신문기사로 재구성한 인천 자유공원의 기억 - 근대 도시공원의 실천과 정치성 - = Memories of Incheon Jayu Park Reconstructed Through Newspaper Articles : Practices and Politics of the Modern Urban Park

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study reconstructs past patterns of use of Incheon Jayu Park (hereafter “Jayu Park”) - a site for which little is known beyond the description of it as “Korea’s first Western-style park” - by examining stories found in newspapers published before Liberation. It analyzes the park as an arena of everyday urban life and governance, as well as a political space where emotions and memories intersect. Whereas previous research on Jayu Park has focused primarily on its establishment, facilities, and official names, this study investigates the practices and perceptions of actual park users through modern newspaper reports, reader submissions, and literary sections. The multilayered sociocultural characteristics of Jayu Park may be summarized as follows: it functioned simultaneously as a space of enlightenment and discipline and as a site of pleasure and transgression, serving as a symbolic place that revealed the landscape of the colonial city where reflection, resistance, and compliance converged. The practices exhibited by users in the park’s past continue to be repeated or transformed in various ways today. Through this, the study offers insight into the social construction of the park as a public space and demonstrates that the use of a single space manifests in complex forms. The significance of this study lies in its reminder of the need for research on modern urban parks and in showing - through the everyday life and modes of thought observed in Jayu Park’s past - that the modern urban park functioned as a social space constituted through the practices of contemporary individuals.