Changing Unification Consciousness of Koreans

초록

In this article ‘unification consciousness’ means thoughts, ideas, emotions, willingness, and aspirations that South Koreans have toward Korean unification. Unification consciousness can be defined as a collective consciousness based on essential traits that South Koreans share in the trap of culture of divided country. Koreans have a tendency to think to the unification problem under the basic pressure of identification with such dominant idea of anticommunism. In this respect, anti-communism can be said to have become an enchantment that drives and pulls unification consciousness of Koreans from behind. I try to make a typology of unification-consciousness. Four types of unification-consciousness can be distinguished according to the positions toward unification ways and the established divided states. ‘Amalgamation’ intends to deny the established states of South and North, and to form a new state of a third type. ‘Pluralism’ opposes to monolithic homogenization, recognizes and respects different customs and value orientations of North Koreans. ‘Convergence’ wishes to accomplish similarity through assimilation that North Korea gives up its own socialist regime and adapt to the South Korean social system or that South Korea dissolves its own capitalist system and adopt North Korean socialist system. Finally, there can be a position opposing to the unification and claiming the coexistence in amity of South and North. I call it ‘coexistence.’ It wants South and North develop their existing system of capitalism and socialism respectively. Based upon the results of various social surveys conducted by several institutions, I would like to discuss what type of UC is dominant among people, what changes and trends have appeared in UC, as spiritual geography of South Koreans has no longer confined to the divided national border and extended to the world, owing to the wave of globalization and the development of information technology. My central question is whether or not anti-communism as a categorical UC has lost its power in South Korean society, such that convergence has become weakened, and pluralism has become dominant.

키워드