미국․한국의 냉전 지식 연결망과 북한 연구의 학술장 진입

Abstract

The study aims to analyze how North Korean studies entered the academic field as a school of thought in the 1960s. In the 1950s, unscientific discourses focused on demonizing North Korea were distributed by intellectuals who crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. However, as systematic understanding about North Korea is required in the 1960s, scholars in the U.S. and Korea began to conduct academic research on North Korea. Institutional and theoretical framework of North Korean studies in the early stage was heavily influenced by Chinese studies among Asian studies in the U.S. Such American experts in Chinese studies as John K. Fairbank and Robert A. Scalapino cooperated with such Korean scholars in Korea and the U.S. experienced in staying in China as Jun-yeop Kim, Dae-sook Suh and Chong-sik Lee to lay the framework for North Korean studies. However, the cooperation was a sort of an inclined playground where the U.S. played a leading role in theories, funds and data and Koreans or Korean Americans provided detailed knowledge based on asymmetrical relationships. In the early times, North Korean studies led to a theoretical foundation where Soviet Union theories, modernization theories and orientalism were merged based on the premise of anticommunism. There were variations in North Korean studies in the U.S. and Korea. The U.S. tended to understand communist states in Asia including North Korea in the context of nationalism. On the other hand, Koreans tended to undervalue nationalistic tendency in communist states as a strategy for communist revolution. The variation was only a difference within the knowledge of the cold war and was basically confined to the U.S. hegemony in knowledge.