탈식민적 식민지 연구의 원점

Abstract

In the 1980s, Korea achieved economic growth and democratization. Changes in Korean society came along with the global post-Cold War era. Japanese critical intellectuals tried to interpret the changes in Korean society. Satoru Nakamura, a Marxist historian, paid attention to the development of Korea and presented a new world history statue based on semi-developed capitalism theory. Hideki Kajimura, who led the study of modern Korean historiography based on the theory of immanent development, explained Korea as peripheral capitalism that develops dependently. Until the mid-1980s, South Korean critical economist Ahn Byeong-jik adhered to the theory of colonial semi-feudal society that denied Korea’s capitalist development. In 1985, with Ahn Byeong-jik’s study in Japan, a Korea-Japan joint research was planned to explore the historical conditions of Korean economic development. Critical intellectuals from both countries put their heads together for the first time and discussed repeatedly to historicize the colonial experience. Decolonization is possible by facing and historicizing the colonial experience. Ahn Byeong-jik accepted Nakamura’s semi-developed capitalism theory in the course of his joint research. However, this joint research cannot be simplified as the origin of colonial modernization theory. The Korea-Japan joint research on the history of Korea’s modern economy can be positioned as the starting point of the colonial research that began in earnest after the 1990s in that it attempted various empirical and theoretical analyses.