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Han Kang’s trilogy The Vegetarian, composed of “The Vegetarian,” “Mongolian Mark,” and “Flaming Trees,” has been examined by critics mostly from the eco-feminist perspective. This approach, however, can oversimplify various discourses in The Vegetarian by employing dichotomies such as: male vs. female, meat-eating vs. vegetarianism, and violence vs. non-violence. Yeong-hye has been previously interpreted as a victim of physical and ideological violence, who refuses to eat meat and tries to become a tree in protest against the oppressive masculine and patriarchal system. This paper, however, aims to present another aspect of the novel by adopting a trauma theory. The trauma theory shows that Yeong-hye can also be a perpetrator in the fundamental dimension of human beings who must take something from natural environments as it focuses on Yeong-hye’s trauma created from her guilt. In this respect, The Vegetarian fundamentally deals with human violence in general as well as ideological problems. This paper analyzes Yeong-hye’s trauma represented in The Vegetarian through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory characterized by the five stages; shock, incomprehensibility, incubation period, repeated dreams or hallucinations, and awakening. This article also explains the meaning of and the reason for Yeong-hye’s becoming a tree in the coda by applying Sigmund Freud’s Death Drive theory. From this perspective, this study emphasizes that The Vegetarian shows not only Yeong-hye’s personal problems but the universal truth that all human beings are living at the sacrifice of other creatures. When readers share her trauma and take the joint responsibility, they will be able to understand the significance of her trauma.

Recently, geologists have suggested the concept of the anthropocene has various significant implicatures. Specifically in environmental discourses, it implies a nature-human interrelationship with an integrated perspective between natural science and humanities, human responsibility on current global environmental issues and involvement of the public. Given that the tipping point of nature’s resilience has almost been passed away, human action can be one of the alternative solutions on global environmental issues even though some deep ecologists have limited human intervention on environment since the 1960’s. Therefore, the anthropocene’s implicatures can render new practicable methodologies on environmental problems with human action. Regimen can give a space to render practicable solutions with its implicatures as it can support the nature-human interrelationship with both individuals’ health and quality food. With regimen, individuals can give a substantial consideration into how they can get good food for their own health. Furthermore, with regimen, the public can realize that humans are responsible for their own actions and for sustainable environments in order to get good food. Therefore, regimen can be a method for not only exemplifying the nature-human interrelationship, but rendering responsible human action, and fortifying communication for environmental discourses with the public. Gary Nabhan suggests the interrelationships with food, gene, and culture based on regimen. This research explores: 1) food-gene relations through fava bean and related phenomena (sickle-cell anemia, anti malaria substances); 2) gene-life relations through diabetes and eating native plants and life style; and 3) the importance of community culture through reconstruction of Hawaiian traditional community culture. With these examples, it emphasizes that regimen can reveal the anthropocene’s implicatures and help render responsible human action on sustainable environments.

Seo Yu-gu, a high-ranking government official cum scholar in the late Joseon Dynasty, wrote Treatises on Management of Rural Life (Imwon Gyeongjeji), a most comprehensive practical encyclopedia dealing with rural life in the history of Korea. This led to the establishment of the so-called Imwon economics. Seo Yu-gu, whose pen-name was Pungseok, examined the food culture of the Joseon period centered on Imwon economics. It does not focus on the excellence of Korean culture. Rather, it critically examined the daily life pattern of Korea. Besides, it suggested a new criterion of daily life pattern by absorbing the positive aspects of living culture in Korea, China and Japan. The book has set a new standard. The food culture dealt with in Imwon encyclopedia was both the contemporary reality and the old future of Joseon’s food culture. Korean food is not a fixed entity but a process that is constantly changing. The great principle that guides the process is our mouth and body and the corresponding cultural sense. Through exchanges and convergences, we must form contents and enhance our senses.

