• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.215-243
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• 2015

This paper looks at the literary mood of southwestern Russia in the late Russian Empire, while examining the writers of this area and their literary tendencies. Southwestern literature was formed in the late Russian Empire, and prospered centering around Odessa. Because of the uniformity in the Soviet culture, however, it could not stay alive but disappeared in the history of Russian literature. Odessa, the center of southwestern literature was a multiracial region unlike other Russian cities. A unique culture was created, therefore, combining the western European culture and local ethnicity. Jews in Odessa could enter into the Russian society and assimilate naturally. They could utilize their talents as a strength to enrich the Russian culture without giving up their cultural heritage. For example, in lingual aspects, using Yiddish was not against the Russian culture. In addition, it contributed to interesting new coinages and led to efforts among writers to minimize the gap between the two languages. Many Jewish writers showed special interest not only in Yiddish but also in French, German and other languages. Therefore, they took the lead in translating and introducing west classics. As evident in the way Yiddish language was formed, mixing their language with other languages enabled jews to soak their way into other cultures naturally. Their yearning for the Russian and western European cultures, combined with their unique sense of humor, led to generic twists and problematic experiments. From another point of view, it is also unusual that southwestern literature diversified locational settings and heroic characters in literary works. European style heros, appearance of multiracial people, pain or waggery experienced by Jews in their assimilation process, thrilling revenge to unfair violence of Russians, and espiegle swindlers are the new domains that southwestern literature pioneered. In summary, southwestern literature was formed in a heterogeneous cultural climate, which was entirely different from the Russian Empire. In this regard, it was in deviation from the Russian literary tradition. From the Soviet point of view, it existed as a heresy which was against the Russian Empire.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.65-88
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• 2022

With the expansion of the Russian Empire southward in the nineteenth century, connoisseurs, art historians, and scholars in Russia began to pay attention to carpet traditions in the new territories of the Russian Empire in Turkestan. In journals and other specialty publications, they underscored a need to establish claims to authority over the knowledge of the traditional craft. They were highly attuned to parallel accounts of carpet weaving from regions that had a longer history of research and collecting of carpets. In contrast to the situation in Western Europe or the United States, commentators bemoaned the fact that the public and even professed experts in Russia did not properly appreciate carpets from the Caucasus and Central Asia. These scholars articulated a need to establish authority over the carpet weaving traditions of Russia's colonial possessions, resulting in a push toward a serious study of carpet weaving as a legitimate field of inquiry. This paper uses published sources on early carpet scholarship from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to examine how carpet weaving traditions in Central Asia entered an imperial discourse of knowledge. It argues that attempts to understand and categorize carpet weaving as an art form occurred along two fronts. Intellectuals and scholars attempted to wrest control over the locus of knowledge from experts in the West as well as from local weavers. In the process, they established a distinctly imperial vision of carpet weaving in contrast to competing imperial discourses and over traditional forms of knowledge.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.155-174
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• 2023

Trade along the Silk Routes reached its zenith during the Pax Mongolica, a period of relative stability in Eurasia that was created by the Mongol empire in the 13th and 14th centuries. It is generally believed that the Silk Routes declined after the disintegration of the Mongol empire in the second half of the 14th century and that they fell into disuse after the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople as the Europeans sought alternative maritime routes to Asia. This paper examines the aftermath of the Mongol-era overland and maritime Silk Routes from a non-Eurocentric perspective. Seen from the standpoint of various successors to the Mongol empire, such as the Timurid empire, the Mughal empire, the Uzbek khanate, the Ottoman empire, Manchu Qing, and Russia, the overland and maritime Silk Routes did not really collapse or sharply decline during the post-Mongol period. These Mongol successor states maintained close and thriving overland trade relations with each other or some important maritime trade relations with Southeast Asia. It may be argued that the Silk Routes in the post-Mongol world functioned rather independently of European seaborne commerce.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.67-85
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• 2009

