역내 교통의 (불)가능성 혹은 냉전기 아시아 지역 기행

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explain the re-organization of regionalism by examining the Asian travel journals written by South Korean elites in the post-colonial era (1945~1960). Such re-organization concerns the demarcation of ‘I-We’ beyond the nation-state. In other words, I looked into how the sign of former ‘Orient/Asia’ changed when it was put in the process through which cold war narrative spread out on a global scale. Through the analysis of the travel journals, it became clear that the most conspicuous change was that ‘Asia’ as an organic unit had been rapidly dissolved with the urgent agenda of making a nation-state. What the travelers witnessed in Asia was the ‘post-colonial’ power of the U.S., and ubiquitous universality of America located at the core of cold war narrative. Not every newly born nation-state, however, regarded the U.S. the same way South Korea did. The cold war narrative was being differently appropriated incompetition with the post-colonial orientation in many other Asian countries. This is the complicated context in which the travel journals for Asia were located. In reality, the travel journalsproduced after the Korean War made a symbolic tie among the few anti-communist countries instead of a collective-security system that ended in failure among all Asian countries. In short, what the travel journals for Asia showed was the serious breakup of Asia in dichotomy of comrade/enemy that originated from the excess appropriation of cold war narrative in South Korea. A comrade is made by the existence of an enemy. For example, India, the leader of non-allied Asian countries is one typical case that travel journals represented as an enemy in a cold war narrative. The backwardness of Asia was the only thing which was regarded in common among Asian countries within the context of the modernization theory that originated from the U.S in 1950's. With the failure of political solidarity, what remained was the gaze of economic exploitation for Asia. In the South Korean society, Asia was the name of those who were gazed upon.