‘민족’에서 ‘인민’으로 가는 길: 고정옥 『조선민요연구』의 보편과 특수

Abstract

This paper focuses on the analysis of Chosŏn Minyo Yŏn’gu(Research on Korean Folk Songs, 1949) by Ko Chŏng’ok(1911~1968), which systemized practically all of the pre-existing folklore scholarship. The paper aims at finding out how Ko’s folk song discourse was formed in close relationship with the process of the new ethno-national (minjok) identity formation at that time. The objective Ko had in mind was the creation of ethno-national literature from below, on the basis of “masses”(minjung) songs (folk songs), with an eye upon the precedents of national culture movements in Western Europe/Japan. Ko also strove to discover the value of the folk songs related to their cultural content, their “native originality”, or consistency, as opposed to (modern) literature defined by “civilization” or worldwide universality. In such a way, he wished to overcome what he saw as “underdeveloped” conditions of the Korean literature. However, after the 1945 Liberation, it was the historical value of past’s folk songs that was given priority in South Korea; Ko’s attempt to relate the folk songs to the creation of the new ethno-national culture could bear fruits in North Korea, which used the Soviet movement for folk songs’ modernization, grounded in Socialist Realism, as its reference. At the point, in order to promote his project of ethno-national culture creation from below in a systematic way, Ko- who went North - introduced the concept of “people’s(inmin) art”, which included not only folk songs but all the other products of collective linguistic creativeness as well. However, by identifying the “people” as dominant power, identical with Party and its leader, this project easily allowed itself to be co-opted by the nationalism from above. In this framework, “people’s art” and literature were seen as mutually related, fusing and developing together, rather than opposing each other. It can be said that Korean literature’s particularity reverted in this way to the “universal law of the development of literature”.