초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The following paper approaches the issue of memory politics in a unified Korea by focusing on what is likely to be the most contentious problem, namely, what to do with the numerous statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il that now stand in North Korea. Referring both to recent South Korean research as well as the historical experiences of Germany and Estonia, the paper argues for a compromise between those two countries’ approaches. According to this proposal, the central government would remove most of the problematic statues in a discreet and orderly manner, as opposed to the German practice of letting regional and municipal governments decide their fate. But in contrast to the central-government intransigence that led to deadly rioting in Estonia in 2007, a few statues of Kim Il Sung as a young anti-Japanese fighter should be left where they are, albeit with new plaques, in emulation of the German solution, that subject them to re-interpretation.
