworks based in Western societies have been applied to knowledge production in the global South. Using a 'most different' design, this study compares the dimensions of media systems reflected in two Chinese and two Korean newspapers in their initial coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Content analysis showed statistically significant differences in distribution of sources, topics and valence, usage of frame types, and actors including domestic government and foreign entities held responsible between the two groups of media. Based on political implications of crisis on Chinese and Korean news content, we mainly discuss political instrumentalization and parallelism in the media in an Asian context. Finally, we open up the dimensions of media system from an Asian perspective and address the need for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how middle-aged urban men in South Korea relate to age-relevant ideas of beauty in a society in which youthful muscular bodies are increasingly presented as the ideal or, arguably, even as a norm. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 male participants aged 36–56 years residing in the Seoul metropolitan area, it seeks to outline what role grooming and aesthetic labor play in their everyday social interactions. The findings suggest that men's aesthetic practices in the workplace are strongly linked to considerations of in-group harmony, competency at work, and maintaining social hierarchies. Rather than being motivated by a desire to emulate hegemonic masculinity embodied by male celebrities of similar age, men in this age group engage with body work primarily for the homosocial gaze of other men in their workplace in order to embody their membership and belonging to it. These micro-contexts of men's aesthetic labor help to illustrate how not all aesthetic labor can be explained in terms of considering the body simply as an object of investment. The participants' reflections also illustrate how men's bodies as neoliberal objects in the contemporary Korean workplace are not interpellated by societal or cultural influences in identical ways. For white collar workers, the role of aesthetic labor was clearly seen as more significant than for those in blue collar roles, suggesting a degree of social stratification of body work. Despite the relatively easy access to affordable technologies of the body in Korea, for workers in lower-middle class jobs where grooming and fitness are not considered an essential part of their job, partaking in aesthetic labor came with the anxiety that it might be encoded as "excessive" by others. This suggests that Korean beauty cultures continue to be highly class- and context-specific rather than relatively uniform as often (mis)understood in existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selfies allow us to exert control over how we are seen and to construct our identity through the people, places, and activities that we imbue with value. The composition of the image, situation, and location photographed indicate aesthetic and ontological choices that reveal cultural values, performances of identity and social position of the person taking the selfie. When read as digital placemaking practices, travel selfies become salient to producers and audiences as political and performative expressions of identity and one's place in the world. This article examines the travel selfie within the South Korean context and argues that thinking about selfies as placemaking practices informs the productive and potentially empowering nature of these photographs, which simultaneously conform to and contest neoliberal consumerist ideologies. The authors analyze a case study in which the placemaking practices of selfies are represented and critiqued. We argue that these digital placemaking practices become sites where young people's imaginations, aspirations, and frustrations about social hierarchies, national imaginaries, and class status are expressed and debated through representations of international travel. Through textual and discourse analysis of the images and virulent public criticism faced by South Korean females who travel abroad and document their experiences on Instagram and Naver, we examine the tensions that emerge regarding expressions of the 'spatial self' online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistent with global trends, population aging in South Korea is necessitating increasing admissions to intensive care units (ICU). This integrative review describes the challenges experienced by family caregivers of ICU patients in South Korea and evaluates relevant intervention studies. Using Whittemore and Knafl's methods, we identify and synthesize findings from 20 (14 descriptive and 6 experimental design) articles and evaluate study quality. South Korean ICU family caregivers reported challenges such as feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability, difficulty in maintaining their own health and well-being, and mixed feelings regarding patients' transition to the general ward. Intervention studies, which were based on quasi-experimental design, examined modified visiting hours, information provision strategies, nurse-led transitional care programs, and educational support. Findings highlight the current state of the science in this topic area in South Korea. Future studies should use more robust methods, such as longitudinal cohort studies and randomized controlled trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical and practical impact of dynamic capabilities on organizational performance remains elusive. This study investigates the mediating role of a firm's dynamic capabilities, measured by IT capability and environmental scanning. In addition, by proposing that knowledge management (KM) strategies play a crucial moderating role in the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation (EO), dynamic capabilities, and organizational performance, this study