일본의 문화재 ‘반환’으로 본 식민지 지배의 ‘잔상’, 그리고 ‘청산’의 허상

The False Image of Clearing Colonial Legacies in Returning Korean Cultural Assets by Japan - The Study of the Korean-Japanese Negotiation Process of Returning Cultural Assets until 1958 -

This paper examines the beginning of negotiation for returning cultural assets between Korea and Japan and so reveals the characteristics of the early-time Korean-Japanese relationships after the Japanese colonial rule. Although returning cultural assets has been considered the most significant symbol of clearing colonial legacy, the detailed negotiation process between Korea and Japan for returning cultural assets, which has started with a talk for normalizing diplomatic relations since October 1951, has not been well examined. This paper tries to examine this detailed negotiation process through diplomatic documents publicly disclosed by Korean and Japanese governments in 2005 and 2008. In the negotiation process, there was strong resistance to returning cultural assets in the Japanese from Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, which has the responsibility of maintaining cultural assets. It is because many Japanese leaders concerned understood returning cultural assets as a recognition of unreasonable colonial rule. However, the Korean government considered returning cultural assets as one of the most important concerns in Korea s claims against the Japanese colonial rule, and so aggressively pressed the Japanese government. The interesting thing is that the Korean government tried to politically settle this negotiation, and so took an ambiguous position on specific category of returning. The Korean government worried that Korea was not eligible to be benefit from a provision, in which Japan should instant return cultural assets acquired during the Pacific War, in the postwar peace treaty between the Allied Forces and Japan. Therefore, the Korean government tried to solve returning cultural assets politically but not by legal process. Since the Japanese government did not have a strong intention for making a list of cultural assets before a talk between Korea and Japan, the Japanese government passively responded the demand from the Korean government. The negotiation for returning cultural assets finished when the Korean government presented a list of the must-be-returned cultural assets. However, the Korea government did not have accurate information on the must-be-returned cultural assets. A list prepared by the Korean government was a sum of Korean cultural assets located in Japan revealed by the Japanese scholars, summarized in the Japanese National Museum, or introduced in exhibitions during the Japanese colonial rule. This shows that returning cultural assets, originally targeted to clear colonial legacy, was working under a framework of the Japanese colonial legacy. Since the Chosen government-general had examined and controlled the Korean cultural assets during colonial rule without the Korean participation, the Korean government could not catch what kind of cultural assets had been overflowed to Japan during the Japanese colonial rule. Therefore, the Korea government had significant limitations on the negotiation for returning cultural assets after the Japanese colonial rule. The Korean-Japanese negotiation for returning cultural assets was not a case of clearing colonial legacy but rather a case of strong legacy of the Japanese colonial rule.