초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Throughout Japan’s colonial rule over Korea, Japanese of various stances called for “assimilation” with multiple intentions. The Japanese Government－General of Korea in the 1910s, the topic of this paper, also consistently promoted ‘assimilation’ by Koreans. That assimilation, however, was not intended to be a “Japanization of Korean national identity” as it has been understood to be in previous studies. The assimilation intended by the Government－General consisted of demanding personal loyalty from Koreans to the Japanese Emperor and converting this loyalty to a submission to the colonial rule (“subject” conversion). Specifically, the Japanese Government－General of Korea first established the sovereign and subject relationship between the Japanese Emperor and Korean people based on the reasoning that “as members of the Japanese Empire, Koreans must pledge loyalty to the Emperor who is the sovereign of the Japanese Empire.” It also demanded for loyalty to the Emperor with the reasoning that “one must thank and repay the royal favor,” and at the same time concentrated the energy for “filial piety” toward “loyalty” by asserting the logic that “loyalty and filial piety are both an expression of the same devotion.” Furthermore, by applying to Korean people the falsehood that “the Japanese Empire is the property of the Japanese Emperor” and identifying “loyalty to the sovereign” with “patriotism,” it tried to convert personal loyalty to the Emperor into submission to the Japanese Empire. The Japanese Government－General of Korea in the 1910s, as discussed above, did not apply the ethnic nationalism of Japan to Koreans. That is, while the Government－General tried to homogenize Koreans with Japanese in terms of the “subject” conversion process, it did not attempt to Japanize the national identity of Koreans and instead “tolerated” the ethnicity of Koreans. This does not mean that it took a position of cultural relativism, since the ethnicity tolerated by the Government－General was a homogeneously “uncivilized” but “good－natured” people that the Government－General itself had worked to create. Together with such a position, when consideration is given to the fact that Koreans were left in a state of having no rights, the “subject” conversion of Koreans can be said to be a conversion to “imperial subjects” disparate from Japanese subjects. Through such “assimilation”=“imperial subject” conversion, the Japanese Government－General of Korea in the 1910s attempted to stably rule Korea, which served as a bridgehead to the continent. This attempt ended in failure, however, because the Government－General was not able to persuasively explain to Koreans why the Japanese Emperor was the sovereign and could manufacture loyalty to the Emperor as the sovereign and the center of “imperial subject” conversion only through the rule of Japanese Empire. Moreover, since the existence of a sovereign was essential for the national consciousness of the common Korean people, such deficiency of “imperialsubject” conversion had a greater critical effect.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Japanese Government－General of Korea, assimilation, imperial subject, Enlightenment Statement, moral training textbook, harmony of loyalty and filial piety, loyalty and patriotism, sovereign－subject justification theory, sovereign－people same root theory, ethnic nationalism
