조봉암의 평화사상 -‘적극적 평화론’의 관점에서의 고찰-

Abstract

This article revaluate the life and political activities of Cho Bongam, a famous Korean politicians in 1950s, from the perspective of ‘Positive Peace’ of Johan Galtung. Positive peace is an idea against not only directive violence like war, abuse, and confinement, but also structural and cultural violence like political oppression and economic exploitation. In fact, Cho devoted most of his life to political activities that could contribute to the resistance against structural violence of world capitalist system and division system of Korean peninsula. During Japanese colonial period, Cho actively chose the life of independence fighter from his individual experiences and understanding of the violence of imperialism. After liberation from Japanese, he struggled for the reform of discriminative social structure of the Republic of Korea as a member of National Assembly, a committee member of the foundation of the Constitution, and a minister of Agriculture and Forestry department. He contributed to making progressive economic provisions of the Constitution, and made ceaseless efforts for the realization of land reform. Cho was typical advocate of positive peace who resisted social and economic discrimination in Korea. Furthermore, he continuously made much efforts for the coalition of the left and the right of Korean politics, and was sentenced to death because of his political activities to realize the ideal of the peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula. These efforts can be directly connected with Galtung’s idea of ‘integration’ in his explanation of positive peace.