이승만 정권기 ‘공화’ 이해와 정치적 전유

Abstract

This paper examines how the term, concept and discourse of the ‘republic’ had been understood in the Korean society and appropriated by each subject until 4.19 Revolution in 1960. e most general understanding of the ‘republic’ in those days can be divided into the ‘rejection of monarchy and orientation toward popular sovereignty’ and the ‘anticommunist republicanism based on the Cold War camp theory’. e primary meaning of the ‘republic’ is the rejection of monarchy and orientation toward popular sovereignty on the basis of popular sovereignty. Such an understanding of the ‘republic’ combined with ‘democracy’ has been continued so far, 70 years after the enactment of the establishment of the constitution.BRIn 1950s, the Korean president Syngman Rhee denounced the Opposition as a feudal privileged forces escaping from the republicanism or criticized the cabinet government proposed by the Opposition as the most wrong form created by imitating the republicanism. Syngman Rhee, thus, appropriated the ‘republic’ and used it as a measure to oppress the Opposition. On the other hand, the Opposition or media also put forward the ‘republic’, more specifically the ‘democratic republicanism’ specified in the constitution as the strongest cause, when they criticized violation of the constitutional order, devastation of the separation of the three branches of government and denial of the representative government, caused by the Syngman Rhee administration. As such, the meaning of ‘democratic republicanism’ has been engraved on the minds of Korean people, as it has been endlessly evoked.