한국 민족주의의 반공 국가주의적 성격에 관한 연구: 식민지 시기 ‘부르주아 우파’와 국가형성 초기 ‘이승만 세력’을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper studies the process in which anti-communist statism became a major element in Korean nationalism, by examining the bourgeois rightist movement of the colonial period and the Syngman Rhee group of the early state-formation period. Because Korea lost its sovereignty during colonial period, Korean nationalism in early colonial period emphasized national sovereignty rather than civil rights, and this tendency continued after the liberation of the country. With the introduction of socialism in the 1920’s, Korean nationalism divided into two, i.e. leftist and rightist, camps. The rightist camp pursued such movements as the Reconstruction of the Nation Movement, the Encouragement of Corporation Movement, and the Self-government Movement during the 1920’s. Also, in opposition to socialists, rightist nationalists introduced anti-communist rhetoric into their brand of nationalism. Towards the end of the 1920’s, the rightist nationalists again divided into two camps, i.e. the bourgeois leftists and the bourgeois rightist, as a result of their opposing positions towards the united front with socialists. The bourgeois rightists that took control of the hegemony within the Korean nationalist movement during the 1930’s gradually tilted towards statism, influenced by fascism and Japanese totalitarianism. As a result, Korean bourgeois rightists gave up Korean nationalism during the second half of the 1930’s and became the proponent of Korean people’s dissolution into Japanese people. Soon after the liberation of the country, Korean rightists including the Syngman Rhee group took control of the hegemony within the Korean nationalist movement, taking advantage of the national confusion and conflict regarding the issue of the country’s trusteeship. Using nationalism in their persecution of the leftists, they united anti-communism with Korean nationalism. As a result of their pursuit of establishing a separate government in the south and ignoring national hope for unification, they faced defiance from other nationalists including leftists. Taking advantage of this challenge to their legitimacy, however, rightists in power mobilized statism, the highest value of the times. Ilminjuui (One-nation-ism) that rightists put forward at the time was nationalist discourse that combined anti-communism with statism. Due to the loss of national sovereignty, struggles with socialists, and crises regarding the establishment of separate governments in the peninsula, Korean nationalism during the colonial and early liberation periods took on anti-communist statism as its major character.