Despite the differences in systems arising from the North-South division of Korea, it has been common in historical studies to emphasize national identity. One example of this is in the studies of Shilhak conducted after the mid-1950’s. In North Korea, Jeong Jin-Suk(1912~1968) was the leader studies of Shilhak.
Jeong studied liberal arts at Chosen Christian College, then studied in the College of Law at Meiji University, as well as the graduate school of Kyoto Imperial University majoring in Eastern philosophy. After Korean liberation from Japanese rule, he worked in journalism, primarily at Jayu shinmun. He supported the establishment of an autonomous democratic nation through the American-Soviet Joint Commission and worked to realize this through the formation of a new culture. In April 1948, he traveled to North Korea as part of a newspaper reporter group for the South-North Joint Conference but ultimately remained in the North.
During his time in North Korea, Jeong Jin-Suk was a professor and researcher at Kim Il Sung University and the Institute of Philosophy at Academy of Sciences, specializing in his major of Eastern philosophy. He was head of the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences, while publishing the first volume of his History of Korean Philosophy.
This book was the result of the change of circumstances in North Korea at the time. At the end of 1955, Kim Il Sung reorganized the confrontational political line and announced that the basic principle of academic research for the Korean revolution was, “dogmatism and formalist in ideological work would be eradicated and juch’e must be established.” As a result, Jeong Jin-Suk stated that juch’e-based development of Korean philosophy was “the development of materialism that was opposed to idealism.” He believed that historically the juch’e-based development of materialism could be found in Shilhak thought. After the mid-17th century, Shilhak thought criticized feudal Neo-Confucianism and sought to reform the feudal socio-political order. Of course, Silhak thought contained the contemporaneous limitations arising from conceptions of socio-economic development of that time period, as well as the class-based limitations of being an ideology of the developed yangban class. However, Jeong believed that Silhak also syncretically developed the social contract view of Jeong Yak-Yong and democratic ideology. Furthermore, Jeong Jin-Suk declared that Kim Ok-Gyun “patriotic enlightened intellectual who inherited advanced Shilhak thought, opposed fuedalism, and subjectively promoted enlightenment.”
카카오톡
페이스북
블로그