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This article investigates aspects of heritage and atrocity by bringing the Japanese case into focus. The dissonant nature of such dark cultural heritage has gained greater attention since the late 1990s in Japan and around the world, though scholarship has been largely limited to the European context. While locating the Japanese making of dark heritage in the context of the decomposition of the Cold War in Asia, I will first examine the process by which specific sites of past violence are transformed into war heritage in Japan. Second, I will explore how changing values and attitudes toward war-related sites causes changes in strategic planning for heritage management. These two themes will be demonstrated through an examination of civic activities to conserve the remains of underground warehouses built during the Second World War in Nagano and Osaka.

Korean popular music (K-pop) fandom may serve as a case study to identify both cynical and utopian views of fans' participatory Net activism by addressing three key aspects: fan activism, cybervigilantism, and Othering mechanisms. Fancom (fan company) in the K-pop scene refers to the way fans systematically manage their own stars. These notions of assertive fancom practices address how fans actively participate in sociocultural events such as fund raising, donating to charity, and volunteering in emergency situations. This management may take another turn, however: antifandom surrounds K-pop star Tablo, signifying cybervigilantism of sinsang teolgi (personal information theft), a term referring to the online activities of a group of netizens who seek to expose the personal details of perceived wrongdoers by publishing them online as a form of punishment. The Tablo case revitalized public concern over privacy and the security of personal information in the digital era. Finally, Othering mechanisms in participatory online K-pop fandom display a strong sense of nationalism and even racism, as demonstrated by responses to anti-Korean rhetoric posted on the MySpace page of K-pop idol Jae-Beom. This highlights the relationship between participatory Net activism and nationalistic sentiment active within K-pop fandom. Some K-pop fan practices may have negative connotations, but by engaging with specific civic issues and social events, participatory fan practices encourage people to interact, discuss, and challenge conventional discourses, which may lead to new forms of social action.

Around the world, pop consumers are increasingly accessing popular products through social media. Online fan groups of Korean popular music (K-pop) in Asia have dynamically and transculturally circulated their product through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. In October 2010, Super Junior, a K-pop idol boy band, was ranked as the number one worldwide trending topic on Twitter—ranking even higher than a sensational news story about trapped Chilean miners. Regional fans in Indonesia in particular have been identified as the source of a spike in tweets on this topic. Such a phenomenon illustrates how social media–empowered online fandom enhances cultural flow and affects transcultural pop circulation dynamics. I examine these dynamics by means of the specific case study of K-pop fandom in Indonesia. By focusing on three specific aspects of new media circulation of K-pop in Indonesia—performing immediate transculturations, embodying K-pop, and building intimacies—I contextualize transnationally focused, newly emerging, and social media–deployed cultural circulation driven by online fan practices.

The Jeju April 3rd Incident of 1948, which resulted in the largest number of casualties in modern Korean history other than in war, was a national tragedy. The complexity of the incident and its importance in Korean history explain the failure to discuss it publicly until the late 1980s. For this reason, existing studies have largely focused on uncovering the truth about this incident. Even though national reconciliation is an important topic in South Korea, a more structured study from a transitional justice perspective has not been undertaken of this violent event that led to a divided country. Thus, this study provides a theoretical framework for the conditioning of the institutionalisation, national narratives and psychological healing that are required to establish national reconciliation. The paper, then, applies this framework to the Jeju April 3rd Incident. Finally, it evaluates the limitations and challenges of national reconciliation in South Korea.

La présente étude évalue le rôle d'une institution démocratique – le budget participatif – dans l'amélioration de l'efficacité du gouvernement. Les institutions participatives visent à améliorer la gouvernance, le partage de l'information et la réactivité des agents politiques vis-à-vis des citoyens, à des fins d'imputabilité et d'efficience budgétaires. En nous appuyant sur une base de données de 221 gouvernements municipaux en Corée du Sud autour d'une période d'adoption obligatoire du budget participatif, nous constatons que l'adoption des budgets participatifs est suivie d'une amélioration de plusieurs dimensions de l'efficacité du gouvernement. En particulier, les gouvernements municipaux connaissent des améliorations statistiquement significatives de leur viabilité budgétaire et de leur efficacité administrative. Dans une analyse complémentaire, nous constatons que les améliorations de l'efficacité sont plus prononcées en présence d'un leadership fort de la part des maires. Les résultats globaux suggèrent que les programmes de budgétisation participative contribuent à la santé budgétaire et à l'efficacité administrative, au-delà de leur rôle dans la garantie de la démocratie budgétaire. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens L'étude actuelle suggère que les systèmes de budget participatif contribuent non seulement à la qualité de la démocratie (comme l'ont constaté des études antérieures), mais améliorent également l'efficacité et l'imputabilité budgétaires en servant de mécanisme de gouvernance ascendante. Nous démontrons que l'introduction de programmes de budgétisation participative est suivie d'améliorations statistiquement significatives de la viabilité budgétaire et de l'efficacité administrative. Les résultats indiquent également que l'effet d'amélioration de l'efficacité diffère selon les municipalités, en fonction de leur environnement politique. Dans l'ensemble, cette étude fournit un argument fort en faveur du système de budgétisation participative en confirmant empiriquement son effet d'amélioration de l'efficacité.

The current study evaluates the role of a democratic institution—participatory budgeting—in improving government efficiency. Participatory institutions aim to enhance governance, information sharing, and the responsiveness of political agents to citizens, leading to fiscal accountability and efficiency. Drawing from a database of 221 municipal governments in South Korea around a mandatory participatory budgeting adoption period, we find that participatory budgeting adoptions are followed by improvement in multiple dimensions of government efficiency. In particular, municipal governments experience statistically significant improvements in their fiscal sustainability and administrative efficiency. In additional analysis, we find that the efficiency improvements are more pronounced in the presence of strong mayoral leadership. Overall findings suggest that participatory budgeting programs contribute to fiscal health and administrative efficiency, above and beyond their role in securing fiscal democracy. Points for practitioners The current study suggests that participatory budget systems not only contribute to quality in democracy (as prior studies have found), but also improve fiscal efficiency and accountability by serving as a bottom-up governance mechanism. We document that introductions of participatory budgeting programs are followed by statistically significant improvements in fiscal sustainability and administrative efficiency. The results also indicate that the efficiency-improvement effect differs across municipalities, depending on their political environments. Overall, this study provides a strong argument for the participatory budgeting system by empirically supporting its efficiency-improvement effect.

Abstract
The global records of infectious diseases, including Western and Eastern documents from 1825 to 2020, during which sunspot observations are considered reliable, show that 27 of the 34 pandemic outbreaks were coincident with sunspot number maxima or minima. There is evidence that the intensity of galactic cosmic rays is anti-correlated with solar activity and that cloud seed formation is accelerated by galactic cosmic rays. There are a substantial number of research papers showing the relationship between COVID-19 and vitamin D deficiency. The data analysis of ozone thickness measured based on NASA satellite observations revealed that ozone thickness has 11-year and 28-month cycles. Because the 11-year cycles of ozone thickness and cloud seed attenuation are anti-correlated, when either one becomes extremely thick, such as at the maximum or minimum point of solar activity, UV radiation is over-attenuated, and human vitamin D deficiency is globally increased. This finding explains the coincidence of pandemic outbreaks with the extrema of the sunspot numbers. Vitamin D supplementation can be an effective countermeasure against the spread of infectious diseases, which is a paramount importance to global society. Future pandemic forecasting should include the 11-year and 28-month cycles of UV radiation. This founding completes the relationship between solar activity and human health through the earth's environment.