Thesis (D. Min.)--Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard, Ill., 2001. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-194).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007. / Abstract. Description based on Microfiche version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-161).

Applied research project (D. Min.)--School of Theology and Missions, Oral Roberts University, 2008. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-164).

Applied research project (D. Min.)--School of Theology and Missions, Oral Roberts University, 2008. / Includes abstract and vita. Translated from Korean. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-174).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-220). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Education, August 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Albany, 2003. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-204) and index.

This study examined the experiences of five Korean American mothers in Oregon and California who have children with disabilities using qualitative research analysis. The mothers' adaptation processes were individually analyzed, and these mothers' overarching experiences were discussed with three major themes: (a) caring for family cohesiveness, (b) needs for social and professional support, and (c) positive transformation of life through religion Adaptation to the children's disabilities was a process for these participants. All mothers had their own demands, resources, and subjective interpretations of their situations. Analysis of the qualitative data disclosed that these five Korean American mothers transformed the negative life events of having children with disabilities into meaningful opportunities to grow personally and spiritually. These immigrant mothers' care-commitment for their families' cohesiveness strengthened their life long coping process. Several married mothers perceived emotional support from their husbands. Most of the mothers expressed the need for social support due to their immigrant status. These five Korean American mothers tried to adapt to their situation of raising a child with a disability within their intact family members. Two mothers from California utilized emotional and informational support from Korean parent support groups, which are more readily available in that state due to the large number of Korean American families with children with disabilities. Despite the lack of social and professional support, many of the mothers perceived their experiences of having children with disabilities positively through their religious beliefs. Raising a child with a disability reportedly strengthened the mothers' religious faith, and their strong religious beliefs gave them courage to successfully adapt to their situations. Several of the mothers stated that their worldviews were also changed. Although this study was limited to five participants, it yielded an enhanced understanding of Korean American mothers who have children with disabilities and provided direction for future research and practice. The findings suggest that special education providers should emphasize and support the strengths of a child's major caregiver. / Graduation date: 2004

One of the main purposes of this dissertation is to examine who Korean American diaspora-oriented journalists are and how they make news, taking into account several forces on the individual, organizational, extramedia, and social system levels that influence the gatekeeping processes and news content. In addition, this dissertation investigates what interests Korean American diaspora-oriented journalists mainly serve. The author surveyed journalists working for major Korean diaspora-oriented media in Los Angeles and conducted in-depth interviews with experienced personnel involved in the Korean diasporic journalism industry. In addition, two major Korean diasporic dailies were content-analyzed. The basic characteristics of the majority of Korean American-oriented journalists in 2008 are depicted as follows: male Korean Americans, 30 to 40 years old, born in Korea, with a bachelor’s degree, in the United States and working as journalists for less than 15 years, politically liberal, Protestant religious backgrounds, with previous journalism experience at another media organization. Korean diaspora-oriented journalists place emphasis on three major news topics: immigration, business/economy, and education. Cultural proximity rather than geographical proximity significantly influence the degree of newsworthiness of a news story. Newsworthiness is highest when an event/issue has both high cultural proximity and geographical proximity. When geographical proximity is low and cultural proximity is high, newsworthiness in Korean American-oriented journalism is moderately high. If the degree of cultural proximity is low, however, it does not matter whether the news story occurred in Los Angeles or other states or countries in determining the degree of newsworthiness. The Korean American journalists value the interracial harmonizer function most, followed by the disseminator, ethnic consolidator, and interpreter functions. The finding suggests that Korean diaspora-oriented journalists keep in mind that their foremost responsibility is to help Korean immigrants settle smoothly in their new host country and to live in harmony with other racial groups. The longer a Korean journalist has lived in the U.S., the more he or she tends to embrace the interracial harmonizer and ethnic consolidator functions. In other words, the longer Korean American journalists stay in the U.S., the more sensitive they become both to racial issues and to their own ethnic identities. / text

Hwa-Byung, known as an anger illness, was conceptualized in Korean culture and listed in the glossary under Culture-Bound Syndromes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Hwa-Byung develops when the emotions of anger have been suppressed for a long period of time and it becomes difficult to control those feelings. Common complaints of Hwa-Byung have two dimensions, psychological and physical symptoms. The prevalence of Hwa-Byung exhibits gender differences in that the majority of individuals who experience Hwa-Byung are women between the ages of 40 and 60. However, as the number of Korean immigrants in the United States continues to increase and their issues draw attention from researchers, the topic of Hwa-Byung receives little. Because Korean immigrants in the United States share a cultural background with their origin of ethnicity, and at the same time, may also assimilate the American culture during the acculturation process, this study will address the cultural differences in Hwa-Byung between native Koreans who live in South Korea and Korean immigrants in the United States. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities of Hwa-Byung in native Korean middle-aged women in South Korea and Korean immigrants in the United States, roughly between the age range of late-30's to middle 60's, by investigating the influencing factors of stressful life events, stress response, anger expression, and demographic background. A sample size of at least 200 participants, required for each group, using both paper-pencil and web-based methods, depended on participants' preferences, which were influenced by a gap in ages and the level of familiarity with and/or ability to access Internet. Participants were randomly selected from major cities, both in South Korea (including Seoul, Incheon, Busan, Daejeon, and Gyeonggi Province) and the United States (including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles), using similar proportions of ages for both groups for the equivalences of participants in cross-cultural research. Survey measures included five instruments: (a) the Hwa-Byung scale (Kwon, Kim, Park, Lee, Min, & Kwon, 2008); (b) Life Stress for Korean women (Chon & Kim, 2003); (c) stress response inventory (SRI) (Koh, Park, & Kim, 2000); (d) anger expression (Hahn, Chon, Lee, & Spielberger, 1997), and (e) demographic background that measured the variables used in this study. To minimize the weakness of language differences used in the different cultural contexts, survey packages for Korean immigrant participants in the United States were formatted in both Korean and English for each item. Thus, a translation process became necessary, especially for the Korean instruments of the Hwa-Byung Scale, Life Stress for Korean women and Stress Response Inventory (SRI), from Korean into Englishtwo of which were (originally developed by Korean researchers) . On the other hand, native Koreans submitted only the Korean version of questionnaires because they fully understood the meaning of questionnaire statements, as well as in order to get rid of possible distractions by the inclusion of English sentences.