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With r egard to t he s truggle of the contem porary p eople to s urvive t he COVID-19 pandemic, this paper aims to look at the stories of those who survived in anticipation of and in preparation for the pandemic in The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. Previous studies on the novel have explored the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene mainly focusing on technological imperialism, feminism, human engineering, apocalypse, religion and theology, and posthumanism. However, this work specifically represents material entanglement, intra-action, circulation, and nonhuman agency in the world, s o it i s necessary to e xplore i t through t he lens of new m aterialism in the material turn. This paper explores the reassembling the assemblages of the novel through the thermodynamic politics targeting material entanglement, intra-action, circulation, and nonhuman agency. According to the analysis, the God’s Gardeners in the novel slow down and cut off the problematic material-semiotic-affective flows of the anti-life network. And by capturing and transforming these flows, it stably reproduces the network that restores life. This work pays attention to Gaia’s material world that caused the pandemic, and specifically explores and invents the thermodynamic politics to come up with the speed of escape from the pandemic.

This research is aimed at promoting the understanding of how we perceive the issue of coexistence with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the age of digital culture and the fourth industrial revolution, by surveying students and analyzing their responses. At the top of the list of things that the respondents want to delegate to AI was housework, and many responded they wish to utilize time for self-development when AI works for them or spend time for leisure and entertainment. When asked to imagine their future 10 years from now, the respondents were divided into two categories: positive transformation through personal development versus a negative image reflecting their indolence and laziness. Based on such analysis, this research discusses how and on what purpose people will make use of their newly available time as AI’s jobs gradually replace our tasks.

Gojong made an effort to realize a monarch-centered autocracy after having sought refuge at the Russian legation. In the process, the penultimate monarch of Joseon induced a confrontation between the royal office and the Independence Association in order to strongly take over the government and expand his political influence. This mutual confrontation of political power became the cause of the political conspiracy incident after the royal refuge at the Russian legation. One of the major conspiracy incidents was the so-called “conspiracy case for the royal bodyguard officer” known as the case of an attempt of the bodyguard officers to abduct Gojong in collusion with a Japanese in November 1896. This incident was resulted from a direct connection between the Japanese and the forces connected with Japan. The Japanese legislature in Korea tried to cut off the connection between the bodyguard officers and the Japanese legislature in Korea when the “conspiracy case for the bodyguard officer” came up with a forged rule requesting protection from the Japan Corporation in Korea. This could provide a foundation for Gojong to naturally liquidate a person related to Japan within the bodyguard when the Japanese were involved in the rebellion and assassination cases. Lee Geun-yong, commander of the bodyguard battalion, who was sentenced for this case, was punished for the fact that the detective for the case was insolvent, not for participating directly in the “conspiracy case for the bodyguard officer.” Lee Geun-yong reported the development of the case to Gojong in advance, and even received Gojong’s direct instructions. This means the fact that Gojong directly intervened in the “conspiracy case for the bodyguard officer.” At that time, a Russian diplomat in Korea also identified Gojong’s involvement in the incident. In the “conspiracy case for the bodyguard officer” there was a situation of Japanese intervention, and Gojong attempted to politically reverse it. Gojong expanded the conspiracy case to eliminate the Japanese forces inside the bodyguard and used it as a means to eliminate the opposition forces among the government ministers and the Independence Association. In the end, King Gojong was hiding behind this incident, and he intended to strengthen the loyalty of the military through the liquidation of the pro-Japanese group among the bodyguard by using the “conspiracy case for the bodyguard officer”, and to strongly seize the government’s minister after the establishment of the Independence Association. This incident shows that King Gojong attempted to take control of the government and manage the government by using a political conspiracy incident to strengthen his influence.

It is important to note that Korean intellectuals did not produce writings that justified or supported the rise of military governments and their authoritarian tendencies as inevitable or that dealt with them favorably as part of a national revolution in the late 1950s. Korean intellectuals shared a common view that powerful government-led policies and plans were necessary to overcome backwardness in Korean society, but they believed that these plans and policies should be carried out by a democratic government. Nationalist sentiments shared among the college students after the April 19th Revolution included the notion of elitist enlightenment, zeal for reforms to modernize society and the development of democracy. However, few Korean intellectuals recognized the power of the masses even after the Revolution. It appeared that some college students shared the observation that ‘democracy’ would not fit the reality of Korean society, as nationalism expanded across the nation in the early 1960s. They thought that democracy would be the ideological tool of the United States aiming at exerting influence on such weak countries as South Korea, or that democracy itself would be an obstacle for rapid economic development. While criticizing the established dominant ideology and political and economic system, they insisted on overcoming ‘backwardness’ and establishing a ‘developmental regime’ for industrialization.

This study aims to examine the discussions over the ethical issues on the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. We point out that the technology needs urgent attention and its impacts must be examined both from the social and the ethical perspective. The strong power of influence and the potentiality of CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing also demand novel approaches with regard to the ethical discourses of the new technology. First, we have tackled the CRISPR-related ethical issues based on the actor-network theory according to which technology exists in the physical, human and sociocultural networks. Second, limitations of the liberalism-oriented perspective on ethics and technology were also discussed. Considering the powerful and complex ramifications of new technology in general, we suggest the approaches from the perspective of communitarian ethics which may justify the necessity of regulations against the misuse of the technology in order to promote public goodness.