식민지기 오락문제와 전통오락 통제에 관한 일고찰 -줄다리기 사례를 중심으로-

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the control of traditional plays during the Joseon era through analysis on conflict over a tug of war during the colonial period. In particular, the fact that a tug of war was meaningful as a traditional play during the Joseon Dynasty when there was no decent entertainment was examined. The popularity of a tug of war as a type of ‘popular entertainment’ or ‘exercise (sports)’ backs up this contention, which symbolically represents the historical context that traditional plays were maintained or promoted. For example, after facing a problem of ‘the absence of entertainment’, a necessity of popular entertainment emerged. As a result, a social semantic network on a tug of war was reconstructed accordingly. A tug of war, a leading group play during the Joseon Dynasty along with seokjeon (“stone battle”), was traditional entertainment which displayed dynamic ups and downs by forming diverse conflicts under colonial rules. In other words, based on ‘conservativeness’ and ‘dailiness’ in which social and cultural meanings were overlapped, a tug of war developed into a dual type, not just a positive or negative one only. Furthermore, a tug of war held on tradition to a certain extent through compromise despite collision with ‘coloniality’ and ‘modernity’ while the related complicated conflicts emerged. In terms of a view on a tug of war, in other words, an overlapped boundary between permit and prohibition or between positive and negative aspects was formed. In fact, the desires of ‘colonial ruling power’, ‘literate stratum of Joseon people’ represented by the Dong-A Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo and ‘the masses under colonial domination’ were entangled. A context that conflict over a tug of war didn’t just diminish or disappear but developed in a more dynamic network reveals one side of Joseon society during the colonial period.