카이로선언의 기초와 한반도 독립조항의 의미–전후 단순 분리 독립의 기원–

Abstract

The Cairo Declaration proclaimed on December 1, 1943, is extremely important for Korea in the meaning that the declaration was the first legal and political pledge for the independence of Korea. Above all, the declaration referred to rhetoric such as “violence,” “greed,” “take,” “enslavement,” and other terms with regard to the region which was planned to be stripped from Japan after the war. As a result, Korean society has regarded the declaration not only as the simple promise of independence, but also as the grounds which clarified that Japanese rule against Korea had been illegal and unjust. In other words, this interpretation means that Korean society understands that the declaration confirmed that Korean independence was the “liberation” from the illegal and unjust Japanese rule. Further, in Korean society the Cairo Declaration has often been used as the grounds for stating that Japanese sovereignty over Dokdo Island has been stripped and returned to Korea. But an emotional understanding such as this, which has become standard in Korean society, has never been sufficiently verified by academic analysis in international diplomatic history. Of course, several recent studies have greatly contributed to the analysis of the drafting process of the declaration, but those studies did not elucidate whether the declaration actually clarified the character of Korean independence just as Korean society has understood. That is why this study analyzes this problem by focusing on the drafting of the phrases related to Korean independence. As a result, this article clarifies that the sentence “Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed” in the declaration was not related with the problems of Korea’ s independence. It also is highly probable that the phrase “mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea” was used as a last resort for avoiding presenting the grounds of Korea’s independence because the United States had recognized the Annexation Treaty in 1910 which determined that Korea should be a part of the territory under Japanese sovereignty. That is to say, this article concludes that it is not appropriate to interpret that the Cairo Declaration confirmed that Korean independence was the liberation from the Japanese illegal and unjust rule.