해방 직후 북조선에서 지방자치기관의 조직

Abstract

Around the end of the war, provincial governors who had served the Japanese Governor-General in North Korea sought to forestall social turmoil by creating an association for maintaining public order with right-wing nationalists. Instead, nationalists banded together to form an organization aiming to foster autonomy in the newly independent nation. Bourgeois nationalists took charge of the majority of these local self-government bodies, variably called “preparation committees for the founding of the country” and “local-government committees.” The leadership of the Soviet occupying forces in North Korea restructured the local self-government bodies into people’s government committees by combining the bodies with Communist organizations in the corresponding areas on a one-to-one ratio. The Soviet authorities then transferred administrative power to the people’s government committees under an occupation policy manifestly intended to strengthen the left. The Soviet army desired to replace anti-Soviet nationalists in the local self-government bodies with communists by ousting the former. To that end, the Soviet army endeavored to unify the organizing principles of local self-government bodies and reconstitute each class of self-government bodies through elections. As a result, each class of self-government bodies transformed into people’s committees dominated by the left wing and excluding anti-Soviet nationalists opposed to the Soviet trusteeship.