풍문으로 들었소, 『이북통신』을 경유한 북조선

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how knowledge of the North was produced and distributed after the separated occupation of the peninsula with the 38 Parallel as the border, which prevented free traveling between the North and the South, focusing on the case of the magazine EeBookTongShin which was published by Sampalsa, a publishing house, starting from June 1946. North Korea Studies for the cold war geography begun in the 1960s, but objective and academic discussion of North Korea stalled, turning it into a mysterious being while the Cold War intensified. Primarily there was a movement among North Korean defectors in the South to produce and distribute news on North Korea or at least acquire such news for personal consumption.BRBuk Lee(real name Gyeongdeuk Lee) was a North Korean defector with a history of collaborating with the Japanese Imperialists. He obtained support from other North Korean defector groups such as ‘North-Western association(SeoBookHyupHoe)’, which was presided by Eungmo Bang as the Chairperson and utilized their human network to publish EeBookTongShin, which was a product of anti-communist ideology and aspiration for publishing power. The magazine declared its purpose to reveal the truth about North Korea, but most of its articles were from anonymous sources, using rhetorics of ‘secrets’ and ‘revelation’. They never refrained from producing fake news on North Korea, such as the conspiracy of Jiyong Jeong’s defection to North Korea or the fabricated theory of fake Il-sung Kim. These baseless messages made it impossible to verify the stories and transformed the North into something ‘incomprehensible,’ as a part of their narrative strategy to secure authority as the messenger on North Korea. Their reproduction of the North was structured to contribute to the spread of anti-communism ideology and internalization thereof, which evidences the involvement of the media and political powers. As such, it is necessary to examine the context of the discourse on the North being formed aer the Liberation for a close examination of the popular image of the North and the process in which the cultural cold war, including anti-communism, came to be.