해양권역의 재인식과 ‘태평양지역연구’로의 전환

Abstract

This study emphasizes the viewpoint of Jeju Island as part of the Pacific rim and avoidance of restriction to consider it only as an island of East Asia. The Korean academic society discusses the Asia but actually excludes the Pacific. This is a result of insufficiency of ocean centered thinking. The Pacific is a historical invention of imperialism, and the classification of a cultural area is also an invention of the West. The notions of the Pacific reigon and Pacific people are the product after the World WarⅡ. The classification of a cultural area was just a creature of western onlookers who wanted to acquire about the Pacific. Even the names of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia are all inventions of Europeans. As the Japanese imperialism invade to the Pacific, the name of the 'Namyang Gun-do'(南洋群島) was created. The Jeju Island and the Korean Peninsula are the members of the northwest Pacific area. In the oceanic history, it is required to clarify its own area called 'the northwest Pacific' and this has another meaning different from the expression of the northeast Asia. The renewed appreciation of the Pacific not as a zone but as a trench will lead a renewed appreciation of the Jeju Island not as a 'island belonging to a land' but as an 'island which moved ahead one more step to the Pacific' even in the understanding method. Furthermore, the full-scale understanding and solidarity about the Pacific is a beginning from now on. What our academic circle requires is performing the area study for the Pacific as a clear area, namely as the widest sea area in the world. The past exclusive devotion to the political economics of the Pacific study should be avoided to have a conversion of a viewpoint to move ahead to 'the Pacific Riberal arts'.