highlights the need for effective KM strategies to maximize organizational performance. A questionnaire was administered to Korean managers who understand and can answer overall characteristics of their organizations. Our study found that dynamic capabilities partially mediated the relationship between EO and organizational performance. In addition, our findings show that the relationship between EO and organizational performance is stronger when firms emphasize personalization KM strategies, while the firms focusing on codification KM strategies demonstrate a stronger relationship between IT capability and organizational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea is slowly but steadily becoming a country of immigrants. In 1998, there were barely 300,000 foreign residents in South Korea. As of 2018, there were more than 2.3 million. The immigrant population has yet to reach 5% of the total population, but it is predicted to rise significantly in the years to come. Despite the increase in newcomers, it is not well understood who native South Koreans prefer as immigrants and why. Are immigrant attitudes motivated by co-ethnic solidarity, or are they primarily based on economic and sociotropic concerns? To isolate attitudes on these crucial questions, this research uses a conjoint experiment that simultaneously tests the influence of seven immigrant attributes in generating support for admission. Our results show that broad sociotropic concerns largely drive attitudes towards immigrants in South Korea, but an immigrant's origin also matters. Prospective newcomers from culturally similar and higher-status countries who can speak Korean and have clear plans to work are most preferred. The research findings will be relevant to the comparative study of immigration attitudes, as well as to researchers interested in the specifics of the South Korean case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article revisits the developmental state literature that stresses the unitary role of the state in steering economic development in East Asia. Focusing on the Korean state actors' diversity and their agency after the trend of globalization and democratization, this article highlights various state actors as agents and looks into how the role of state actors has changed with industrial development, using the setting of the Korean online gaming industry over the past two decades. By examining government policy measures on the industry, I found that the state actors have actively engaged with the industry, however, this agency has not been uniform due to the different purposes of the actors and sometimes led a detrimental effect against the needs or expectations of the industry. The findings, thus, contribute to the literature by suggesting the potentiality of agent-driven institutional change and the heterogeneity that comes from the state actors' policy engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underemployment is a multidimensional construct that captures various suboptimal work statuses. Although recent economic depressions and insecure job markets in Korea have increased underemployment, no appropriate scale exists to measure underemployment in a Korean context. Therefore, the aim of this study was to translate the Subjective Underemployment Scales (SUS) into Korean and validate the Korean SUS (K-SUS) with a sample of 427 Korean employees. We found that a bifactor model fit the data best, suggesting a different internal structure from the English version. Scores from the K-SUS were also invariant across gender, age, income, and employment status. In addition, we found evidence for construct validity by relating scores from the K-SUS to similar constructs and indicators of well-being. Findings from the current study help describe Korean employees' experiences of subjective underemployment and suggest how psychologists, employers, and policy makers can address structural and psychological issues related to underemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how information communication technologies (ICT) investment affected sales and employment at 76 small and medium-sized Korean companies during 2009–2013. Especially, this study investigated the effects of ICT investment on sales in general and by subsets of investment in hardware, software, and ICT staff. Studies normally assumed a standard Cobb-Douglas production function, and measured variables in logarithms. In line with previous studies, we assumed that firms produced output, performance, or productivity via a Cobb–Douglas production function model with inputs capital and labor. We then suggested a new model that could be incorporated into the production function above to estimate the effect of the interaction between ICT investment and labor on sales. This study found that hardware investment complemented labor in increasing performance, whereas investments in software and ICT staff substituted labor. These results show that ICT investment might affect firm-level employment, and what business managers must consider insofar as each subset of ICT investment exerts differing effects on firm-level employment. This study also found that the effect of ICT investment on firm-level employment might be more pronounced among smaller firms and firms outside the IT industry. This study also demonstrated that ICT investment complemented labor and that the effects differed for specific types of ICT. This study can help managers respond to the challenges of ICT investment or employment, and provides a framework for analyzing the strategic significance of ICT investment and employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do organizations respond differently to social policies? This is an important question because it gives us a clue as to why social progress is often slow even with successful legislation. We argue that HR professionals' conflicting roles within organizations affect modes of organizations' compliance with a law because