Scrap Paper

While reading Chapter 4 The Craft of Research, I was reminded of the “So what?” discussion we had in our previous class. I began to realize that my three-step formula did not really address why my readers (the honors thesis class) should pay attention to my topic. Instead, it focused more on why I was interested in investigating it. Therefore, I did my performed my own “So what?” exercise and came up with the following pure research question: How has South Korea become a cultural world power in the past decade and how has it impacted the societies of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the United States? My new three-step formula produced the following statement: I am writing on South Korean popular culture because I want to find out the forces that drove South Korea to become a cultural powerhouse in the past decade and the impact on the regional cultures of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the United States in order to understand in which direction those societies’ values are moving.