Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois at Chicago, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-218).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Temple University, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-244).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northwestern University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 383-409).

This thesis considers issues of individual's 'style competence' within global order. Guje (imported second-hand garments) fashion in South Korea is an ideal case study from which to examine consumer autonomy in the adoption of this Western vintage fashion trend since the 1990s. The importance of guje clothing lies in the local-cultural discrimination between the 'imported' and the local second-hand garments; guje clothes have been considered far more fashionable than the locally generated used garments. Consequently, in guje and vintage markets, the origin bears a great significance, such as German or American yasahng, or Japanese(-import) jeans. While the foreign origin of these garments is an emblem of being stylish, the images of foreign cities are mostly presented as ideal places associated with romanticism and nostalgia. Such fashion practice reflects South Koreans 'rose-tinted' view of foreign countries and material culture. Furthermore, nostalgic memories are imagined and constructed based on Western fashion history in replacement of South Korea's own. More importantly, Japan plays a key role as a cultural and material mediator in the introduction of Western fashion, from jeans to luxury goods, to South Korea. This ethnographic research concludes that guje fashion cannot be regarded as a fully autonomous consumer practice, but rather as symptomatic of global homogeneity, which reveals the cultural and material impact of both Americanisation and Japanisation dominant in South Korea.

The study reported in this dissertation aimed at exploring relations between parental factors - parenting and maternal executive function (EF) - and preschool children's EF in the South Korean context (the Republic of Korea; Korea hereafter). Specifically, it investigated the replication in the Korean context of existing findings in Western cultures on the link between parenting and child EF. In addition, the present study explored parental aspects that have rarely been linked to child EF: 1) the relation of parental verbal input to child EF, 2) simultaneous relations of parenting and maternal EF to child EF, and 3) mediating roles played by parenting in the maternal EF-child EF link. Ten kindergartens located in different districts (middle- to upper-middle class households) in Seoul, Korea hosted the present study, and data were collected from a total of 92 mother-child dyads who volunteered to take part. The children were aged between 3 and 5 years, with 97 per cent of them being 4 years old, and they were reported not to have experienced developmental issues. The mothers were biological parents of child participants. Both the mothers and children performed on age-appropriate EF tasks. Three types of parenting dimensions were focused on in two contexts of mother-child interactions: maternal contingency and intrusiveness in a problem-solving context and maternal verbal input during a mother-child reminiscing conversation. Maternal verbal input was operationalized to consist of four constructs: maternal elaboration, semantic connection (maternal utterances that are semantically connected with the child's utterances), maternal mental-state references, and connected mental-state references (maternal mental-state references that are semantically connected with the child's utterances). As such, a total of 14 maternal traits during the two mother-child interactions were examined for their relations to the development of child EF. Mother-child interactions were videotaped for later analysis. As a result, 184 five-minute video clips were obtained and analysed by adopting a quantitative approach. Results showed that the positive relation between maternal contingency and child EF was successfully replicated in the Korean context. In addition, maternal connected mental-state references, particularly emotion references, were found as a significant factor explaining child EF, above and beyond three covariates of child EF (child age, child verbal ability and maternal educational attainment). However, maternal intrusiveness was found not to be significantly related to child EF in the Korean context. Next, the analysis of the simultaneous relations of maternal factors to child EF showed that maternal contingency accounted for unique variance in child EF more than any other parenting variables involved in the present study. In addition to maternal contingency, maternal EF (i.e., maternal shifting as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) and maternal connected mental-state references were found to significantly account for unique variance in child EF. Finally, it was found that the maternal EF-child EF link was not explained by parenting behaviours explored in the present study. Instead, maternal contingency was found to mediate the link between child verbal ability and child EF and the link between maternal educational attainment and child EF. While the above mentioned results were the main findings of the present study, the difference in the results should be addressed between when using the whole sample (N=92 dyads) and only 4-year-olds (N=89 dyads). Child's age was found to account for less unique variance in child EF when using only 4-year-olds. In addition, the significant link between maternal EF and child EF when using the data from the whole sample became insignificant when using the data from only 4-year-olds. These findings are discussed in terms of universal or culture-specific links between maternal EF, parenting behaviours and child EF, adding to the literature by presenting the first empirical evidence on this research field in a non-Western context.

As levels of economic prosperity grew in the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s in South Korea, so people's concern with health, and with leisure opportunities has grown. In particular since 1988 and the successful staging of the Seoul Olympics, and with the onset of a fledgling democratic government there has been increasing pressure to meet citizens' demands for sporting opportunities. A sport for all policy is a recent innovation in South Korea and little research has been carried out on its implementation, or indeed on sports participation more generally in the South Korean context. The rationale for promoting a policy of sport for all, which is essentially a welfare rationale, reflects the recent major changes in the political system, that is, a change to a democratic regime in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, developing from the system of government characterised by military authoritarianism for the majority of the period since the Korean War. The principal aims of the research on which the thesis is based are two hold. The first is to provide a review of the changing nature of sports policy over time in South Korea, covering the period from 1945 up to the present day, changes which have taken place against a background of significant politico-economic shifts. This is accomplished via an historical review of sports policy and its reporting by government sources and by media of contrasting political affiliation. Most recently there has been a discernible change in emphasis in sport policy, promoting in particular a sport for all approach. The second aim of the thesis is therefore to review the nature of sports participation in urban South Korea, to establish the level of participation, the nature of participants, and to identify barriers to participation, in order to evaluate whether the measures adopted in a sport for all promotion are coherent and likely to be adequate. This latter aim is achieved through the analysis of a questionnaire survey administered to a sample of 600 urban dwellers in the city of Suwon. In addition to supplement this, detailed sports histories are recorded for 79 individuals and for 10 married couples, in order to identify how key life events impact upon sports participation at the individual level. As with West European and American studies, statistically significantly greater levels of sports participation in a wider range of sports are associated with higher levels of education, income, full time employment, and gender (males participate significantly more widely and more often). The sports histories illustrate how major life events influence sports behaviour, while the sports histories of married couples reflect the mutual influence of the sports careers of marital partners, in particular the impact on female sporting behaviour of male sports careers. These findings suggest approaches and priorities which sports policy might take in fostering the achievement of sport for all goals. The major contributions of the thesis to knowledge in this field are, first an enhanced understanding of the development of sports policy in the South Korean context, and the relationship between sports policy goals and the goals of political actors in the evolution of the Korean system of government from styles of authoritarian nationalism to emergent liberal democracy; and second a data base on, and analysis of, sports participation in a major urban settlement, which incorporates for the first time in relation to South Korea, personal sports history data, and for the first time in the wider sports participation literature, analysis of the sports histories of married couples. These data are subsequently analysed in terms of their significance for sports policy in the contemporary South Korean context.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 258-264).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 232-252).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northern Illinois University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [107]-115).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-242).