해방 전후 민주주의‘들’의 변주

Abstract

At the time of liberation, ‘Democracy’ was a living, breathing conceptencompassing a wide variety of subtle interpretations which were subject tovigorous debate. Whatever their political stance, whether left or right oranywhere in-between, all who were interested in joining the grand task ofcreating a new country for the Korean people had to embrace some form ofpurportedly democratic ideology. All political identities were based aroundthis concept, and all factions had to be ready to defend their democraticcredentials. The left wing proclaimed ‘People’s Democracy’ and ‘Progressive Democracy’in support of their own philosophy of unification, but in order to distance themselves from the right, they presented these ideas within aframe of democracy vs. anti-democracy. Meanwhile, the right wing neverconsidered democracy as a unifying value, and instead used it to attack theleft by trying to propagate a frame of democracy vs. communism, andaligning themselves with the U.S. military government. It was only themoderates who proposed democracy as a genuinely unifying principle:witnessing the deep divisions within Korean society, both moderate leftistsand moderate rightists suggested a variety of neo-democratic forms, allseeking to present a concept which had not obviously been inspired by theU.S. or the U.S.S.R. The evolution of the concept of democracy ran in parallel with thechanging political realities confronting the Korean people: from theliberation of the country through to the division of the Korean peninsula. Infact it was suggested as a value symbolizing unification immediately afterthe liberation. But when the peninsula was being divided, it came to beused as a weapon in the hands of both the left and the right, taking on therole of an ideology of separation.