구한말 기독교학교 교과서에 나타난 민족의식(1885-1910)

Abstract

In the last decades of Chosen Korea, it has been argued, the Christian schools inspired the national consciousness into the Korean students. This study aims to understand the national consciousness as presented in the textbooks used at the class of these Christian schools at the time and to justify the above-stated argument. For this the present study first tries to define the meaning of the two terms, the nation and the national consciousness, and then to explore both the way that the national consciousness is nurtured at the class and the way this consciousness is applied in the Korean society the students are situated in. It finally tries to reconstruct the elements constituting the national consciousness. To speak from the result of this study, the nation is a group of persons who have resided in a specific region from generation to generation constructing and managing a society and a state. The national consciousness is the mind loving, longing, protecting, and serving their own country(aemonbuik, 愛慕扶翼). This mind in turn comes out both from the soil handed down to the nation for generations and from the history having developed on this soil. Koreans are a nation having preserved a soil and a history for long time since Dan-gun Chosen. The national consciousness has revived weakly or strongly depending upon the external conditions surrounding the Korean people. A strong national consciousness is in acute need for Koreans at the time in order to preserve their county's national sovereignty in the world dominated by the law of 'the stronger prey upon the weaker'(yagyukgangsik, 弱肉强食). The national consciousness nurtured and inspired by the Christian schools through the textbooks is the mind loving, longing, protecting, and serving their own country. The elements constituting the national consciousness are the awareness of the historical identity of Korean people, the confidence in Korea and Korean people, the sense of mission for social progress, the spirit to fight against foreign enemies, the will to get strong for recovering the national sovereignty. The so nurtured consciousness motivates the students to preserve one's health, to behave rightly, and to study hard, and thereby to strengthen the body, the virtue, and the wisdom, which would lead to develop their country to be strong.