단군개념으로 본 기원담론의 상징과 심적효과

Abstract

Every nation in the world has a myth that shows its origin. This myth contains a linguistic system, and its content contains the process of ethnic formation, its significance, and its ideological framework. ‘Dangun’ is a discourse that has been transmitted from ancient times to the present day. Throughout the process of transmission, it has been interpreted in the direction of expressing the collective consciousness of each era, and encompasses concepts ranging from mythology, history, philosophy, literature to religion. This paper examines the discourse of ‘Dangun’ in modern Korea and Japan. During the modern period, Japanese claimed that Japan and Korea emerged from the same ancestor based on Japanese mythology. On the other hand, the reason denying Dangun was that it came from a flawed argument by Buddhist monks. Including Dangun in Japanese mythology or denying it is due to the influence of Dangun entrenched in the unconsciousness of the nation. Therefore, the discourse of Dangun in Japan is formed to colonize Korea according to its purpose. Choi Nam-seon’s discourse on Dangun began as a criticism of Japan’s Dangun theory. He studied mythology and mythologized Dangun. For him, mythology was the collective unconsciousness necessary for the formation of a modern national state. The discourse on Dangun during the Japanese colonial period in Korea had a symbolic significance in identifying the entity of the nation. In this way, the discourse on Dangun in Korea and Japan aimed at the psychological effects based on collective unconsciousness of the nation. Therefore, as the collective unconsciousness of the modern nation is encapsulated in ‘Dangun’ and develops a shared system of meaning and reasoning, ‘Dangun’ is actualized.