상연되는 미래 - 북한 형성기 사회주의 문화기획과 문학

Abstract

This article analyzed the aesthetic and political aspirations of North Korea in the mid-to-late 1940s, which influenced the projects of building a decolonized independent state from the perspective of ‘cultural cold war’ and ‘imaginary war’. The period from 1945 to 1950, when World War II ended and Korean War broke out respectively, was the so-called “North Korea Formation Period,” which the foundation of North Korean art and politics began to be formed for the first time. This article focused on the facts that various strategic policies for mass mobilization and political education began to emerge shortly after liberation in August 1945. In this context, the paper analyzed the ways in which various modern technologies were utilized including speech, discourse, publication, literature, and art, which were effective in mobilizing the public. In addition, the activities of the “Chosun-Soviet Cultural Association,” which emerges as a representative Cold War organization, and the political meaning of cultural projects, were to be revealed, and the cases of artists who turned into cultural planners in the process of working as main figures of the organization were illuminated. Furthermore, it was examined how cultural projects advocating “Chosun-USSR Friendship” gave unified political meanings to the signs of “Soviet Union,” “Communism,” and “Kim Il-sung,” and contributed to spreading them to the general public. In particular, the travelogue of the Soviet Union is important in that it is not only the most interesting example of generating these political meanings, but also a autoethnographical text which records the first step toward decolonization. This paper contributes to examining aspects of the cultural cold war in Asia-Eurasia in the 1940s and 1950s, which connects North Korea (Pyongyang), the Soviet Union (Moscow), and China (Beijing). Furthermore, the subject and perspective of this paper imply the possibility that it can be extended to the study of cultural exchanges in other socialist countries. Considering that post-colonial and Cold War studies are mainly focused on relations between South Korea, Japan, or the United States, discussions on North Korean socialist cultural planning are expected to provide a new perspectives for research.