解放直後 朝鮮人 歸還硏究에 對한 回顧와 展望

Review and Prospect of Study on Korean Repatriation after the Liberation

In this paper, I reviewed the studies on the repatriation after the Liberation and showed the prospect of these studies. Korean historians have made a lot of efforts to investigate Korean emigration under the Japanese rule but they have paid little attention to the repatriation issue until B. Cummings pointed out, in his book, that the overall mobilization of Koreans during the colonial period influenced the extent of the political change in postcolonial Korea. However, we cannot dismiss the repatriation issue in order to totally understand the wartime national mobilization of Korean laborers and soldiers and moreover, the colonial rule itself. While Koreans had to leave their homeland because of the breakup of their agricultural basis, basically caused by the cruelty of colonialism. they also suffered in the process of the repatriation and settlement shortly after the liberation. There are themes related to the repatriation issue that Korean historians have examined so far - the change of the Korean community in Japan after the repatriation, the process of the repatriation, the housing question of the repatriates, the repatriation from Japan to North Korea from 1959 to 1984, and etc. Recently, researchers' cooperative works help the repatriation study develop to the various themes with the wider prospect. Those themes are as below: the differences of the repatriation from China, Japan, and other countries, the political engagement of the repatriates, the regional case studies of their settlement, and the conflict and the reciprocity between the residents and the repatriates. From now on, the repatriation study needs to overcome the conventional concept of the 'repatriates = victims' and to extend the sphere of the study; the cases of the repatriates who settled in North Korea, the comparative analysis on the Korean repatriates and the Japanese repatriates, the influences on each countries after the repatriation and the personal motives about the repatriation in the individual and the family history.