독립협회와 만민공동회의‘근대성’ 논의 검토

Abstract

Public-private assembly and people's assembly which were interested by Korean political world in 1898 are understood as the first start of Korean democracy or the original form of civil society. But, this movement was progressed at the stage before forming modern ‘citizen’, so it cannot help being progressed like elites and pan-civil. Also, Korean fate hanged by a thread because of the attack of western imperialism powers, so we couldn't help showing the anti-attack characteristic. At the same time, we also couldn't help showing foreign power-depending characteristic. In addition, this movement is also the process forming modern people. Periodic complexity and citizen's immaturity in the late 1880s made movement of Independence Club and people's assembly complex and multi-layered. In spite of it, most of studies progressed till now were evaluated a little exaggeratedly, based on the Western modern concept. Most of the studies were mainly progressed in study's branches except for historical studies. Therefore, there were many cases the movement was progressed in the situation that relationship with political situation and other movement such as farmer movement, especially, the relationship with foreign powers, etc. at that time were not verified. However, those studies sufficiently verify that the appearance of Independence Club and people's assembly means the appearance of new political subject and new political movement. On the other hand, the truth of this movement's modernity (form and autonomy of modern subject, publicity problem, etc.) wasn't clearly established yet. For the studies of the future, it's necessary to reject to simplify this movement to problems if it's anti-public or not, if it's anti-people or not and if it's seen positively or negatively and focus on how those characteristics were combined and divided. Also, it's necessary to analyze the characteristics of modern subject formed newly in detailed and explain how the autonomy of modern movement was revealed, continued and cut.