This article illuminated in detail the timber theft scandal in Jiri Mountain in October 1964. Four key points of the scandal were analyzed as follows. Firstly, this study has analyzed the details of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s timber disposal and a close relationship between the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and companies which committed timber theft. Secondly, it examined the behind-the-scenes power of the scandal and inspected whether the power intervened or not in the timber theft. Thirdly, this article investigated if the Ministry of Home Affairs was far from that scandal. Finally, this article examined Seonam Heungeop (Southwest Company), Namseon Mokjae (South Korea Timber Company) and intervention of high-ranking officials in the scandal. Besides the above-mentioned four points, this study also researched this scandal’s impact on forest policy. The timber theft scandal in Jiri Mountain gave a big shock to the general public because high-ranking officials were involved and the theft was perpetrated on a large scale. Sin Sang-muk and Jang Gyeong-sun were central figures of the scandal. A key issue of the scandal was to find out the close relationship between illegally timber-felling companies and high-ranking officials. However, the prosecution and the police investigated the incident while taking a lukewarm attitude. Special investigation committee organized by the National Assembly could not reveal the connection between high-ranking officials and the timber theft scandal. Even if the suspicions of the scandal was not dispelled, this incident and its investigation exerted an influence on the changes of the forest policy. It resulted in the foundation of the Office of Forestry and prompted the integration of forest organizations. Also, the scandal had an influence on rearrangement of slash-and-burn fields. Those efforts could not become thorough measures against the timber theft or reckless deforestation, but could decrease the damage of the forest to a certain degree.

The aim of this study is to make an analysis of hybridity in Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne on Naxos), an opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The collaborations between librettist Hofmannsthal and composer Strauss were very important for both of them. Hofmannsthal was able to escape from the ‘magical lyrical world’ in which he was immersed in his youth after his encounter with Strauss. And Strauss’s encounter with Hofmannsthal was also a great opportunity to enhance his reputation as an opera composer. Hofmannsthal planned Ariadne auf Naxos as ‘a play-within-a-play’ in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by 17th-century French playwright Moliere. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme as a ‘comédie-ballett’, which mixes a spoken play with music and dance, was also a precedent of the hybrid style. Following the failure of the premiere in 1912, Hofmannsthal removed the complete portion of the Moliere’s play in the 1916 revision. Instead, he created the ‘prologue’ with music, which would explain why the opera combines an heroic myth with a comedy performed by a commedia dell’arte group. In this final edition, hybridity of the work is complicatedly exposed. Opera seria and opera buffa are played at the same time, classical heroes and contemporary comedians come on the same stage, and noble asceticism comes into conflict with vulgar hedonism and is mixed with it. This bizarre form, in which serious music and frivolous comedy are mixed, is the result of being coerced by a rich and vulgar sponsor. The ‘composer’ in the drama, who succumbs to money power, implies more or less the artist existing in all societies at all periods. But the opera has not become a meaningless jumble, but has formed a complete whole, in which the contradictory elements found a suitable combination. This whole is not the synthesis of oppositional elements in a classical sense, but means hybridity, in which each element represents a diversity. The completed opera demonstrates the victory of the composer in the drama, and the victory also belongs to Hofmannsthal and Strauss.

The uniqueness of Jacques Rancière’s thought is that he grasps politics and aesthetics as the distribution of the sensible, and by doing so he locates aesthetics in the foundations of politics. Ancient political philosophy founds politics a distribution of faculties based on human nature. However, Rancière argues the distribution is not the foundation of politics but the object of politics, and encourages us to think about the distribution itself. Distribution is the distribution of place, which is to establish borders regarding what is inside and what is outside, what is seen and what is not seen. That is to say, it is basically the distribution of the sensible, and it is what politics and aesthetics have in common. Aesthetics and politics, both of them are the matter of form of the distribution of the sensible and sensible experience. Rancière’s work on politics is an attempt to show politics is a matter of aesthetics; therefore, his theory of art should be understandable through his political philosophy. This thesis aims at examining Rancière’s theory of art by means of his political thought, and suggesting the limit of his thought.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Time Perspective and the levels of happiness of the Korean people. Three hundred and twenty working men and women in the Busan and Gyeongsangnam-do area participated in the survey. First of all, an exploratory factor analysis was done with Time Perspective data to assess the appropriateness of ZTPI (Zimbardo and Boyd, 1999) for applying to the Korean people. Based on the factor analysis result, a Korean ZTPI composed of 30 items was constructed, and the characteristics of Time Perspective of Korean by 4 age groups (20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s) were analyzed. Furthermore, correlational analyses were made between Time Perspective and the levels of happiness by age groups. The results are as follows. Those in their 20s showed higher ‘past negative’ Time Perspective and a significantly higher happiness level than those in their 30s, who marked the lowest figure in the happiness level compared to other age groups. Those in their 40s showed a different characteristics of happiness compared to other age groups, and those in their 50s showed a kind of detachment from the economic status and happiness. This study has a significant meaning for investigating the trend of Time Perspective and the happiness levels of Korean adult office workers and the relationship between them, and tried to suggest a developmental trend of Korean society to solve social conflicts.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an Enlightenment thinker, criticized the unfairness of Christianity and tried to reconcile Judaism and Islam in his play Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise). He supported opinion by using a ring allegory. Christianity, Judaism and Islam are the religions from the same root and the three religions are valuable and meaningful. Even more than 900 years after the Crusades, conflicts between religions still arise locally. Despite the fact that religion does not provide a problem, the ideology of religion still exists. Lessing found a major cause of conflict in the 18th century Enlightenment in the militancy of some Christians and wrote a play to ring an alarm bell against the rigid doctrines of his Christian society. In the 21st century, a small number of Muslims are in the process of committing acts of terrorism, and in many cases, Western society often regarded Muslims as reckless terrorists rather than searching the fundamental reason for terrorism. Western society is ignoring the reason for the terrorist attacks and they only criticize the terrorist incidents. But if we don’t know the exact reason for this, we will continue to face terrorism. Even now, hundreds of years later, we need an intellectual who thinks self-reflectively like Lessing.

