American and South Korean Engineering Students’ Communication Motives and Their Student–Instructor Communication Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was twofold. The first purpose was to compare American and South Korean engineering students’ motives (i.e., relational, functional, excuse-making, participatory, and sycophantic) for communicating with their instructors and their student–instructor communication satisfaction. The second purpose was to examine the extent to which both American and South Korean engineering students’ motives for communicating with their instructors are related to their student–instructor communication satisfaction. Undergraduate students (N = 168) recruited from public universities in the United States and South Korea participated in this study. The results of a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), an independent sample t-tests, a series of zero-order Pearson correlational analyses, and Fisher z-tests revealed significant cultural differences and that the relationship between students’ communication motives and their student–instructor communication satisfaction largely are consistent between the two cultures.     

We or they? A summit,accents and South Korean stereotypes toward North Koreans

The effects of verbal accents on intergroup attitudes are well documented. This study aims to enrich our understanding by exploring how those effects vary according to the speaker's gender and the political context. We conducted two online survey experiments in which South Korean citizens were randomly exposed to speakers exhibiting one of four accent conditions – South Korean male and female accents and North Korean male and female accents – a week before and two days after the 2018 Singapore summit between North Korea and the United States, in order to test hypotheses based on literatures from political science, social psychology and evolutionary biology. The results indicate that only exposure to a North Korean male accent, not a North Korean female accent, strengthened stereotypes about North Koreans among South Koreans prior to the summit. Further, this negative effect disappeared immediately after the summit.     

Facing history with a sense of awe: an interview with Professor Mizoguchi Yūzō

In this wide-ranging interview and discussion with Kuan-Hsing Chen and Sun Ge, Mizoguchi Yūzō describes the origins of his interest in China studies and the process through which he developed his perspective on China, Japan, and the world. Mizoguchi details his break with both old-style Japanese Sinology and Western-influenced scholarship, which assumes Japanese superiority over China and takes Euro-American society and concepts as its standard. Mizoguchi suggests that historians can and should cultivate a new subjectivity for themselves and understanding of the history of the world as a whole through an approach to China that attempts to understand China’s own internal historical processes rather than assuming the universality of Western processes. He discusses his efforts to help reform the institutional structure of China studies in Japan, and further touches on the part played by Japan in China’s modern history as well as its historical relations with Taiwan and Korea.     

Urban commoning for Jarip (self-standing) and survival: subcultural activism in “Seoul Inferno”*

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the spatial practice of a subcultural activism of the “young radicals” in Seoul, South Korea through the lens of urban commoning. As a cohort of people born after the 1980s, these young musicians, artists, and cultural activists have endeavored to create, produce, and transform urban spaces through involvement in a series of anti-eviction protests. In particular, this study investigates how and why radical musicians, artists, and their associates have negotiated the chasms among their personal lifestyle, collective subculture, and political activism by pursuing their spatial practices for self-standing and survival over the past 10 years. Although not necessarily place specific, several cases are drawn from a group that relocated to the central area of Seoul since the mid-2010s, making its urban activism a subcultural (and transcultural) formation.     

For a comparative film studies

The paper argues that the comparative approach to the study of modern cultural forms should be founded on the common experience but divergent histories of the development of a capitalist mode of production and the impact of its reformatting dynamics on social, including cultural, relations. The paper then goes on to explore and propose a number of probably inevitable theoretical frameworks and tools to implement a comparative approach to the study of a thoroughly industrialized cultural form, such as cinema and films.     

The Influence of Social Norms on Korean Wives’ Intention to Talk with Their Husbands about the Equal Division of Housework

Currently, Korean males see the equal division of housework more positively than in the past. However, a large gap still exists between the attitude and the actual behaviour of the equal amount of housework. Interpersonal communication can be used to reduce this gap. The theory of planned behaviour and social norms approach are the theoretical frameworks that guide the study. The purpose of the study is to examine how social norms are influencing Korean wives’ intention to talk to their husbands about the equal division of housework.     

Working practices in Thai independent film production and distribution 1

Abstract

In the late 1990s, independent Thai films became a new burgeoning industry, with the beginnings of international recognition. Taking three case studies, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon (), Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Voodoo Girls (2003 Thunska, Pansittivorakul. 2004. Personal interview, 19 February [Google Scholar]) and Aditya Assarat and Mingmongkol Sonakul’s Ma‐mee/ Three Friends (), I argue that the digital format for DVD/VCDs is paving the way for independent filmmakers/producers to participate in the art film market abroad and to cut production costs. Following the economics of money flows makes it clear that ‘independent film’ in Thailand is less about economic independence than a type of branding and packaging of aesthetics and content. While film, economically, is never outside the workings of capital, the content and style of the three film projects considered here seek to break out of the conventions set by the commercial Thai film narrative style.     

Cold War and the contested identity formation of Korean filmmakers: on Boxes of Death and Kim Ki-yo˘ng's USIS films

The definition of the Korean national cinema in the course of modern and contemporary history of South Korea has provoked controversy. This article examines the negotiations in the identity formation of Korean filmmakers examining specific objects from years of reconstruction following the Korean War. It pays attention to the time when state-building and nation-building became combined enduring heterogeneity of this process. Kim Ki-yo?ng's films depict such characters. His public information short films reflect the legacy of American war films. However, they also contain self-conscious moments when the director refuses to be identified as a mere successor of American documentary filmmakers. Kim's first commercial film, Boxes of Death (1955), an anti-communist thriller, shows great influence from Hollywood, but also with a strong auteurist impulse, theatrical tradition, and the Japanese colonial legacy. However, the most important aspect is the standing presence of America and the USIS-Korea in the identity of Kim Ki-yo?ng and his film. American agencies intervened in the work of Korean filmmakers in the interest of “Free World” bloc-building, and those filmmakers used such agencies to obtain resources. The heterogeneity in the process of the subject formation in Korean national cinema was one common characteristic of many filmmakers of the post-Korean War era.