로컬 지정학의 재현: 6·25 전쟁과 부산

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze some representations of a local geopolitics of Pusan in relation to the Korean War. The Walker Line set by UN forces who had been pushed back to the southeast region of the Korean Peninsular was called Pusan Perimeter by the Americans and Pusan Bridgehead by the Koreans. These two namings are the different representations of the two sides which reveal the different perspectives on the war soon after the outbreak of the war. The war brought about considerable changes in Pusan, which grew rapidly in the manufacturing industry and strengthened the status of first harbor in South Korea. So Pusan might be the biggest beneficiary of the war. Pusan was the provisional capital almost during the war and the inflow of massive refugees, US soldiers and war material deepened the hybridity of habor city of Pusan, so these produced a peculiar geopolitical landscape of Pusan. These changes might be an extension of the geohistory of Pusan as well as a reflection of the international politics. Pusan had been already the window of the relations with the Japan in the dynasty of Choson and a gate which had connected the Korean Peninsular with the Japan and the Korean War extended this connection to the US beyond the Pacific. The development of Pusan caused by the war was often referred to give an objective relevance in the explanation of the regional conflict of Yeongnam and Honam. However the development of Yeongnam is in effect that of Pusan and Gyeongnam, which is a kind of path dependence, that is, the result of the Korean war in the near history and that of Japanese occupation in the long geohistory.