Here is a recent article form MK News indicating that the only part of the retail economy in Korea showing strong growth is the luxury goods sector. As I noted in my recent post, this trend has very disturbing implications for the Korean, and world, economy.
Vogue Archive: The Collapsing cost of information brings the past smack into the middle of the present
It is now becoming extremely cheap to input, reformat and process information. That situation makes it possible for Vogue Magazine to make accessible every single issue from its founding in 1892. That opens up to the casual viewer the whole range of Vogue’s history and allows for the appropriation and adaptation of images, words and ideas from a broad swath of history. See Vogue Archive
Broadcast about Emanuel’s Teaching on EBS (article in Korean)
A short introduction to the broadcast today:
EBS <초대석>
한국문화를 위한 미국 선비의 고언(苦言)
-25년 넘게 한중일 고전문학을 연구하고, 연암 박지원 선생의 고전소석을 영어로 번역한,
파란 눈의 동양학자 이만열 교수 (경희대 후마니타스칼리지)!
미국 출신 인문학자가 본 한국 전통문화의 저력, 그리고 현주소는?
Article featuring our Daejeon Three Rivers Mug Cup (article, Korean)
This article in Hello DD, the primary online journal for science and technology news related to the Daedeok Research Cluster in Daejeon, features our Daejeon, Three Rivers mug cup. The article mentions my own vision that having people look at this image of Daejeon’s ecosystem while drinking coffee each morning could transform their thinking.
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Professor Jonathan Spence (essay)
Jonathan Spence
Jonathan Spence is the towering intellectual in Chinese studies at Yale, a man who has produced generations of important scholars in Chinese history and inspired many undergraduates at Yale to study Chinese. His most important role, I believe, has been introducing Chinese culture to American intellectuals who would otherwise not take much interest. Because he writes such elegant English, and is so well versed in the Western classics, his writing makes China accessible. I took only one course with Professor Spence, his famous survey of Modern China. We established a close relationship that has lasted to this day.
Professor Kang-i Sun Chang (essay)
Professor Kang-i Sun Chang
There was one other Chinese at Yale who had immense impact on me and led me to strive for excellence in the field of Chinese, Professor Kang-i Sun Chang (孙康宜教授). An extremely enthusiastic teacher and scholar trained in Taiwan, she had an all encompassing view of the potential of Chinese literature to be meaningful to everyone. She was also the one who encouraged me to learn Japanese and to study in Japan for my graduate work. Her father had studied in Japan in a previous era and she felt that I should take an equally broad perspective. An extremely well-read scholar, who wished to talk with anyone willing to engage her in a serious conversation, Professor Zhang constantly shared with me poems and stories when we sat at the desk in her office.
Would we be better off if we were run by robots?
Of course it is a joke, or mostly a joke, perhaps.
But as we witness the complete inability of humans to regulate themselves and embrace global projects that will start to address the problems of limited natural resources, globalization and climate change, we cannot help wonder whether humans are even capable of rising to the occasion.
When Albert Einstein wrote about world federalism in the 1950s, the facts were already clear: technology has moved so far beyond human’s ability to control that we need a global approach to assuring that technology is used responsibly and global war can be avoided. And yet, although the need for “world federalism” is even greater today, and the world is increasingly integrated by trade and the global exchange of information, if anything, humans are even less capable of coming up with global solutions.
Kyung Hee University’s “Kyung Hee University Future Compact”
Kyung Hee University held a year-end party for faculty and students at the Peace Auditorium on December 21. The event, titled “Magnolia 2011” featured a very impressive music performance and the presentation of awards to outstanding faculty. The height of the event was the signing of a remarkable document entitled “Kyung Hee University Future Compact”
There is no English version of this remarkable document
The preface reads:
“This is a road that did not exist before. The road before us is one that has never been traveled. Only after we have crossed over it will it be a road. Today our Kyung Hee University community members join hands to build a better common community and a university of dignity based on a spirit of communication, harmony, consideration and respectfulness. For the first time since the founding of our Kyung Hee University faculty & students sign here together this “Kyung Hee University Future Compact” on a basis of mutual trust within the university.
Korea Society of East Asian Comparative Literature awards prize to Emanuel (Korean)
December 15, 2011
I had the great honor of receiving the Seokheon Scholarly Prize offered by the Korea Society of East Asian Comparative Literature. The prize was awarded in recognition of my recent study of Chinese novels in Japan: The Observable Mundane: Vernacular Chinese and the Emergence of a Literary Discourse on Popular Narrative in Edo Japan (Seoul National University Press, 2011). The Seokheon Scholarly Prize is awarded for the best study of comparative Asian literature published in Korea. The prize was established four years ago in honor of Professor Jung Kyubok (정규복 교수) of Korea University’s Department of Korean Literature. When I studied in Korea back in 1995, I attended many seminars held by the Korea Society of East Asian Comparative
The Need for Peace: Fukushima and Technology
Many people dismiss the call for global peace as an unrealistic dream of the naive. I do believe that we must uphold high ideals if we hope to achieve anything in this world. But at the same time, there is a practical reason why we cannot afford to contemplate war any more. The cause is none other than the unprecedented acceleration in the rate of technological change.