개항기 ‘체육’ 담론의 수용과 특징

Abstract

This paper analysis the characteristics and the shaping up of Korean modern physical education(PE) discourse. The author tries to elaborate the adoption of various discourse related to the physical education(PE) in detail and asserts that the diplomatic envoys to Japan in 1881 was the first occasion to understand and to adopt physical education to the Korean Government. Soon Koreans began to accumulate deep knowledge on the physical education through newspapers, reports and books written by overseas student and foreign envoys. The typical Korean modern physical education acquired the characteristics of nationalism and modernism as the government officials and intellectuals found it useful in making disciplined and healthy body which was required in the industrial sector and military unit. The Education Department in Gapo Government adopted military training in the high school PE class. This was to train high school boys as modern pre-soldiers in times of trouble and national ordeal. For that reason, they had employed retired military personnel as the teachers for the PE class. On the whole the author asserts that PE class was used to internalized royalty, patriotism and nationalism to students and was also used as a means to make 'modern men with modern body'. Which meant to train human body to response readily to the orders and be faithful to the Emperor. However the patriotic intellectuals tried to train our body to response to the orders of the nation state. This kind of norm and discourse was propagated through school PE class. The author also argues that this PE class was also used as the infiltration ground for imperial countries. For example, in Russian School led by former Russian colonel, trained Korean youth and later used them in Russian military espionage during the Russo-Japanese War.