‘오뻬꾼’과 ‘조선사절단’, 그리고 모스크바의 추억 - 해방기 소련기행의 문화정치학

Abstract

This paper focused on "visiting to the Soviet Union" of people in the political and cultural circles in 1946, when North Korea’s propaganda projects were in full swing, and examined the individual and collective positions surrounding this event as well as the way the literary people then were involved in the process of formulating the image of the Soviet Union at the time of liberation. Such people’s visit to the Soviet Union showed that although the power and influence of the Soviet military administration then was instrumental in creating the North Korean regime, the positive image of the Soviet Union could not have been so vastly expanded only within the domain of the political norm but also within cultural areas and within the realm of daily life, without the cooperation between North Korea and the Soviet Union. Moreover, the image of the Soviet Union that was created at that time was initially proposed to explore the friendly relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union, but ultimately, it was what came about when North Korea’s political system was in the process of being established and adjusted. The narrative of self-planning was being formed in line with the shift to cosmopolitanism, through the medium of new spatial discussions and emotional support that was created while partly monopolizing the political imagination formed under the colonial rule. On the other hand, the travelogue writers struggled to reestablish "Joseon" as an independent local entity and assumed that the "other democratic countries" and "the world" belong to a higher dimension, but the representations of the others were incessantly distorted and oscillated and were presented in the text as a mirror reflecting the representations of Joseon. In addition, the leakage of the gap between clear rhetoric and realistic description could not be completely prevented. In short, "Sovietism" was the present that was stuck between the struggle to cut off the relations with the past and the efforts to figure out the future that had not yet been determined then, and the travelogues on which such political consciousness and unconsciousness were projected were more of "a narrative of the will" than a record of realities.