조선총독부 간행 「일본어·영어 대조 텍스트」 : 사료군의 보고 및 연구전망

Abstract

Previous research on the Japanese Occupation Period has mostly investigated only Korean or Japanese text data in spite of the well-known fact that the Japanese Government General of Korea also published lots of the equivalent documents written in English. Considering this fact, the current paper is to highlight the importance of English texts parallel to those of Japanese (i.e., Japanese-English parallel texts). The Japanese Government General of Korea rigorously exploited English, a language of civilization and the third language rather than Korean or Japanese, to get an approval from western countries to ensure its legitimacy of Joseon’s ruling. For that reason, it was proposed that the English texts at that time were different from the original Japanese texts whose main purpose was to efficiently rule Joseon. In other words, English was a political vehicle to obtain support of the western powers; in the English texts parallel to the Japanese texts the Japanese Government General of Korea camouflaged its original intention which emerged in equivalent Japanese texts. Therefore, this paper proposes that we need to pay attention to the historical importance of English-Japanese parallel texts and call for a further investigation or analysis of the circulation of these texts and texts themselves.