한국 현대] 2020~2021년 팬데믹 시기 ‘정중동(靜中動)’의 한국현대사 연구

Abstract

This paper examined the main trends and their results in Korean contemporary history research from 2020 to 2021. The Korean scholarship in Korean contemporary history under the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than creating new issues, quietly but steadily continued to publish the papers focusing mainly on the “anniversary” of historical events such as the Korean War, the 5·16 Military Coup, the Self-burning of Chun Tae-il, and the 5·18 Gwangju Uprising. Through this, new “facts” were discovered, and their interpretation was made more sophisticated.Two trends were remarkable. Firstly, some articles sought to reconsider the question of the historical “subject”, decomposing those who were regarded as a single homogeneous entity into multiple agents, thus contributing to more concrete and multi-layer understanding of the history. Secondly, local history research has advanced, reconstructing and trying to understand the local society as a concrete space of life, and the historical experiences of local residents. These trends corresponded to the rise of social issues such as human rights and diversity.