The Trans-Central Asian Railway consists of the Trans-Caspian Railroad, the Kazalinsk Route, the Turk-Sib, and the Trans-Kazakhstan Trunk Line. Currently, one-fifth of the residents in Central Asia are living around these railroads on which 70% of the economic activities in the region depends. The construction of the railroads in Central Asia was motivated by the Russian Empire's competition 'with its maritime rival, the United Kingdom, over the Eurasian heartland in a geostrategic sense. Using the railroads, the Russian Empire aspired to connect its central industrial regions in European Russia with the remote frontier areas in the Central Asian republics and to increase economic specialization of the region. After the breakdown of the USSR, however, the rail network, which had well been linked among the regions in the former Soviet nations, has been in a deteriorated linkage with their non-Soviet neighboring nations. Despite a lot of problems to be solved, the Trans-Central Asian rail network is expected to play a crucial role as a land bridge between East Asia and Europe as well as between Russia/the Baltic sea and the Indian Ocean/the Persian Gulf in the long-term.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.33
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• pp.263-286
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• 2013

Is this a right way in politics that attitude of Japanese scholars to separate Natsume Soseki from the expansionism of pre-war Japan to protect 'sanctity'? Nowadays, most Japanese scholars are regarded to share the desire that minimize the memory of the behavior of Japanese Imperialism in East Asia, such as Korea, China, etc. Furthermore, 'the desire to minimize' inescapably concluded in avoidance, concealment, at last the temptation of deliberate misleading. Until now, the controversy about the Natsume Soseki's travel to Korea and Manchuria has repeated in defence and criticism surrounding the self-awareness and recognition of others of Natsume Soseki, making the expression in a record of Natsume's travel as the subject of study, for example, the degrading expression about Chosun people and scorn for Chinese and Russian. This paper will investigate that Natsume's travel is the political practice which is combined with the desire for the empire, focusing on the political context in the action of journey of Natsume and its contents other than the expression itself.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.25-49
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• 2020

This essay, based on an oral presentation, provides the non-specialist, with an evaluation of the Mongols' influence and China and, to a lesser extent, on Russia and the Middle East. Starting in the 1980s, specialists challenged the conventional wisdom about the Mongol Empire's almost entirely destructive influence on global history. They asserted that Mongols promoted vital economic, social, and cultural exchanges among civilizations. Chinggis Khan, Khubilai Khan, and other rulers supported trade, adopted policies of toleration toward foreign religions, and served as patrons of the arts, architecture, and the theater. Eurasian history starts with the Mongols. Exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art confirmed that the Mongol era witnessed extraordinary developments in painting, ceramics, manuscript illustration, and textiles. To be sure, specialists did not ignore the destruction and killings that the Mongols engendered. This reevaluation has prompted both sophisticated analyses of the Mongols' legacy in Eurasian history. The Ming dynasty, the Mongols' successor in China, adopted some of the principles of Mongol military organization and tactics and were exposed to Tibetan Buddhism and Persian astronomy and medicine. The Mongols introduced agricultural techniques, porcelain, and artistic motifs to the Middle East, and supported the writing of histories. They also promoted Sufism in the Islamic world and influenced Russian government, trade, and art, among other impacts. Europeans became aware, via Marco Polo who traveled through the Mongols' domains, of Asian products, as well as technological, scientific, and philosophical innovations in the East and were motivated to find sea routes to South and East Asia.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.37
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• pp.131-156
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• 2014

This article attempts to explore the literature of Catherine the second, focusing on her comedies in the light of anti-freemasonry in the late 18th-centuryof Russia. Her main idea towards social morals was consistently expressed from in her early comedies during 1770s, such as 'Oh! times!'(1772), to her late counterparts during 1880s, such as so called 'anti-freemason trilogy,' which includes 'the deceiver'(1785), 'the deceived one'(1785) and 'Siberian shaman'(1786). By depicting antagonists-freemasons in her own trilogy, only as alchemists, shamans, fallacious chemists, hypocritical medical doctors, and so on, Caterine the second intended to undermine the mason influence against Russian Empire, which had ideationally attracted Russian nobles and intellectuals and furthermore to reinforce her political control over the intellectuals as well as the public. The above literacy attempts by Catherine can be said to aim to found morals of her own era through the utilization of social discourse, rather than through the political or governmental control.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-28
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• 2022

