일제하 미국 유학생의 근대지식 수용과 국민국가 구상

Adoption of Modern Knowledge and Nation-state Plan of the Korean Students in North America during the period of Japanese Colonialism

Under the Japanese colonialism, there were two main streams of Korean nationalist intellectuals. The one was students in America, the other in Japan. The academic tradition in Japan which was led by Imperial Universities was state-nationalism, but in America, it was led by liberalism. As a result, they had the different attitudes toward accepting modern knowledge. For example, the 3/4 of them majored in law, economy, literature in Japan, but the students in America majored across various subjects including the 1/4 of them majoring in science and engineering. In the early 20th century, science and pragmatism were key words for the American academic world. Korean students in America also accept them. Then the disputes followed in the matter of accepting American modern knowledge. One group advocated that they had better accept the new tide fully, but the other asserted to accept it with Korean identity. It was not only a question for Korean students in America but also a universal one. While they were drawing up the blueprint for establishing a new nation-state, they paid attention to Christianity and liberalism. Most of them were Christians. They thought Social Gospel was the way how the new nation-state would be built. They wanted to establish the nation-state based on open-minded individualism and new liberalism through the incarnation of love and justice principles in Korea. Secondly, they wanted capitalism based on science and pragmatism to be the foundation of the economic system of Korea. Although they saw economic illnesses in America, they did think it was not important in our social context. They thought the expansion of productivity was most important to us. So they insisted the industrial progress through popular education of scientific technology, concentration of capital, and scientific management of industry. Third, most of them agreed with anti-Marxism . When socialism spread rapidly to Korean intellectuals in the 1920s, they opposed it cleary. After the Korean Liberation, most of them who studied in America became the main leaders building a new nation-state in South Korea. This is very important point to understand why South Korea accepted anti-Marxism after the Liberation and division of Korea into two states.