1920년대 초 동경 유학생의 ‘사회’, 사회주의 담론 수용 연구­ ―동경 조선 기독교 청년회 기관지『현대』를 중심으로―­

Abstract

The periodical,『Hyeondae』, was created by Tokyo Chosun YMCA. The birth of this periodical had very close connections with the social trend during that time. After the February 8th Independence Declaration, the Korean students studying in Tokyo focused their attention more on society, and the relationship between individuals and society. Tokyo Chosun YMCA published their periodical,『Gidokcheongnyeon』, from November 1917 to December 1919, which mainly claimed individuals should train mentally and physically. However, when publishing『Hyeondae』in January 1920, they started insisting that one should sacrifice themselves for society. Seungman Choi was in charge of editing『Hyeondae』and he began defining the meaning of ‘society’ more abstractly. According to him, society stood for emotion such as sympathy or compassion based on love. It was translated into the word ‘Lin’ which means social aid. Society was considered to be a massive community beyond a nation or ethnic group. Individual people were considered to be cosmopolites rather than citizens who belonged to one country. In every issue, Heeyong Byeon wrote his article about ‘socialism’ based on Marxism. He believed a labor problem was all human society’s problem. He stressed that there should be mutual help even between the capitalist class and the proletarian class, so-called sympathetic socialism. It’s a well-known fact that socialism was widespread during that time and we can see early socialists such as Heeyong Byeon through『Hyeondae』. Based on their own interest, Seungman Choi focused more on ‘society’ and Heeyong Byeon on ‘socialism’. However, there was no big difference distinguishing between their views on society. For them, society transcended a nation. It was a massive social community based on mutual aid between all mankind and classes. Both Seungman Choi and Heeyong Byeon were members of <Yeomyeonghoe>, which was created by the Japanese democracy theorist, Yosino Sakujo, and they were influenced by Taisho democracy. At the time, many ‘-isms’ were derived from democracy. Many thoughts were studied and existed at the same time and later offshoots were created.『Hyeondae』is a good example which reflected the needs of the time.