한국근현대사에 있어서 주체성 문제 고찰

Characteristic in Formation of subjective consciousness in the Korean peninsula after the modern age

The Northeast Asia project initiated by China recently has been endangering the independent status of Koguryo history, making it a local history in China and arousing wild rage among the press and people as well as historians in Korea. However, on this situation, we need to diagnose our past history more calmly and precisely and to agonize about today’s historical mission. We can still see a great majority of foreigners who believe that there are only China. Japan, and India in Asia. We have only short history of trading with foreign countries on regular basis. Therefore, we’ve now commenced to introspect ours at the first time since our history began, trading with other countries in order to be out of the rim of the world as well as Asia. In a word, the question, ‘What is the Korean one,’ has been cast on all of us. We are now opened toward the world and put in the environment where we can not live without contacting other countries. As a result, it is hard to establish ours in the world without discussing Korean identity or subjecthood. This is because we can determine how to live only after establishing our identity or subjecthood in any case. Considering the question, ‘What is the Korean one,’ one of the issues on which we must focus is the relation between universality and particularity. Emphasizing the Korean one, it is possible to adhere to the Korean particularity. Particularity without universality is to be criticized as the closed one. On the contrast, it is also hard to keep particularity, pursuing universality. Universality in the world history has been the history focused on the West until now, and now, the American one is world-wide and universal one. If so, we should not lose our subjecthood pursuing the American one unconditionally, but at the same time, should not be isolated from the world pursuing ours exclusively. In a word, balance and tension should be maintained between universality and particularity. This article covers the significance of subjecthood for Koreans and reflects on the process in formation of the Korean subjective consciousness in history of Korea, contemplating direction for establishment of the Korean subjecthood suitable to the primary task in contemporary history of Korea, unification.