KJC Korea
Journal Central

Korea’s policy toward the United States during Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun administrations has been often depicted as an anti-US or anti-alliance model of autonomy – to improve the inter-Korean relations at the expense of the ROK-US alliance. The main purpose of this article is to argue that such characterization wrongly places the government in a policy spectrum between autonomy and alliance. Put differently, this kind of generalization overlooks how the 10 years of the progressive governments also continued to value the ROK-US alliance. To establish the argument, this proposes a model of autonomy-utility nexus to describe the policies. In the context of the post-Cold War security environments, the two progressive governments sought to increase its autonomy in the inter-Korean relations, while readjusting yet clearly maintaining the ROK-US alliance, as the alliance continues to be central to the security of ROK. On the basis of the framework, this article also observes and compares how the debate on Korea’s US policies have become polarized into the misleading ideology-laden dichotomy between autonomy and alliance during the conservative Lee Myung Bak and Park Geun-Hye administrations.

This study sets out to examine the China-DPRK research institutions in China and their research outcomes. This study finds that China, as the “No. 1 ally” of North Korea, has no special research institutions on China-DPRK relations. Most studies in this field are focused on the comments of popular news topics. In addition, most researchers share the same education background―most of them majored in International Politics. They all conducted their researches under the framework of relations among great powers. As a result, the researches are not systematic enough. This study also finds out that only several papers talked about the status quo of China-DPRK research institutions in China. Those papers focused on the national research institutions located in Beijing and Shanghai, and neglected the potential of Yanbian University, which boasts ‘global and local’ advantages because of its location and languages. This study suggests that in the future, researchers should conduct overall research on China-DPRK relations in order to avoid getting one-sided views. This study is of pragmatic and academic values and hopefully it will usher in better and in-depth academic exchanges between China’s DPRK research institutions and ROK’s counterparts.

On December 19, 2014, the Constitutional Court of South Korea, broke up the United Progressive Party based on militant democracy. Militant democracy suggest that principles and fundamental rights of democracy need to be withheld or constrained in order to protect democracy and the core means among these kinds of system is a institution of party dissolution. Some countries dissolve a parties to exercise a substantial violence or threaten democracy directly. In this case, it can be called as a ‘passive and ex post militant democracy.’ On the contrary, some countries include the goals and mission statement of party as dissolution criteria. In this case, such militant democracy is active and ex ante. The Constitutional Court of Korea had been relatively ex post and passive about party regulations. But in this case, it regarded the goals and mission statements of the party as a potential threat to Korean democracy although there are no obvious and urgent violence or behavior. The dissolution decree was very ex ante and active. This means that there had been a change in the position of the Constitutional Court of Korea, which had regarded a political party dissolution system as protecting means of them. The reasons of that change are Korean’s growing sense of crisis against North Korea. Since the 2008, North Korea–South Korea relations has changed from cooperative to conflict. As a result, Koreans regarded North Korea as the enemy has increased. But The United Progressive Party is friendly to North Korea, sometimes gave the impression that obedience to North Korea. Eventually, active and ex ante militant democracy against the North Korean was able to dissolve the United Progressive Party.

This study examines the diversity of youths that have defected from North Korea (NK) and analyzes current settlement assistance policies and programs available to them. The youths can be classified into four groups: children born in NK, unaccompanied children born in NK, children born in the 3rd countries such as China, and children born in South Korea. Legal protections are differently applied for the children according to their place of birth. The four types of youths are entitled as ‘youths with a background of defection from North Korea(NK)’ and analyzes settlement assistance policies and programs in order to suggest more effective assistance for them. This study analyzed their entrance routes, official paths of entrance to the resettlement process, related laws and policies to their resettlement assistance, and institutional environments of civil and social assistance by implementing several research designs such as in-depth interviews, focused-group interviews (FGI), and need assessment with the youths, their parent(s), and professional practitioners. Based on research findings, this study suggested several policy and research implications.

