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Study of Silhak in North Korea - Focusing on "Yeonam Park Ji-won" of Kim Ha-myong in 1950s -

  • The Review of Korean History
  • 2008, (90), pp.187-228
  • Publisher : The Historical Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Youngsoon Chung 1

1한국학중앙연구원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The two Koreas divided since liberation from Japanese occupation have established different historical views despite sharing historical experiences from when the two had been one nation due to ideological differences. As a result, historians from the South and North evaluate historical facts differently. However, historians from both Koreas agree much on the late Joseon Dynasty and Silhak studies. The late Joseon Dynasty was a crucial period to both South and North Korean historians in abolishing the historical views set by Japanese colonialists. In North Korea, the era was dealt with based on Marxism and focusing on capitalist relationships. Meanwhile, in the South, apart from identity theory, the period is perceived as a transitional time when feudalism dismantled and capitalism began to emerge. In addition, Silhak has been historically valued as a innovative and advanced ideology in North Korea from the 1950s. South korean scholars also regard Silhak positively as "modern-oriented." Accordingly, the present study deals with how Silhak is perceived specifically in North Korea and how the views have changed over time. I particular, the North Korean interpretation of traditional history in the process of building a socialist system has been analyzed based on North Korean scholar Kim Ha-myeong's Yeonam Park Ji-won (1955). In South Korea, the disclosure of North Korean materials from the late 1980s when democratization began boosted studies on North Korea. But obtaining materials is not easy and so studies face restrictions in expanding to diverse fields. Even the majority of materials recently acquired are propagandist materials made since the 1970s when North Korea's Juche-Ideology took ground to make it still difficult to overcome restrictions in North Korean studies. This is not completely irrelevant to North Korea's destruction of historical views before the establishment of Juche-Ideology and mass production of studies supporting the North Korean system. Research materials before Juche-Ideology have been banned and discarded. As so, it is very difficult to find materials of historical studies conducted in North Korea from a rather scientific perspective from the 1950s and 60s. Regarding this, analysis of studies on realism in North Korea through Kim Ha-myung's Yeonam Park Ji-won printed in 1955 will show how differently historical facts were viewed before and after the founding of the Juche-Ideology.

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