북한의 그림책 장르인식과 아동 그림책에 나타난 탈이념성

Abstract

This study set out to examine North Korea’s perceptions of the picture book genre and analyze the characteristics of picture books for children by examining picture books in North Korea with a special focus on the anti-ideology of North Korean picture books to overcome a sense of difference between North and South Korea. In North Korean picture books, pictures include cartoons. Since there is no clear distinction between picture books and cartoons in North Korea with regard to the perception of the picture book genre, the researchers are in confusion in the field. The hybridity of the genre itself should, however, be understood as a characteristic of North Korean picture books instead of forcing the South Korean-style concept on North Korea. The North Korean picture books for children whose publication was concentrated from the 1980s to the middle 1990s, in particular, offer texts that can be approached from an artistic perspective in terms of relations between texts and pictures and the completion level of pictures. The present study examined the North Korean-style understanding of a medium of art called picture books with a focus on these texts. It is clear that many picture books for children have a primary goal of conveying the virtues of refinement required by the North Korean society, but the picture books of antiideological nature around “old storybooks with pictures” are worth receiving attention as they will be able to promote the recovery of homogeneity between North and South Korea and serve as a bridge in future relations between two Koreas.