This study aims to examine the meanings and effects of luxury consumption in modern Korea(from the 1920s to the present). In presenting a cultural history of luxury consumption that has progressed in conjunction with the ideas such as coloniality, mod... This study aims to examine the meanings and effects of luxury consumption in modern Korea(from the 1920s to the present). In presenting a cultural history of luxury consumption that has progressed in conjunction with the ideas such as coloniality, modernity, nationalism, materialism, statism, and sexism, politics was found to be an element pervading all of them. This stems from the fact that the public's luxury consumption had long been the subject of control. We may summarize this as difference and discrimination. The desire to be different has led the development of luxury consumption, while, on the other side, the formation and effect of a negative discourse against luxury consumption have expanded to become an implicit social norm producing mutual interference and discrimination among members of the society. As consumption is a component of an individual's daily life that defines their life style, when power intervenes with it and exercises microscopic influence, daily life becomes politicized, which is a matter belonging in the realm of cultural studies. Thus, while this study is a cultural study, it also focuses on the cultural politics; accordingly, it has attempted an interpretation based on cultural politics as a frame of study. We examine the progression of luxury consumption, a universal phenomenon in human culture, in the context of the sociocultural environment of modern Korea, portraying the dynamics between the practices of consent, deviation, and negotiation in response to state control and discriminatory discourse of criticism. In reality, because Korea has achieved rapid economic growth, the public's luxury consumption is a phenomenon that has only recently become universally possible in the Korean society. A newly emerging nation after its liberation from Japan and one of the least developed countries in the world at the time, Korea passed through a period of developmental dictatorship, the quality of life beginning to improve gradually, and the formation of a consumer society is understood to be, by and large, not until the late 1980s and onwards. In terms of the world situation, we may say that this is also in line with the fact that it was in the 1980s that the Western luxury industry, dominating the world's luxury market today, established and began to implement a mass sales strategy geared toward the middle class. However, even during the previous period of Japanese occupation, during the era of scarcity after liberation, and during the war, luxury consumption has always existed, which led to state power exercising control over it as well as the initiation of a discourse of criticism. The state power's control over luxury consumption was carried out in the traditional form of sumptuary law and tax increase. An import ban on luxury items was also crucial, as imported high-end goods comprised the majority of luxury items. Control measures on luxury consumption enacted during the Japanese occupation period, such as the regulation on production and sales of luxury items, tariff increase on luxury items, item-specific tax, and import restrictions, continued under the post-liberation Korean government in a similar manner, gradually disintegrating amidst changes in the world situation – the termination of the Cold War, globalization, and neoliberalism – and the ensuing effects. However, the long-standing negative stigma on luxury consumption and the ensuing effect are even today operating at a low level. Examples of this are products of institutional control and the discourse of criticism that were continuously at work in the past: the contradictory coexistence of both repudiation of and desire for luxury consumption as a cultural byproduct and the discriminatory view towards women who indulge in luxury. This study traces the historical relationship – within the dynamics formed by reaction to control and discrimination – between luxury consumption and cultural concepts crucial in explaining modern Korea, such as modernity, nationalism, patriotism, and gender. For this, Chapter III gives a chronological account of popular luxury consumption and the state's intervention that have been developing in accordance with historical changes, starting from the Japanese occupation period, when luxury items first emerged as the signifier of modernity, until today. Chapter IV presents, along with actual case examples, the politics prominent in the rhetoric criticizing luxury mobilized for control, i.e., the effect of nationalism and statism and the phenomenon created by interaction between the power of the discriminatory view towards women and consent or deviation in response to it. The majority of cultural interpretations in luxury consumption studies until now are mainly accounted for by "Korean” elements with respect to consumption of luxury products, such as maintaining one's face, being conscious of others' eyes, deindividuation due to groupism, the desire to show off, and the desire for a higher social status. This study is significant in that it attempts, within the historical context, a cultural interpretation of the political power that has come to penetrate an individual's personal realm and the reaction of the people to it. This attempt has also broadened the scope of study both temporally and spatially. In other words, if existing studies were problematization of luxury consumption, we may say that this study problematizes the problematization of luxury consumption. Luxury consumption has been considered negative in many cultures, and this study focuses on what kind of context and motives, in the case of modern Korean society, were involved in luxury consumption acquiring negative qualities and, at the same time, becoming an object of desire, as well as how women came to be depicted as agents of luxury consumption. We may say that, in doing so, this study has also become a historical example verifying that the universal human behavior of seeking luxury in one form or another can under no circumstances be controlled by power. Furthermore, this study may be used to examine historical changes in modern Korea through the crucial topic of luxury consumption, which has become a style and goal of life to be sought after in a consumer capitalist environment, a critical indicator of the current age. ，韩语毕业论文，韩语论文范文 |