The province of the People's Republic of China, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has historically been known under various names - Eastern Turkestan, Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, etc. In the early 19^th century this region was one of the least explored in Western scholarship and for the influence over which the so-called 'Great Game', geopolitical rivalry between Great Britain and the Russian Empire, gradually unfolded. This rivalry was one of the significant factors stimulating increased interest in an in-depth and comprehensive study of the geography, nature, and population of Kashgaria. Accordingly, in the second half of the 19^th to early 20^th centuries, several expeditions were organized that pursued serious academic goals alongside military, diplomatic, and commercial purposes. One of these expeditions, organized by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, was the so-called 'Tibetan expedition' led by a talented scientist and military figure M.V. Pevtsov in 1889-90. The expedition followed the routes of Eastern Turkestan, the northern outskirts of the Tibetan Plateau, and Dzungaria studying this vast region's geography, topography, nature, climate, and population. The results of this investigation were presented by M.V. Pevtsov in a detailed and comprehensive report published in St. Petersburg in 1895. An important part of this narrative is the so-called "Ethnographic Essay of Kashgaria," which reflects the author's observations and thoughts on this region's ethnic composition, religious beliefs, language, customs, and rituals. This article offers insights and analysis of the content of Pevtsov's report, which provides valuable information about the daily life of the population of Kashgaria at the end of the 19^th century to an English-speaking audience.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.313-332
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• 2013

Large tundra of the Russian Empire, has rich resources and science and technology, and a huge domestic market potential is rapidly changing. Based on the abundant energy resources such as oil, gas, and minerals, as foreign trade is active, the huge capital is moving. And commitment the active SOC by improving laws and regulations and changes in the structure of the Russian economy. One of them pushed the WTO since 1993, 19 years to see fruition join the WTO (World Trade Organization). As the official entry into force August 22, Russia, July 10, 2012, Congress passed the treaty after joining the WTO and of the 156th WTO member countries, was officially join. As the WTO, Russia has the world's 11th-largest economy in the steel tariffs from 30% to 15% are exported to Russia, South Korea Car TV parts from 10% to 0%, reduced from 20% to 5% Korean export companies to export to Russia, etc., is expected to become the new land of opportunity. Russia hopes the changes improve the investment environment, the service industry, manufacturing revitalization the macroeconomic sectors of the economy through the WTO, and forecast, but the consumption increased revenue due to tariff cuts, falling import prices and the real economy, and weak manufacturing base. On the one hand, the perspective of concern. In conclusion, Russia joining the WTO, and the feed to improve the fairness and transparency of the market opening, the Russian advance in Korean companies be facilitated and strong complementary cooperation, especially in manufacturing is expected. In this paper, after Russia joining the WTO, trade liberalization, and ready for a new era of economic cooperation between Korea and Russia, at the point of expanding openness to propose strategies to analyze the problems of Korean companies during the Russian advance.

• (The)Korea Educational Review
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.57-81
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to summarise the educational meanings of Official Foreign Language Schools(hereafter, OFLS) in Korea, 1895-1906. Especially, I try to find out the foreign language policy of the Joseon Dynasty and the comparative superiority between six foreign language schools - Japanese School, English School, French School, Russian School, Chinese School, and German School - through the traits of teachers and the change of students numbers at the Regulation Period. As a part of Kabo Reforms, the government had abolished the of Civil Service Examination System and status system, and foreign languages worked as a cultural capital to acquire modern civilization and to escalate one's social status. The results were as follows: Firstly, the OFLS have to be regarded as one of the highest educational institute during the Regulation Period. The eligibility of the OFLS was over 15 years old, but most of the incoming students were over 20 years old. Secondly, many of the OFLS's teachers were specialists of military, diplomat and mechanics. Especially, Martel, the teacher of French school played an important role for the neutral diplomacy policy of the Great Korean(Dae-Han) Empire during the Regulation Period. Thirdly, the recruit of new members of the OFLS was affected by the political and social circumstances at that time. Fourthly, the statistics of incoming students during the Regulation Period was concentrated on Chinese school, French school, and English school in due order. Thus, it differed from the commonly accepted ideas of students' statistics which was concentrated on English School and Japanese School. Fifthly, the OFLS were not only for the training of official interpreters(譯官通事), but also the cultivation of civil servants who could become statesman.