‘The Emergency measure for decisive battle’ was enacted by the Japanese ministry on February 25, 1944. That included ‘The Prohibition of luxurious entertainment’, which included the ‘System for decisive battle of performance’. Subsequently, ‘The System for decisive battle of performance’ introduced in Japan and colonial Joseon in March, 1944. The filmdom of colonial Joseon faced big changes in the system from it. Film production and distribution firms were integrated on April 7, 1944, legal foundation for control of theaters and regulation of performance was instituted on May 8. Tour projector organization was unified on July 1, all by the Joseon Film Corporation on April 7, 1944. Additionally the Joseon performance federation was re-organized as ‘The Joseon performance association’ on August 19.

This paper demonstrates that Modern Neo-Confucianism in Mainland China has become the new ideology to make the Chinese Communist Party(CCP)’s legitimacy since 1990s, but has limitations to replace Socialist theories of the CCP by exploring the relation between the CCP and the Modern Neo Confucianism, conflicts between them and the countermeasure of the CCP toward Modern Neo Confucianism’s challenge. With the Reform and Open Door policy and the collapse of Eastern Bloc, the CCP faced a threat to its ruling due to an ideological vacuum and the deepening societal faith crisis. In this situation, the CCP realized that they needed a new complementary ideology which could suppress the spread of liberalism and help the CCP to maintain its regime. Therefore, the CCP politically began to support Neo-Confucianism, and the CCP successfully made its legitimacy by emphasizing Chinese traditional culture and using various political concepts of Confucianism. Modern Neo-Confucianism, however, has its limitations such as the inseparable relationship with Marxism and the division of Modern Neo-Confucianism so that it has little possibility to become a key ideology of the CCP and create the political transition in China.

Shenzhen City is the core area to lead the reform of rural land , as a pioneer of land reform. The reasons why Shenzhen City’s new land reform is important, are as follows. First, the city sold the rural lands in the first-class land market without nationalizing them. So far, the first-class land market has been monopolized by urban lands. Second, Shenzhen City is attempting various policies to legalize Small Property Rooms(SPRs), even though Chinese government is banning their legalization. Based on this significance, the study findings are as below. First, the rural lands that were sold in the first-class market for the first time in the country in December 2013 increased the profits of farmers and local government. However, the sold land has not yet been developed by the first half of 2015 due to the inadequacy of various regulations, so there is a need to find a resolution for this. Second, the Shenzhen city government allows original Shenzhen city residents to change SPRs, which classifies half of the city’s gross building area as residential, once they pay a specific sum of money and some houses have been changed into national housing or care facilities for the elderly. However there is no measure for SPRs that were already transferred to and inhabited by people from other regions.

This study analyzes the effects of the relationship between social support and local community adaptation of Korean-Chinese. Therefore we conducted a survey targeting ethnic Koreans at Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, and collected 250 copies from which 218 were used for statistical analysis. Results of research are as follows. First, unofficial social support based on trust between relatives and acquaintances among ethnic Koreans helps more to adapt into Chinese society rather than official community support. Second, ethnic Koreans adapt well to the community in everyday life, however social adaptation through local community participation and activities are not significant. Third, if ethnic Koreans adapt faster in terms of social support level, they also adapt in terms of social community support as well. Forth, both official social support and unofficial social support are influenced by education level and Chinese fluency, but especially unofficial social support is affected the most.

The film named Asian Corridor in Heaven, which consists of 6 parts, was produced by KBS in 2007. The eight-part film, The Ancient Tea Route, ,was produced by YNTV in 2006. They are both ethnographic films about the historical culture of China. However, according to the view of anthropology and imaging, although their object and materials are the same, they are different in many aspects such as their methods of approach and description strategy. Because of the cinematography, the concept and the goal of production, the composition of the production staff and the instrument are all different. Up to now the comparative study between the ethnographic films of China and Korea has almost no result. In this paper, according to the feature of expository mode, observational mode, participatory mode, which are among the narrative modes of documentary that Bill Nichols classified, I’d like to clarify the difference in the production of ethnographic films between China and Korea by means of a comparative study about the narrative mode of two countries’ ethnographic films focusing on the two films of the same name. Further more, the film named Asian Corridor in Heaven produced by KBS is classified into ethnographic films because it is based on salvage anthropology. While The ancient Tea Route produced by YNTV is also regarded as ethnographic film because of its restoration anthropology basement.