혈력(血力) 발전(發電/發展)의 제국, 이주노동의 식민지－니가타현(新潟縣) 조선인 학살사건과 염상섭－

Abstract

The “slaughter of Korean works” that took place in Niigata (Japan) in 1922 was a case of primitive accumulation that was developing between Imperial Japan and colonial Korea. Separated from the lands, Korean tenants had transformed into overseas workers. The “slaughter of Korean works” occurred on construction sites of hydroelectric power generation, which represented the heart of Imperial Japan’s electric power networks. It then circulated andspreadthroughtelecommunicationsnetworks,creating resistance movements and political tensions. Electric networks in the empire were indicators of the degree of capitalist development, yet they were also networks of life that fostered and fueled the potential for revolt and uprisings. Networks of the empire that had been constructed by the combination of electricity and telecommunication had a double helix structure. One line had drawn a boundary line on the body and had created a hierarchy by continuously producing identities such as nationality (race), class, gender. The subject, so formed, had been subsumed under the complementary relationship of wage labor and forced labor, and had constructed a network of deadlabor.Theotherline’sagentshadcontinuouslybeen transformed by making contact with other subjects-in-action which might begin with the given identity, but chose not to be limited nor isolated by it. Thus they had constructed the network of living labor while creating a new subjectivity against the empire. In short, Imperial Japan had been the empire of labor. It had been the empire of dead labor as well as that of living labor. Yom Sang-seop understood that the “slaughter of Korean works” was a process of primitive accumulation that was occurring between Imperial Japan and colonial Korea, and he proposed a plan against it. Ultimately he thought that labor should be liberated from the capitalist system of wage labor, and should be transformed into an autonomous human activity. Thus in order to actualize this thought, he paid attention to worker’s subjectivity that can acquire autonomy from capital. And he understood that this autonomy could be obtained through an increasingly technical composition of labor. Yet, the level of technical composition of the colonial Korean workers was lower than his expectations. Thus, always considering solidarity between the Korean workers and the Japanese workers, Yom Sang-seop searched for substantial and realistic measures from a long-term point of view.