텍스트로서 『조선신보』의 한문기사 고찰— 당대 이데올로기와 담론을 재구성하는 메이지 지식인의 그림자 —

Abstract

In 1881, Korea’s first newspaper, the Chosen Shinpo, was published by Japanese in Busan, the first port opened after the Kanghwa Treaty (1876), which opened Korea to Japanese trade. Between five and twelve issues appeared, though the exact number is unknown. The newspaper was published in Japanese and Chinese, with each language making a clear distinction in the readers targeted. Japanese articles were aimed at Japanese traders and dealt with economic matters and other stories of interest written in a tone that disparaged Korea. Articles in Chinese were aimed both at Korean bureaucrats and the educated class, as well as at a Japanese readership of intellectuals and even politicians. Scholarship on the Chosen Shinpo is limited, despite its pioneering role as the first newspaper on the peninsula, and found mainly in surveys of Korean history. Studies of the colonial period have tended to view the newspaper as a means by which the Japanese prepared the grounds for their invasion of Korea. The fact that the newspaper was published by the Japanese in an East Asian treaty port led to it being closely connected with Japan’s imperialist expansion, but this is an oversimplification. At the time the Chosen Shinpo was published, the idea of “statism (nationalism) from the bottom-up” was flourishing under the influence of the democratic rights ideology (自由民権論), which had a considerable impact on Meiji-period intellectual society and journalism. This bottom-up approach can be confirmed in the tone of the Chosen Shinpo’s Chinese articles, and particularly its editorials. While these usually followed policies consistent with those of the Meiji government, they also revealed an antagonistic structure that has since been omitted or neglected in current scholarship. This paper focuses on how the Chosen Shinpo reveals the discourse of the Meiji intellectuals and journalism regarding statism from the bottom-up. Hitherto, the newspaper has been discussed from the viewpoint of Korean history. Seen from the context of Japanese history, this article examines how the newspaper reflects Meiji-period intellectuals’ active participation in contemporary debates and their critical consciousness in the early 1880s.