Since the early 1990s, there has been a critical shortage of marriageable women in farming and fishing villages in Korea. This shortage, which has become a major social problem, resulted from a mass exodus of Korean women to cities and industrial zones. Korea's efforts to give rural bachelors a chance to marry have succeeded in providing 120,146 brides from 123 countries. However, the Korean government has proven to be ill-prepared to deal with the problems that foreign brides have encountered: family squabbles, prejudice, discrimination, divorce, suicide, and many adversities. The UN Commission on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination warned Korea to stop mistreatment of foreign brides and their children, those of so-called mixed blood, on account of human rights violations. This book comprehensively covers Korean multiculturalism, with a focus on the foreign brides. In a two-pronged ethnographic approach, it offers a historical account of Korean immigration and naturalization, while also relating that past to the contemporary situation. As more and more people cross national boundaries, this detailed description of Korean multiculturalism serves as a valuable case study for an increasingly globalized world. Kim tells the stories of these voiceless women in a compassionate manner.
During the period of Japanese domination, Kim Songsu emerged as one of Korea's leading cultural nationalists. This life history details his contribution to the self-strengthening programs moderate nationalists advocated as the foundation for Korea's independence.
As Americans become more conscious of trade competition from Japan, Korea looms large as another source of high-quality goods. What accounts for Korea's ability to compete in foreign markets, and what distinguishes it from its island neighbor? Anthropologist Choong Soon Kim sheds light on this question through an ethnography of Poongsan Corporation, a metals manufacturer in South Korea. Through this single case, Kim shows how Korean values, ethics, and other cultural traits such as kinship networks are translated into organizational structure and economic life. Confucian in origin yet distinctly Korean, these values help account for that country's recent economic development. Kim's study is based on personal observation at Poongsan and on interviews with both labor and management, and also draws on a variety of company documents. During his fieldwork, Kim witnessed a prolonged strike at the company, which lent additional insight into corporate behavior. Despite Korea's adaptation of Japanese models of modernization, distinctive traits of Japanese industry were not found by Kim to be clearly evident at Poongsan. His book thus reveals characteristics of Korean industry that have never before been documented, offering scholars and professionals in a number of fields an opportunity to better understand one of our most important trade partners.
Japanese Industry in the American South is an anthropological case study that describes whole industrial cultures found in three Japanese industrial plants in the American South. This book searches for answers to these questions: Why are Japanese industries coming to the American South? To what extent does Japan industrial management in the American South replicate the industrial relations model used in the home plants in Japan? What are the reactions of Americans toward the Japanese expatriates? At the same time, the book looks at the profound impact that the Japanese have had on Southerners.
Unlike anthropologists who conduct their fieldwork in one cultural setting, Choong Soon Kim has alternated between two distinct worlds for more than thirty years. He is an anthropologist whose research has focused not only on people in his homeland of Korea but also on rural whites and African Americans in the American South and on American industrial workers and the Japanese entrepreneurs who employ them. One Anthropologist, Two Worlds is both the memoir of a fieldworker and a cultural analysis of a transplanted anthropologist who has worked extensively in Asia and America. In telling how he has shifted from one milieu to another, Kim also describes how he has gone from being an insider to an outsider--and from a marginal to a reflexive anthropologist. Kim's account is a unique case study in anthropological fieldwork. He develops a broadened approach to anthropology that encompasses both eastern and wesstern outlooks as he describes cultural changes in both worlds. He addresses such current debates as personal identity, marginality, globalization, and the reflexivity of anthropological fieldworkers, and he discusses these issues with greater insight that can be had from those who less traveled. While there have been many studies of fieldwork, few have dealt with work conducted in the United States by anthropologists from other cultures. One Anthropologist, Two Worlds is an ethnography of an ethnographer--the work of an insightful scholar who is a gifted storyteller. It is aslo a jubilant celebration of the practice of anthropology.
Kim Man-Choong or Kim Man-jung (1637- 1692) was a famous Doctor of Literature and President of the Confucian College. He wrote his most famous work Kuunmong (The Cloud Dream of the Nine) around 1689 while in exile. The events of the novel take place in China during the Tang dynasty in the ninth century.
This book delineates the drive for Korean modernization by cultural nationalists during the colonial era in the early twentieth century. The cultural nationalism movement, led by moderate nationalists, eschewed overt resistance to Japanese imperialism and advocated self-strengthening programs to lay the foundation for future Korean independence. To describe this movement, this book focuses on Kim Sŏngsu and his various projects for Korean modernization. The author provides a narrative that includes encapsulated stories and sheds light on the Japanese colonial policies concerning Korea. A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur examines Kim's projects in chronological order, reflecting historian Carter J. Erkert's statement that Kim's life history has been so closely intertwined with some of the deepest currents of modern Korean history itself. The book describes how Kim took over and developed a post-elementary school, founded Korea's first modern textile firm, established one of Korea's major newspapers, and established Posong Junior College (which later became Koryo University). In 1946, after Korea's liberation from Japan, Kim became a pivotal figure in the conservative Korean Democratic Party, which became the main opposition party in Korea in the 1950s. He eventually became vice president in 1951 under Syngman Rhee.
Since the early 1990s, there has been a critical shortage of marriageable women in farming and fishing villages in Korea. This shortage, which has become a major social problem, resulted from a mass exodus of Korean women to cities and industrial zones. Korea's efforts to give rural bachelors a chance to marry have succeeded in providing 120,146 brides from 123 countries. However, the Korean government has proven to be ill-prepared to deal with the problems that foreign brides have encountered: family squabbles, prejudice, discrimination, divorce, suicide, and many adversities. The UN Commission on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination warned Korea to stop mistreatment of foreign brides and their children, those of so-called mixed blood, on account of human rights violations. This book comprehensively covers Korean multiculturalism, with a focus on the foreign brides. In a two-pronged ethnographic approach, it offers a historical account of Korean immigration and naturalization, while also relating that past to the contemporary situation. As more and more people cross national boundaries, this detailed description of Korean multiculturalism serves as a valuable case study for an increasingly globalized world. Kim tells the stories of these voiceless women in a compassionate manner.
Japanese Industry in the American South is an anthropological case study that describes whole industrial cultures found in three Japanese industrial plants in the American South. This book searches for answers to these questions: Why are Japanese industries coming to the American South? To what extent does Japan industrial management in the American South replicate the industrial relations model used in the home plants in Japan? What are the reactions of Americans toward the Japanese expatriates? At the same time, the book looks at the profound impact that the Japanese have had on Southerners.
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