문화적 애도와 민족공동체: 탈독재기 ‘애도문화론’을 위한 시론

Abstract

Mourning, a behavior that one grieves over loss such as the death of the beloved,usually demands an unconventional ethical reflection and re-orientation. Culturalmourning, which mourns historical losses through cultural representations, thusimparts social, political significance by providing a privileged opportunity to reexaminea social community's identity. After the demise of the Chun Doo Hwan military regime in 1987, cultural mourninghas emerged forcibly in the Korean cultural landscape. Mega-hit movies such asSopyonje(1993) and TaeGukGi: Brotherhood Of War(2004), and popular televisionshows such as The Song of the Mother(1989) and Morae Sigye(1995) are goodexamples of it. In the post-dictatorship Korea, cultural mourning has consequentlyfostered a peculiar culture, which can be termed as the culture of mourning. Theculture of mourning has represented minjung's losses under the authoritarian regimeas mournable and has ever since grown into a strong polar of Korean popularculture. Its characteristics, that is temporal specificity and common subject matter,enable us to theorise this cultural strand in conjunction to Korea-specific contexts. Under the military dictatorship spanned from 1960s to 1980s, public mourningwas hardly allowed against the ruling ideologies, spearheaded by anticommunismand the tenet emphasizing economic growth. Common people's sufferings and sacrificescould not be mourned when the ruling power would not allow to do. In this reason the culture of mourning that has emerged since the late-1980s can be seen as abelated mourning of the repressed minjung's losses. Belated cultural mourning in the post-dictatorship Korea has not only conferredsocial recognition to the hitherto unmourned losses but also enabled Koreans toimagine their nation in a new way. For minjung's losses thereby have been inscribedinto the nation's memory with full legitimacy. Previously the nation was seen internallydivided between the authoritarian state-power and the people. The repeated successesof cultural mourning eventually eroded the officially sanctioned national identity. Instead Koreans, by virtue of the culture of mourning, could have a renewed, betternational identity grounded on a novel imagining of a better nation.