캐나다 선교사들의 북간도 한인사회 인식 －합방 후부터 경신참변 대응시기까지를 중심으로

Abstract

As many Koreans immigrated to Manchuria to avoid a famine at the end of the Daehan Empire and Japan's annexation of Korea, following the Korean immigrants, the missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in Canada who had been working in Ham Kyung province went into North Kando and established a mission station in Yong Jung in 1913. In the correspondences to the Board of Foreign Mission of their homeland denomination, Canadian missionaries described the religious and school education work as being pursued much more actively and progressively in North Kando than Korea proper under Japanese direct rule. On the contrary, regarding the Japanese government, they reported as negative and suppressive to Korean modernization, hostile to Christianity, disregardful to human rights, and even so brutal that they committed atrocities. At the time of the Independence Movement on March 1st(1919), the Vice Secretary of the Board of Mission, came to Seoul and then stood at the forefront of exposure of Japanese cruelty. When the atrocities to the North Kando Koreans took place by Japanese troops(Gyeong Sin Cham Byeon, 1920), the missionaries in Yong Jung played the role of the only witnesses. On the basis of the missionaries' reports, the Board had a long dispute with the Japanese government, who blamed the missionaries for agitating the Korean's rebellion against Japan. The Board maintained that the missionaries never intervened in political affairs, that the exposure of the terrors had no matter with the political affairs, and that Japanese authorities ignored the diplomatic channels and threatened the missionaries. However, the Board hoped to compromise with the Japanese government to carry on the mission work, and thus, at last, they altered the issue of the Independent Movement to the reform of colonial rule methods and the enforcement of the Korea-Japan relationship. At the time of the Gyeong Sin Cham Byeon, the Board reconfirmed their policy of opposition to atrocity and the disapproval of Korean independence. The Missionaries in Yong Jung, however, had a stronger consciousness of the Koreans' needs to be supported regarding the natives' voluntary effort for modernization and to be protected from Japanese interference.