해방과 개념, 맹세하는 육체의 언어들 ― 미군정기 한국의 언어정치학, 영문학도 시인들과 신어사전을 중심으로

Abstract

During the US Military Government period of South Korea(1945-1948), the linguistic sphere of South Korea was divided into three new linguistic rule – English, neologisms, and vernacular language besides Japanese that still demonstrated its power as a mediator. The regime of liberated South Korea, which was a continuum of post-colony or neo-colony, can be described as a regime ruled by “the government of the interpreter” with a broad sense of translation. The system of interpretation as the colonial technology was not an immediate transfer from Japanese to English, but was rather possible through a mediating, Japanese and pro-Japanese social class. The origins of linguistic phenomena in this era can be categorized as follows: law and system; custom [vogue] and livelihood; and social science and oath. 1) The language that aimed at socialism challenged the English hegemony of the US Military Government, which was the language of law and system, and this language was circulated through the dictionaries of neologisms or pamphlets under titles like “–ism, the social, science.” And the regimes of South and North Korea that symbolized the division of the United States and the Soviet Union accelerated the massive circulation of new words that were in vogue. For example, the linguistic sphere that shared the foreign expressions of greetings, such as “good morning,” “очень спасибо,” or “thank you very much,” was categorized as modern language or contemporary language. In this sense, the form of the law became secularized as the form of custom [vogue]. 2) It was the language of so-called –ism that occupied the seventy percent of the neologisms in South Korea during the US MilitaryGovernment period. The neologisms that were mostly related with socialism were induced to become a kind of “oath” based on theirscientific or sociological analysis. These neologisms expanded their expected horizon through the concept of pioneers. These words of –ism, which built the foundation of political promise throughout history, created a kind of commune, or an association concluded with oaths. The civil war-like situation of liberated Korea was a world of oath where the liquidation of the past, such as the issues of pro-Japanese or collaborators, and various other –isms were combined. The vocabularies of oath, including socialism, communism, and democracy, formed the association of the present us, whose power enabled the people’s solidarity. This language of oath was represented through a living voice, i.e. slogans. In this revolutionary situation of liberated Korea, oaths and slogans were combined with custom and everyday life itself. 3) The recovery of “urimal” (literally means “our language”). Its concept is close to vernacular language, or near the vernacular rules of thelanguage of the time, aside from the linguistic situation of law, custom, and oath. A nation (people), society, democracy and socialism fill the void of urimal in their own ways. The signified of the signifier, the vernacular language, was decided by the result of the civil warbetween the nation and society or democracy and socialism. As a result, the concept of urimal spreads to both sides. The belief of thevernacular language seems antagonistic toward the foreign languages such as English or Russian. However, this was not always the case. For example, Rhee Syngman who resided in America for forty years and Kim Il Sung who used to be a People’s Commissar of the Chinese Communist Party and also a captain in the Russian Red Army took chief positions in South and North Korea, respectively. Rhee wasfluent in English, and Kim was able to converse with Stalin and Mao Zedong without interpreters. In addition, these leaders advocated theexclusive use of hangul, or the Korean language. An exploding increase of conceptual words and neologisms had to pass the self-purification process in order to recover vernacular language. During this self-purification procedure, a political and linguistic subjectof ‘genius people/mass,’ which was associated with the discourse of ‘new words or new nation’, was discovered. The unique combinationof concepts, lives, foreignness and uniqueness was examined and approved by these newly born agents of “genius people.” Kim Ki-rimfound both cosmopolitanism and vernacularity from these hybrid neologisms. In Kim’s understanding, considering the people or mass,the linguistic condition of the time could be interpreted as vernacular cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitan vernacularism. He concluded thelinguistic collision between the educational authorities of the US military government and the “genius people” as a battle between thegrammar and the literature: “While grammar endeavored to create the law of the language, the literature devoted to converge the livingwords in reality.”The era of promise: The era when the concept created the struggle, when the concept of struggle changed the real itself; the era when the slogans that people cried out were not separate from their concepts; the era when the oath still preserved its will, performance, and ethics. However, this era of liberated concepts did not last long. With the emergence of discourse against Others, such as anti-communism or the Reds, the linguistic experience in liberated Korea disappeared behind the underground language of activists or remained as merely partisan affiliated language. For these people who spoke the hidden language, the republic of Korea was not so different from theJapanese Empire. The people who avoided becoming Japanese military conscription became partisans, and the language that once appeared on the ground now barely remained in the buried documents, testimonies, and literary works like river novels. For people who continued their thoughts in the realm of ‘society’ and ‘science’, the liberation space of South Korea (1945 – 1948) would be a suspension period between the two prolonged colonial systems, or the period that was long enough for the (post)colonial rule and legacy as an ansien régime to return.