파리강화회의와 약소민족의 독립문제

Paris Peace Conference and the Issue of Independence of the People of a Small and Weak Power

The Paris peace conference, which was to handle the postwar problems of World War I, was held with the anticipation for independence of the colonized, including Chosun. The conference based its fundamentals on Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points, which had included the self-determination of peoples. Wilson’s points were where the colonized found a way of light in their road to independence. Wilson’s declaration of self-determination was a political promise that had been made by the Allied Nations during the war for their own needs, so the colonized nations were highly expecting from the Paris conference. However, President Wilson’s fourteen points were only to counter the reality where the Soviet Russia, which had succeeded in communist revolution, was earning moral righteousness through measures such as self-determination. It was a symbolic gesture to display morality through democracy and self-determination on a war that was regarded highly immoral. The points were exceedingly ambiguous and had a long distance from the reality of the Great Powers. Wilson, who declared the fourteen points, was the highest sovereignty of the United States, a member of the wartime allied nations. President Wilson’s interest was to end the war based on the old order, and build a democratic new order around the United States. The fourteen points expressed Wilson’s ideal conceptions about the new order.