HR professionals are expected to adjust legal pressure to business interests when translating external requirements into internal policies. How they manage this challenge depends on variation in the development of different dimensions of their professional agency: formalization and substantive empowerment. We demonstrate empirically this argument by taking the case of South Korea's parental leave policy. Using workplace-level data, we find that the presence of formal HR structures predicts that minimal compliance is more likely than is noncompliance, but is less likely than is maximal compliance, and that substantively empowered HR professionals contribute to making both compliance and maximal compliance more probable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how labor together with social participation protects against cognitive impairment and depression, with a focus on gender differences. Data are drawn from four waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (2006–2012). Both paid work and unpaid work are considered labor participation. Social participation includes the frequency of participation in formal social institutions, religious groups, grandparenting, and interactions with family and friends. Using growth curve models, we find that social and labor participation are independently associated with outcomes and effects vary by gender. Religious group activity was beneficial only for women, whereas inability to work was detrimental for men only. Informal social gatherings and labor participation, paid or unpaid, were beneficial for both genders. Findings on gender differences highlight how social identities can shape social roles and confine activity space, and productive engagement, affecting outcomes for mental health in later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Uzbekistan's cooperation agenda with Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea demonstrates clear signs of breaking with the Karimov-era security-driven agenda for cooperation in favor of de-securitization. This article uses a comparative analysis of the engagement of Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea with Uzbekistan through an analysis of the shifting political discourses in Uzbekistan and these states, statistics regarding their interaction, and an analysis of the economic road maps of their engagement from 2015 onward. This timeframe is attributed particular importance in this article, as it symbolizes the new opening of Uzbekistan toward these four states after the death of its dictatorial President Islam Karimov. In terms of the narrative, this article will first explore the problem of the securitization of the Central Asian region and the cooperation agenda. The article then discusses the motivations of Uzbekistan and its cooperation counterparts in pursuing closer ties. This discussion will then be followed by an analysis of how the new leadership in Uzbekistan re-evaluated its past behavior to address its post- and neocolonial challenges and the cooperation agendas with Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been numerous discourses around millennials and some of them may sound worrisome. To discuss millennials and moral panic, this study looks at three different areas (i.e., criminal justice, teaching at higher education institutions, and transitions to adulthood in South Korea) with some issues pertinent to millennials and younger generations faced in society currently. Drawing on a wide range of the literature, this study attempts to recognize unique characteristics of our younger generations, to find ways to better understand them using multiple angles, and to identify reasons why we should stay hopeful about the future. Our society will continue to change, often in unpredictable ways, and there will always be a new generation on the horizon. Efforts should be made to work with younger generations, learning from each other and finding ways to work together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Effective and sustainable intervention programs are needed to promote physical activity (PA) in children.Objectives: To adapt the NASA Mission X: Train Like an Astronaut program for use with South Korean children, and to evaluate its feasibility and effectiveness for promoting children's physical fitness.Methods: Children 5 years old (n = 212) and their parents were recruited from three kindergartens in three cities to participate in a 6-week intervention program in fall 2014. We assessed the children's PA and related changes, and parental changes in attitude and beliefs, after participation in the intervention.Results: Girls reported less PA than boys (40.7 vs. 59.0, p < 0.01). Children with a normal body mass index (BMI) were more likely to be active than underweight children (< 10 percentile) or overweight children (⩾ 85 percentile). After the intervention, about one-half of the children had increased their level of PA (49.4%), increased interest in PA (59.1%) and found psychological need satisfaction in exercise (52.6%). The majority of parents became aware of the necessity of childhood PA (94.2%), their child's PA capability (64.3%), and the relationship of PA with their children's self-esteem (79.9%).Conclusions: The adapted NASA Mission X program was feasible and effective in promoting PA in kindergarteners, and also improved their parents' attitude and beliefs about children's PA in South Korea. This study provided a model for promoting childhood health through child care and educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural resemblance between Japan and Korea has been assumed, because both East Asian cultures are generally characterized by collectivism. However, subsequent investigations suggest a contrast between the two cultures in the decision-making process, concurrent with a growing call for a more elaborate model of self-construal. This study compares the diverse ways of self-construal underlying decisions regarding