김태오의 소년운동론

Abstract

This paper looked into the youth movement of Kim Tae-oh. After his devotion to an activist group while forming a youth movement group in Gwangju, he was also involved in the local youth movement. After coming up to Seoul, he made a rapid rise as the prominent theorist of the time. His will for reformation was a practice of his will to remove the colonial condition forcibly imposed by Japanese rule. He avoided any uncritical application of theories introduced from Japan, and instead he insisted on a movement theory based on the special colonial conditions. That theory focused on the work of helping to restore the original personalities of youths in an environment where their natural “innocence” had been damaged. Thanks to his organizational logic, the youth movement theory became systemized. Even during his stay in Japan for study, he tried to produce an agenda for youth movements. That was concretized by the development of a youth literary movement and film and play activities. His trial stemmed from his pure will to seek the revival of a youth movement and to pursue the unification of activist groups. Although he lost his integrity at the end of the Japanese colonial period, his dedication to the youth movement was great; therefore, it is necessary to correct the existing youth movement history that is overly focused on Bang Jeong-hwan and etc.