냉전텍스트 《실패한 신(The God That Failed)》의 한국 번역과 수용의 냉전 정치성

Abstract

This article focuses on the context in which 『The God That Failed』, which was planned with the clear intention of the Cultural Cold War in 1949, was translated in Korea and the aspect of its acceptance, and aims to investigate its status as a Cold War text and its influence. 『The God That Failed』 is a collection of essays on communism experience and a record of conversion to communism, which confessed in detail the process of joining, experiencing, disillusioning, and withdrawing from communism by prominent Western intellectuals who joined the Communist Party or sympathized with communism. The special feature of this conversion text is that it is a simultaneous critique of communist ideology(Soviet system)/liberal ideology(capitalist system). However, 『The God That Failed』 was used as a representative psychological warfare text of the Cultural Cold War as it was meant as decisive evidence to prove the failure of communism by the CIA’s Cultural Cold War strategy. In addition, through international Cold War cultural organizations, including the Cultural Freedom Council, it has spread worldwide and its authority and influence as a Cold War text have been expanded. Therefore, 『The God That Failed』 can be said to be a rare text that can simultaneously grasp the global chain of the Cultural Cold War and the East Asian and Korean acculturation of the Cold War knowledge. The acceptance of 『The God That Failed』 into Korea was maintained as a text that confirms the legitimacy of anti-communism in the macroscopic discipline of the Cold War system, and is widely used as a psychological warfare text both internally and externally to support the advocate system. In Korea, it was accepted as an anti-communist text through a relatively single meaning change, and it has a characteristic that it has been dominantly carried out for a long time. It can be said that the insufficiency of this text as anti-communist knowledge and the political inadequacy of anti-Sovietism in the Third World, which Podhoretz was particularly wary of, did not exist in Korea. This shows that the planning intention of 『The God That Failed』 was most practically implemented in Korea. This was possible because of the strong ideological constraints implied by the ideological conversion under the Cold War system. This acceptance was largely strengthened by the ruling art of the ruling power, but it is judged that the Cold War mentality that was widely established in Korean society worked no less than this. In particular, the actual experience of communism was the main basis for amplifying the Cold War textuality and psychological warfare effect of 『The God That Failed』. This is also a point of distinction from the acceptance of translation by East Asian countries.