invitations between Japan and Korea. We conducted a scenario-based questionnaire in which 377 Japanese and Korean college students made decisions regarding whether to invite someone to an activity, to do the activity alone, or to not do the activity. Utilizing classification tree modeling to analyze multivariate categorical data, we examined the participants' selected actions according to two factors: interpersonal relations (i.e., whether the other was a friend or an unfamiliar but favored classmate) and the locus of interest in a given situation (i.e., whether the event was of interest to the speaker, hearer, or both parties). The results revealed cultural variations in invitations. Japanese students seem to be interdependent, in that they hesitate to invite others unless they have an assured interpersonal relationship, and tend to wait until they are sure of the other's interest, even when interested themselves. In contrast, Korean students appear more independent in considering the other's interest and pursuing their own interest. This study highlights the complex ways of self-construal within the alleged collectivist East Asian region, and also demonstrates the applicability of classification tree analysis in differentiating rank orders of multiple factors influencing people's decision making across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the intersection of The Tempest adaptations and militarization across the Caribbean and Pacific. Through an analysis of the South Korean writer Ch'oe In-Hun's 1973 novel The Typhoon, it argues that past speculative visions for a decolonial future continue to offer a critical imaginary of decolonization in the Pacific and of reunification of Korea. Building on the works of Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, and Édouard Glissant, the article theorizes relational sovereignty and spiritual sociogenesis in the context of militarization of islands. It considers the transpacific region alongside the Caribbean through a comparative analysis of The Typhoon and the Martinican thinker Aimé Césaire's 1969 play Une Tempête. This is an archipelagic perspective that decenters the logic that justifies militarization of the islands for the securitization of the continents. The article analyzes how decolonial knowledge emerges through the affective, spiritual, and environmental transformations and alters the course of military mobilization of the colonized on islands both real and fictional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a framework for the interim evaluation of, and subsequent planning for, information systems (IS) in the public sector. We incorporate the considerations of cost efficiency and task effectiveness, which are critical for reaping a sustained benefit from IS. We recommend this double-sided analysis as the basis for interim evaluation. We also advise that this framework of evaluation can effectively indicate which subsequent course of action should be taken: maintain the status quo, upgrade functionality, redevelop, or discontinue the IS. We applied this framework to 118 ISs within the South Korean public sector with the k-means clustering method and provided both academic and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of Korea (ROK) has not traditionally regarded the Russian Federation as an important partner in the Korean security crisis. Nevertheless, the ROK–Russia relationship has grown by leaps and bounds. Furthermore, the Moon Jae-in administration's "New Northern Policy," which focuses especially on economic collaboration with Russia, exhibits a great deal of compatibility with the "turn to the East" in the Russian Federation's recent foreign and domestic policies. For Seoul, the "New Northern Policy" is not simply a means of generating economic benefits for the ROK but is also part of Seoul's plans for promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Indeed, the Kremlin shares with South Korea not only the goal of increased economic interconnectivity but also a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Nevertheless, two main barriers exist undermining aims outlined in the New Northern Policy. The continuation of the crisis over North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, particularly the perpetuation of the various layers of sanctions against Pyongyang, frustrate the economic integration as espoused in the New Northern Policy. Furthermore, economic conditions within Russia, namely, a lack of economic development within the Russian Far East, frustrate South Korean hopes for greater trade connectivity with Russia. Substantial changes to both the Northeast Asian sub-regional order as well as in the Russian Federation's domestic economic situation, therefore, are necessary before the prospects envisioned in Seoul's New Northern Policy can be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the research was to determine the effects of cultural self-construal of users in social networking sites (SNS) on the way they perceive self-disclosing activities, attach to brand community, and satisfy with brand relationship. With the growth of social media, it has brought diverse users from different countries in a single platform enabling people from divergent cultures to communicate and be influenced by each other shaping unique self-construal. Hence, we used newly developed cultural self-construal as an antecedent of self-disclosure. Data were collected from 460 female adults. The results showed that the perceptions of self-disclosure are the key antecedents of relationship advancement, which are differently influenced by cultural self-construal. The way users perceive self-disclosing activities positively influenced brand community attachment, and subsequently brand relationship satisfaction. The results provided valuable insights for practitioners by presenting the importance of using brand community in SNS as a long-term branding channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]