잡지 『신민』에 나타난 ‘제국’ 인식과 재현 양상

Abstract

The government-manufactured media 『Shinmin』 is the data that can confirm the preliminary signs of the colonial policy and the argument and strategy of the Japanese imperial discourse which was carried out in the midst of the colonial public opinion. 『Shinmin』 greatly regulates the empire's self-consciousness to form an empire discourse. In the field of 『Shinmin』, 'empire' was limited to the Western powers except Japan, and the use of 'imperialism' was completely suppressed. Through the so-called ‘imperialism without empire’ discourse, 『Shinmin』 spread the identity of imperial Japan and sought to avoid the negative public opinion of imperialism. It was 'capital' and 'civilization' which utilized it as logical starting point. By explaining imperialism with the economic phenomenon of 'expansion of capital' and the logic of human development called 'civilization', 『Shinmin』 argued that imperial expansion and colonial invasion are inevitable and universally feasible phenomenon. On this basis, 『Shinmin』 has attempted to shift the world order to the Japanese empire through the so-called 'period of reversal' discourse since 1927. Imperial discourse spoke its legitimacy in a circuitous and indirect way, and responded and penetrated to the colonial public opinion. The empire discourse was a path for Koreans to learn and embody self-consciousness of empire by themselves, and was a gigantic device that encouraged them to gaze and discover themselves with the eyes of the empire. So the Koreans became 'the cosmopolitan' and 'the colonial people' at the same time. This study raised the necessity to look at the identity of the 『Shinmin』, which was evaluated as 'elimination of politics and biased discourse on living', within 'the politics of the empire' by expanding it to the 'world' rather than the inside of Joseon.