This dissertation focuses on the following questions: 1) What is the structure of the Korean sport for international development discourse? 2) How are the historical transformations of particular rules of formation manifested in the discourse of Korean sport for international development? 3) What knowledge, ideas, and strategies make up Korean sport for international development? And 4) what are the ways in which these components interact with the institutional aspirations of the Korean government, directed by the official development assistance goals, the foreign policy and diplomatic agenda, and domestic politics? To address these research questions, I focus my analysis on the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and its 30 years of expertise in designing and implementing sport and physical activity–related programs and aid projects. For this research project, I collected eight different sets of KOICA documents published from 1991 to 2017 as primary sources and two different sets of supplementary documents including government policy documents and newspaper articles. By using Foucault’s archaeology and genealogy as methodological frameworks, the analysis highlights how KOICA sport has functioned for three decades as 1) an international development tool, 2) a diplomacy tool, and 3) a domestic policy tool of the Korean state. The conclusion focuses on 1) the relevance of findings to the larger context of SFD, sport diplomacy, and domestic policy and political literature; 2) additional cases demonstrating the ways other nations might employ sport for political purposes, in comparison with KOICA sport; 3) KOICA sport’s potential future as an alternative to Korean SFD and future direction of my research journey toward a big picture of East Asian SFD.

The dissertation examines factors influencing nonprofit organizations' contribution to collaborative governance for climate change adaptation and nonprofit roles in the collaboration. Why an organization collaborates with others has long been a concern of scholars. However, in a majority of empirical studies, collaboration has been considered as a dichotomous concept. To fill the gap, this study considers organizations' contribution to collaboration, i.e., collaboration level in terms of power, joint activities, human resource, funding, and information sharing. To understand contribution of nonprofits to collaboration for climate change adaptation, this research employs the institutional collective action framework suggesting that organizations work together when expected benefits are greater than collaborative risks. Survey data from 101 nonprofit private organizations (beyoungri mingan danche) in South Korea, which are legally defined in the Assistance for Nonprofit, Nongovernmental Organizations Act, are analyzed. Finding is that government funding and social relationship are strongly associated with nonprofit contribution to collaboration, highlighting that the financial stability of nonprofit organizations and mutual trust among entities based on routine interaction are critical motives for nonprofit collaboration. Finding also reveals that Korean nonprofits mainly play a role as social capital creators in climate change adaptation. The finding also highlights that Sang Bu Sang Jo (相扶相助) among community members is a key concept to encourage nonprofit engagement in climate change adaptation in the Korean context.

Given roles and expectations of father involvement in South Korea are in transition from traditional breadwinner to an involved caregiver to children, it is plausible that Korean fathers show diverse involvement behaviors in the contexts of work, family, and parenting. Using a person-centered approach, we explored if there were groupings of Korean fathers who could be identified from their involvement with their children. We also examined if those subgroup memberships were related to various factors in work, family, and parenting domains. With a sample of 212 married working fathers and the 12 items of involvement behaviors, we found four heterogeneous subgroups of people: low-involved, accessibility-focused, involved-but-less-accessible, and highly involved fathers. Significant differences among the four profiles were also found regarding various factors such as job stress, work and family conflict, work schedule, maternal employment, parenting satisfaction, and perceived level of involvement. Suggestions for future research, practitioners, and policymakers were discussed.

This paper is an empirical study examining the reasoning behind Swedish adults’ choices of attending Korean language programs in the Republic of Korea. By using anthropological modes of inquiry and methods such as participant observation and different qualitative interviews, the focus of the research is on the mental processes behind these choices. Through a utilization of the analytical concept of imagination, what is argued is that these individuals’ choices are engendered and regulated by several factors, such as engagement with Korean culture-products and certain practical conditions, but that the greatest importance lies with their own understandings and agency.

This paper seeks to examine how South Korea news medias portrayed mixed-race South Koreans in Korean society by checking articles from the newspapers Dong-A Ilbo and Kyunghyang Shinmun. The paper explores the process of formation of discourse on mixed-race in South Korea, and the contextual background that related to it by analysing about 800 newspaper articles from 1950 to 2019 through critical discourse analysis. The research is conducted within the theoretical frames of imagined community, the concept of ‘othering’, and race and ethnicity in the discourse analysis of the newspapers. The results of the study show that mixed-race people in South Korea are often stigmatised and discriminated for their difference in society as ‘others’ in the newspaper portrayals. Furthermore, the paper highlights that such portrayals of mixed race are based on ethnic nationalism and patriarchal ideas that influenced the discourse around them in South Korea.

This thesis explores South Korea’s role within international development cooperation through a role theoretical analysis of the country’s development cooperation policies. The purpose of this paper is to shed a light on the possibilities and benefits of applying role theory within the field of international development cooperation, while focusing on South Korea, as a case of an emerging and quickly advancing donor. In order to reveal national role conceptions, as well as the alter’s role prescriptions, the paper puts forward a qualitative content analysis, looking at documents issued by South Korea and the OECD that concern its development cooperation policies. Hereby, it becomes evident that South Korea’s role is highly influenced by its own development experience and recent transformation from recipient into donor state. The experience the country has gained builds the foundation for its own perception as a donor, as well as for the expectations of other OECD Member countries and is, thus, translated into South Korea’s development cooperation policies.

In this thesis I am putting the sexual and gender minorities in South Korea and Japan under the limelight. I am discussing the topic of LGBT social acceptance, and the connection between the level of social acceptance and how the sexual and gender minorities have been perceived through history, and are currently being perceived within the law, culture and religion, politics, and Socio-economic areas in South Korea and Japan. In both countries there is still a visible lack of social acceptance towards LGBT persons, and the hypothesis of this paper is that all of the factors contributing to that outcome, except for religion, are evidently similar. The aim is to analyze and show the connection between these factors and how the sexual and gender minorities are viewed and treated, as well as to compare the outcome in respective country and discuss the similarities and differences.

The current study aims at investigating the mixed effect of family and neighborhood contexts on juveniles’ violence in South Korea. By addressing four different theoretical frames, the current study assumes that family and neighborhood are directly or indirectly influencing juveniles’ delinquency. The target of analysis is respondents of Korean Youth Panel Survey (KYPS)(N=2,248). By using Stata 14, the current study conducted multi-level regression. The current study suggests several meaningful findings as follow: 1) positive family (i.e. parental attachment and parental supervision) and neighborhood (i.e. collective efficacy) contexts directly reduce juvenile’s violence, 2) negative family aspects (i.e. family conflict and emotional strain by family) directly increase juvenile’s violence, 3) negative neighborhood contexts do not necessarily lead to juveniles’ violence, and 4) family contexts mediate the relationship between neighborhood environments and juveniles’ violence. Based on the finding, the current study explains South Korean cultural background, which contributed to the unique findings. In addition, policy implication is also addressed.

This thesis intends to explore the peacebuilding process in East Asia. It mainly examines the politics, cultures, and economies of China, Japan, and South Korea, along with the on-going issues between South Korea and North Korea. To be able to establish a stable and prosperous society in East Asia, these three countries play a major role, and they can create greater cooperation within the region and on the international level. Peacebuilding process highly depends on politic, culture, and economy of these three countries. Confidence Building Measures (CBM) and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes (PSD) are the excellent strategies for achieving peace in the region after studying each country carefully. Economic activities and good trade relations are essential to the peace development in East Asia.

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