When Korea was under Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century, Hong Eurn (1880∼1951) was a first-generation ethnic Korean in the United States. He worked as a Korean-American writer at The New Korea (Sinhanminbo; founded in 1909), and wrote sijo, gasa, Chinese-letter poems, novels, plays, and literary reviews for The New Korea. This paper has examined Hong Eurn’s sijo based on chrysanthemum dealt with at The New Korea, which reported the chrysanthemum image. As a result of the analysis, firstly, this paper has figured out that the chrysanthemum traditionally symbolized “constancy and endurance.” He emphasized that people keep their constancy when they were resisting against Japanese imperialism and engaging in the independence movement. Through this, constancy and endurance had been incorporated in his experiences with which he fought against Japan for Korean independence movement. Secondly, this paper has explored “an autumn flavor and the richness” which is represented by the chrysanthemum. An autumn flower, the chrysanthemum has heightened excitement of season. And the chrysanthemum has co-existed with liquor, the moon, and friends. So “an autumn flavor and the richness” has followed the tradition of Korean sijo. Thirdly, this paper has proved “the death of the chrysanthemum” is converted into “the rebirth of the chrysanthemum.” This paper, thus, has found that “the rebirth” of the chrysanthemum is shown only in Hong Eurn’s sijo. This paper, therefore, has drawn several conclusions from the discussions described above. Firstly, Hong Eurn chose the form of sijo to express his lyricism through the image of chrysanthemums. Secondly, he developed a unique form of chrysanthemum image, he deviated himself from the conventional Korean literary circles. Finally, he wrote sijo based on chrysanthemums in order to preserve his Korean identity and pursue his life of a patriot who fought against the Japanese imperialists.

Participatory watershed management, an eco-protection project that was conducted in Lashihai area nestled in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province and carried out by Green Watershed, an environmental NGO and Naxi minority (and Yi minority), was greatly spotlighted both at home and abroad. This paper is aimed at dealing with the example of Lashihai as the central study about Chinese civil society, intellectuals and the movement of community. Above all else, Green Watershed and Yu Xiaogang as the person in charge of NGO, played an important role on the Lashihai project. And Oxfam, the international environmental NGO, got interested in the Lashihai area that was plentiful of ecological and cultural diversities, and fully and consistently supported the project. Besides, the cooperation beteeen the local governments and the inhabitants who actively participated in the movement made Lashihai project possible. The effect of the Lashihai project did not end in solving ecological problems and helping residents escape from poverty. In the process of carrying out the project, the residents produced their own leader and wrote their own history. The tradition and the value system of the minority, characterized by the concept of environmental protection and consciousness of equality, performed an important role in the management of the watershed. The Lashihai project showed that environmental protection and the sustainable development can be made possible in the local community movements.

