일제하 기업의 항만 개발과 ‘번영’의 동상이몽 - 일본질소의 지역진출과 함흥의 항만 건설을 중심으로 -

Abstract

In Korea, modern infrastructure establishment began in many areas during the Japanese Colonial period. Especially the ports and harbors along the Eastern coastline were built by the Japanese imperial government, army and companies, so that troops could be transported to China and trade goods be exchanged with Japan. Examination of how they were developed would help us realize the so-called ‘colonized modernity’ embedded in the harbors’ and ports’ construction process, and figure out what kind of legacies from that period was left behind while others are still with us.<BR> Hamheung city is a unique case amongst all the harbors established on the Eastern coastline of the Korean peninsula in this time period, as the port in this city was not only constructed for the purpose of transportation (of products to support Japanese war efforts) but also designed to serve as a base port for a Japanese major corporation named Nitchitsu(Japanese Nitrogen Fertilizers). Such important nature of the Hamheung port was rather neglected in previous studies, as they (studies of East Coast harbors) concentrated upon the so-called ‘Northern line route’ in the 1930s.<BR> Examined in this article are all the parties involved in the decision-making process concerning the Hamheung harbor development: the Joseon Governor General Office, the aforementioned Nitchitsu, which was the main investor in facility production, and Local elites who controlled the press and utilized community gatherings to shape the local opinion. These three elements seemed to have sometimes combined forces and sometimes did not, yet they ultimately worked together in shaping the details of the Hamheung harbor. Meanwhile, contrary to the initial prospect that harbor development would bring only prosperity to the area in general, different interest groups aspiring for their own profits and merits ended up colliding with each other in a chaotic fashion. In the end, the Hamheung harbor project, which was driven by the local community’s thirst for development, resulted in creating a harbor that exclusively benefitted a private sector corporation.<BR> After the liberation, the Hamheung harbor entered a stage of decline, due to the state policy of reinforcing trades between North Korea, China and Russia. For a harbor which was built not upon local needs above all else but to fulfill needs of the Japanese imperial government and its corporations, its deterioration may have been an inevitable outcome. The history of the Hamheung harbor in the last century, which was nothing but a poster product of the so-called ‘colonized modernization,’ leads us to think that in a globalized world of logistics, the ‘continuation of life’ rather than ‘circulation of goods’ should be the new focus in our pursuit of prosperity in the future.