Institute of Culture and Sports Science Foundation (Page 35)

Research

IOCSS Research Bulletin | March 2026: AI and the Future of Sport Governance

March 2026 bulletin on AI governance in sport, institutional design, and implementation standards.

AI Series

[Episode 2] What Is Physical AI? The Emergence of Embodied Intelligence

Conceptual and policy analysis of embodied intelligence in cultural and sporting institutions.

AI Series

[Episode 3] The Evolution of AI Agents: The Age of Autonomy

Institutional analysis of AI agency, delegated authority, and accountability safeguards.

AI-Sports-Culture-Philosophy

[Episode 1] Prologue: We Stand Together with AI in the Arena

Foundational framing of AI participation in sport and culture, with governance implications for legitimacy and accountability.

Programs

2023 International Sports Science Forum Asia — Inaugural Seoul Forum

IOCSS hosted the inaugural International Sports Science Forum Asia in Seoul (December 2023), convening senior representatives from Korea, China, and Japan to advance trilateral sports science cooperation.

Science & Society

Artificial Intelligence and Human Values: Toward a Philosophy of Machine Ethics

As AI systems become increasingly capable and consequential, the question of how to align them with human values becomes urgent. This paper surveys the philosophical landscape of AI ethics, from consequentialist frameworks to virtue-theoretic approaches.

Sports Philosophy

The Ethics of Competition: Excellence, Fairness, and the Meaning of Sport

What do we owe each other as competitors? This paper examines foundational questions in sports ethics—the nature of fair play, the purpose of rules, and whether winning is the true goal of sport.

Arts & Culture

Korean Aesthetic Philosophy: From Traditional Forms to Contemporary Expression

An introduction to the philosophical dimensions of Korean aesthetics—from the concept of han in traditional music to the global phenomenon of Korean Wave (Hallyu)—and what they reveal about cultural identity and civilizational continuity.

North Korea Studies

DPRK Humanitarian Conditions: Evidence, Analysis, and the Challenges of Independent Research

Assessing what is known—and not known—about humanitarian conditions inside North Korea, and the methodological challenges that confront researchers working without direct access.

North Korea Studies

Sport Diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula: History, Limits, and Future Prospects

An analysis of inter-Korean sporting engagement from the 1991 unified table tennis team to the 2018 Olympic delegation, examining what sport can—and cannot—achieve in political diplomacy.

Science & Society

Governing the Ungovernable: AI Ethics Frameworks and the Limits of Anticipatory Regulation

Current AI governance frameworks face fundamental limitations. This analysis proposes principles for more robust regulation of autonomous AI systems.

North Korea Studies

Divided Memories: Heritage Preservation as Political Practice in the Korean Context

How states remember and preserve their cultural heritage is never politically innocent. In divided Korea, the politics of heritage takes on particular intensity: both states claim a shared civilisational legacy while constructing radically different accounts of its meaning and its proper custodians.

Arts & Cultural Philosophy

Aesthetic Distance and Political Commitment: Rethinking the Philosophy of Engaged Art

The relationship between aesthetic autonomy and political engagement remains one of the central unresolved questions in the philosophy of art. This paper revisits the debate through the lens of contemporary East Asian artistic practice.

Sports Philosophy

Enhancement, Authenticity, and the Sporting Ideal: Towards a Coherent Ethics of Athletic Performance

The growing sophistication of performance-enhancing technologies—from pharmacological interventions to genetic modification, from advanced prosthetics to neural interfaces—poses urgent questions for the ethics of sport that cannot be resolved by simple appeals to fairness or tradition.

North Korea Studies

The Hermit Kingdom Opens Its Gates: Sport Diplomacy and North Korea's International Engagement

How athletic participation—from the 1988 Seoul Olympics to the 2018 PyeongChang Games—has shaped Pyongyang's strategic engagement with the international community, and what this reveals about the relationship between sport, sovereignty, and statecraft in Northeast Asia.

North Korea Studies

Sport as Soft Power: Inter-Korean Athletic Exchange and the Politics of Reconciliation

Abstract This paper examines inter-Korean athletic cooperation as a form of 'track two' diplomacy, analyzing the structural conditions under which sport has served as a venue for dialogue, symbolic exchange, and confidence-building measures between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Drawing

Sports Philosophy

Excellence and Its Discontents: A Philosophical Inquiry into Athletic Achievement in the Age of Enhancement

Abstract This paper engages with the classical philosophical concept of excellence (arete) as it applies to athletic achievement, arguing that contemporary sporting culture has systematically eroded the conditions under which genuine excellence is possible and recognizable. Against a background of commercialization, performance-enhancing technologies, and the reduction of sport to spectacle,

Arts & Culture

Cultural Memory and the Politics of Heritage in Divided Korea

Abstract Cultural memory—the collective, institutionally mediated process by which communities preserve, transmit, and contest representations of their past—occupies a peculiarly fraught position in the context of Korean national division. This paper examines how South Korean cultural institutions have navigated the dual imperatives of articulating a coherent national cultural

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This article has been editorially revised to match IOCSS scholarly English standards. Problem framing. The widening gap between institutional rhetoric and operational practice in contemporary cultural governance. The resulting policy dilemma is not merely technical. It is institutional and philosophical: decisions once treated as value-neutral are now visibly norm-laden, distributional,