This study focuses on the state of Chinese literary works written by Confucian intellectuals who were exiled to the North Gando region in the early 20th century. Despite the fact that a number of intellectuals were exiled, the identities of only a few are known. There were also only a few remaining Chinese literary works. Until now, studies on these exiled intellectuals have focused on their independence, religion, and educational activity but not on their literary works. These facts provide the key points that can direct subsequent research on Chinese literary works by these intellectuals from literary and non-literary points of view. Therefore, this study is relevant as it lays the foundation for further studies on Chinese literary works written by Confucian intellectuals exiled to the Norh Gando region.

Jaedam (才談), or a joke, is considered to have taken on a very important role in the structure of pansori narratives. But when one examines the transmission and transfiguration of pansori in a diachronic way, one can know jaedam hasn’t always been treated positively. Pansori as a performance art commonly had the tendency to reduce the amount of jaedam and seek musical completion. On the other hand, pansori as a text for reading takes on an entirely different tendency. It didn’t simply use jaedam but actively utilized it or expansively transformed it. Pansori as a performance art put top priority on the singers’ talents and highly valued “popularity,” and pansori as a text for reading focused on ‘interest’ through defamiliarization. So if this can be generalized, the relation between pansori and jaedam can be explained more clearly. Simcheong-jeon (A Story of Sim Cheong) can be distinguished from other pansori works because it doesn’t have an apparent “conflictual relationship,” and it has the aesthetics of ‘tragic beauty’ as its main mood. That is why jaedam, which means amusing jokes that contain textual beauty, is hardly employed in Simcheong-jeon. There is little space for jaedam to settle in between the character’s action of noble sacrifice, and the method of resolving a problem by the intervention of the heavenly mandate aimed at rewarding the character for her behaviors. The overly serious, solemn, and ideological behavior of the character can sometimes cause negative influences on the completion of this piece. That is why a realistic, vulgar, and comical character was vitally required for maintaining the piece’s harmony and balance. So it is considered that the necessity of jaedam was brought up to meet these needs. To summarize Simcheong-jeon by putting Sim Cheong’s father Sim Hak-gyu in the center of the story, it is about losing everything and then restoring it. Sim Hak-gyu, the blind man who had lost his wife but had a daughter, lost his daughter and got a second wife, and then loses not only his second wife but also all the possessions and honor. But he recovers almost all things after losing everything. In the process of losing everything and falling into the bottomless pit, the elder Sim turns vulgar and unhandsome. Simcheong-jeon is balanced sublimely between Sim Cheong and her father’s narrative. In other words, the solemn Simcheong and her vulgar father are forming two central axes. When one puts the part where Sim Cheong plunges into Indangsu Waters (印塘水) as the main scene, it is notable to see that jaedam, which hardly appeared prior to this scene, appears frequently. That is because jaedam takes an important role of describing Sim the blind father. The fact that solemnity and vulgarity, tragic beauty and comic beauty formed harmony and balance is regarded as the important reason why Simcheong-jeon has been loved and passed down to the present times. And it’s worth noticing that jaedam took on a very important part in expressing vulgarity and comic beauty.

Intellectual history, which had been marginalized in the field of history during the past several decades, has been recently revitalized. The context of the return is the spread of the conviction that the humanities including historical studies should take their responsibility for the present and the future of the world. Intellectual history provides a special space of interdisciplinary communication for the academia and universities which are suffering from the fragmentation of the highly specialized discipline system. Over the past few decades, intellectual history has expanded its realm of research. It has overcome the criticism of elitism and idealism and stretched its research subjects over the people, real life, and popular culture. Intellectual history has been influenced by diverse methodologies and perspectives in the related disciplines. Other disciplines have developed interests in the subjects of ideas, knowledge, and high culture which have been the traditional realm of intellectual history. Now the realm of research is largely overlapped between intellectual history and other related disciplines. The new objects such as psychology, emotion, experience are also expanding the realm of intellectual history. Globalization, digital humanities, and the epistemological turn for the space and time recently change the landscape of historical studies. Consequently “global intellectual history” has emerged in the field. Despite the rosy description of the field, some intellectual historians are concerned about eclecticism which could obfuscate what unites intellectual history as a sub-discipline and fall into dilettantism. Intellectual historians should reflect on the nature of its interdisciplinarity and improve the real procedures of interdisciplinary works in order to develop intellectual history as a vital field par excellence.