일제강점기<부세일반(府勢一般)>을 통해 본 북한 지역의 출판문화 실태 연구

Abstract

This paper aims to examine various aspects of publication culture of North Korea during Japanese colonial era. It started from the awareness of the problem that while there are comparatively many studies on publication culture of South Korea, studies on North Korea are very rare. In order to understand the real aspects of publication culture of North Korea, based on the administrative district of North Korea that the Japanese Government-General of Korea decided during Japanese colonial era, this study examined and summarized the circumstances related to publication in 11 bu(府), the major cities of each province, through data such as the general outline of bu(府) tax released by the Japanese Government-General of Korea and each bu(府), regional guide books, registers of merchants and craftsmen. These data were made by the Japanese Government-General of Korea, local public offices, and the chamber of commerce and industry, and they refer to the real conditions of each region and deal with printing business, publishing business, and book dealers. Though they differ from region to region, they offer detailed description on company name, location, name of representative, identity(whether the person is from the region or out of town), and capital or present pictures of the stores. Publication culture was active in each region and publishing was conducted with fairly big amount of capital. Meanwhile, these facilities were located in old cities, market places, and places with big floating population. This paper focused on understanding the current state so there are many aspects to be supplemented. First of all, bu(府) tax that was made in county should be examined and the list of publications made by each publishing company should be reviewed. Also, the circumstances of publishing business following the closure of publishing companies due to the pulp price hike in 1937 and regional publication statistics of North Korea should be examined. Reviewing publication culture of North Korea and overall aspects is not limited to North Korea. Studying publication culture of North Korea during Japanese colonial era is significant in that we can expand the scope of Korea’s publishing companies and literary history and understand the real conditions of diverse publication and reading culture from premodern to modern era. Concerning this topic, follow-up studies are required in the future.