역사대중화와 디지털 역사자료－역사소비의 변곡－

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate correlations between digitized historical materials and the paradigm changes of popularizing history in the Korean history. The popularizing history has gone through four paradigms in Korean History : first, popularizing history happened thanks to “spread of paper” and “development of printing.” In Chosŏn(朝鮮) period, in particular, letterpress and wood-block printing led the spread of knowledge in a mutually supplementary way, which resulted in the conversion of “delivery of memories,” a traditional concept of history, into “historical studies” and “research on the past”; the second paradigm keywords were “modern” and “enlightenment.” The publishing manufacture according to modern technological advancement opened doors to the massive distribution of historical knowledge. The introduction of modern education witnessed the history subject leading the spread of history; the third paradigm represented a meaningful time in the popular spread of Korean history in the aspects of historians’ self-awareness, securement of research diversity, efforts to narrow down the gap between historians and the public, various social activities of historians, and non-experts’ growing writing about history books; and the final paradigm saw the establishment of “digitized historical materials” based on the “development of information technology(IT)” having huge impacts on the production of historical knowledge by historians and non-experts on history. The fourth paradigm was characterized by the subjects of history consumption creating new content separate from the providers of knowledge unlike in the past. This paradigm became an inflection point of history consumption where the trend of popularizing history changed from passive history consumption to active history consumption and production. In the paradigm changes of popularizing history, the major driving force behind the fourth change was the large-scale accumulation and provision of digitized historical materials. This period witnessed the growth of research findings in Korean history both in quantity and quality and the production of various kinds of historical content including videos about history. Historical dramas(TV), in particular, made a 103.7% increase in the 2000s from the 1990s. Although the production of historical films since the 2000s was poor, but there was a meaningful change with 22 historical films making the top 100 box office list(2003~August, 2018). The investigator found the cause of these changes starting in the 2000s in the influences of digitized historical materials mentioned earlier. The increase of digitally constructed historical materials and the growing access to them became the major driving force for the public to move to the stage of producing historical content beyond the consumption stage of history and made the pattern of history consumption hit an inflection point. There is, however, a concern with the possibilities that the original values of historical studies might be misused according to the growing popular consumption and production of history. Historians thus need to provide specialized materials to help the public make their own historical analysis and enrich understanding and communication between historians and consumers through interactions. In addition, they need to accumulate the research findings of outcomes according to the changed pattern of popularizing history by analyzing, sorting out, categorizing, and defining a variety of history content in continuous production.