KJCKorea
Journal Central

Since its establishment, although the All-China Women's Federation(ACWF) has been a mass organization under the leadership of the CCP, it has also done a lot of work in safeguarding women's rights and interests by virtue of its status and authority as the largest women's organization in China. However, after Xi Jinping came to power, the centralization of power to the party, the central government, and Xi Jinping personally was greatly strengthened, and traditional chinese things such as Confucianism gradually reappeared under the name of excellent cultural heritage. In this context, the ACWF has revised its constitution to shoulder the political responsibility of uniting and guiding women to listen to the party and follow the party in the new era, which has become the most important task of the ACWF. The year after the revision of the charter, the ACWF officially launched the Family Happiness and Health Project (Family Happiness Project). In short, the logic of the family welfare project is that the new era requires social unity and stability, and social unity and stability require all families to live in harmony, and to create a harmonious family, women play a unique role, that is, sacrifice and dedication are the most important. China's top female elites, the leaders of ACWF are calling on chinese women to participate in this project across the country, advocating that dedication to the family is the highest virtue of women. In their speeches, the emphasis was not on independent women, self-actualized women, and happy women themselves, but on practicing Xi Jinping Thought, adhering to the party's principles and policies, and committing to creating a beautiful family. During the Xi Jinping period, the party led everything, but the party itself was still male-centered and state-centered, so the changes in the functions of the ACWF, the Family Happiness project, and the limitations of the female elites clearly show that unless the CCP has a pro-female or real gender equality consciousness, it seems very difficult for chinese women to hold up half the sky.

This study explores South Korean perceptions of the European Union (EU) in 2021, emphasizing the public's awareness, understanding, and views on its role as a partner for Korea. Survey findings reveal that the EU is predominantly seen as an economic power, with limited recognition of its contributions to global diplomacy, security, or sustainability. South Koreans view European integration primarily through an economic lens, reflecting a stronger interest in trade and economic relations than political or security dimensions. Even a decade after the Korea-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the bilateral relationship is understood mainly economically. These insights underscore the need for the EU to enhance its communication strategies in South Korea, highlighting its broader roles in diplomacy, governance, and global stability to foster a deeper and more comprehensive partnership.

This research analyzes the effect of online instruction and the resulting lack of an in-person campus experience during the COVID-19 pandemic on the importance of one’s university for college students' identity. While previous research, mainly from the United States, underlines the importance of the “college experience” for fostering strong connections between university students and their alma mater, much less is known about the mechanisms at play in other academic systems. Using a sample of students from a South Korean university—Yonsei University Mirae Campus—that switched to exclusively online instruction in March 2020 and stayed entirely online for four consecutive semesters, we explore the importance of college experience for students’ identity. We compare the importance of their university and their department for students with and without in-person campus experience using two-sample hypothesis testing as well as ordered probit regressions, and find no differences between the two groups and no effects of the length of a student’s offline experience on the importance of their alma mater for their identity. These findings limit the scope of the social interaction thesis for university students’ identity formation and underline the importance of further research on the topic, drawing on data from non-U.S. contexts and diverse academic systems.