3・1운동 이전 민주공화제의 수용과 확산

Abstract

In Korea, republicanism was accepted narrowly as a system of democratic republic combined with democracy. And its development went through the process of making the nation-state discourses encroach on monarchy gradually rather than accompanying a revolution. The acceptance of democratic republic system in Korea was grounded upon the recognition of nation-state. The Independence Club(Dongnip Hyophoe) has made it possible to imagine a modern nation on the basis of national integration. In this effort, it distinguished the notion of the state from that of the dynasty, by instigating and expanding the slogan of the ’Chung’gun Aeguk’ (a stepping stone to the ideology of loyalty to the dynasty) to the patriotism of the nation state. The debate on republican system was officially banned during the whole period of the Daehan Empire. But with the forced deportation of Emperor Gojong, the issue was revived with the consideration of the democratic republic system as the most desirable political system. Nonetheless, the intellectual society advocated a gradual reform and regarded the adoption of democratic republican system as premature. It was no exception to the New People’s Association(Sinminhoe), which had been accepted as a representative of republicanism. The members of the New People’s Association recognized that the task of restoring the national sovereignty would be much more important than that of turning into the front line of the movement against the Imperial Regime. In addition, from the standpoint of the social evolution doctrine on which they were based, the state of the Daehan Empire had to be preserved as the subject of competition. This deferred plan for republicanism was realized in the discourse on ’New Korea’ initiated by the Korean American community after the fall of the Daehan empire. The Korean American community accepted the fall of the Daehan Empire as the beginning of democratic New Korea. Such a discourse led to the conceptual development of doctrines on republican democracy and provisional government construction, and set up New Korea as the subject of survival competition, which could eventually allow the independence movement to be ignited again.