손진태의 신민족주의와 역사만들기의 정체

Neo–nationalism of Son Chin–tae and his History Building

Son Chin–tae said that he wrote 『A General History of Korean Nation』(1948) by applying a point of view of neo–nationalism. The neo–nationalism was an ideology which enabled to find an existence of Korean race, to establish Korean nationalism and to build Korean people's government. Neo–nationalism which he said means specifically democratic nationalism. He invented the ideology of neo–nationalism to provide the road to unification of Korean peninsula which has been divided into South Korea and North Korea since 1945. The purpose of his history building by nationalistic point of view was to instruct the way to go for Korean people. His main purpose of studying history was to make clear that the identity of Korean people in historically. He studied ancient Korean history by applying so–called neo–nationalism. That is why he criticised the every aspect of ancient Korean history, such as the type of government, social stratification, culture and so on. He blamed the people of ancient Korea because they didn't know what the democratic nationalism was. He mentioned that the fall of Kogyryo kingdom was one of the mostunfortunate incidents in Korean history. He thought the people of Koguryo, Paekche and Silla were homogeneous people. Therefore, he pointed out that Kim Choon–choo's diplomatic request for Chinese troops was the betray to Korean people. He made the history of Pohae Kingdom as Korean history. His neo–nationalism has some similarity and difference between colonialism which was fostered during Japanese occupation against Korea. The difference is that he studied Korean history, whereas Japanese historians studied Japanese history. The sameness was that he adopted the historical studying method which was invented by Japanese historians. Japanese historians had criticised some Korean historical material as worthless ones which turned out to be an obstacles to the invention of Japanese history. For instance, Japanese historians urged that the record of 『Samguksagi』 before King Naemul of Silla was invented ones since after the fall of Silla kingdom. It means Japanese historians eliminated more than 400 years of Silla history. And those kind historical interpretation made another distorted interpretation on the rest of 500 years of Silla history. He followed such Japanese criticisms on the historical documents of Korea. He couldn't understand the imperialist Japanese historians intentions. Instead he did done the rethinking on the Japanese invented historical studying process, he recruited his disciples by those methods. Now, it became a problem of post–colonialism. Most of Korean scholars which hold power of historical circles are not free from the post–colonialism. The interpretations of post–colonialism are even be a part of the contents of Korean national compiled history text book for the middle and high school students. The post–colonialism in Korean history is one of the most important problems which most get rid of. Since 1999, new archaeological findings haveprovide the evidences of fallacies in the studies of last 60 years of ancient Korean history. We have to resume the studies of history up until Chosondynasty.