식민지권력의 도시 개발과 전통적 상징공간의 훼손을 둘러싼 갈등의 양상 및 의미 -경성시구개수(京城市區改修) 제6호선의 사례 분석- = The City Development by the Colonial Government and Its Conflict Structure and Significance: On the Argument Pertaining to Line No. 6 of the Kyongseong City Street Improvement Project

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The aim of the Kyongseong City Street Improvement project was to reorganize the road network of the ex-capital of the Joseon dynasty, which had been increasingly complicated due to its history of more than 500 years as a capital, into a modern grid pattern. Therefore, the project inevitably provoked a conflict with tradition. One good example was the case of Line No. 6 on the blueprint of the project, which corresponds to the present Yulgongno. The sixth line brought about such disagreement because the line ran through the route between two palaces―Changdeokgung and Changgyeonggung―and Jongmyo, the shrine of the Joseon Dynasty, and therefore was respected as a sacred place where a road should not run through. The conventional view of this conflict held by contemporary historians was that the road-building project through the formerly revered section was intended to insult the tradition of the fallen dynasty by the colonial government. Hence, the Korean people were unequivocally against the plan. The roadway between the two palaces and Jongmyo took ten years to build starting in 1922, when the first survey for the intended road was carried out, to 1932, when the construction was completed. It was controversy on the roadway that delayed its construction. The main argument of the colonial power elite was for the promotion of the convenience of modern transportation. The counter argument of the old royal family, headed by Soonjong (純宗), the last king of Joseon, was they would not ignore the impending vandalizing of the dignity of Jongmyo, which had been regarded as the core symbol of the dynasty. On the other hand, the Korean language press shared the modern value of convenient transportation with the colonialists. Even some Korean columnists insisted that a changed time required the opening of Jongmyo to the public, proposing to transform it into a park. Analyzing these three views on this controversial plan leads to the conclusion that the assumption of the national sentiment shared by all Korean people under the colonialist rule, which provided the basis of the conventional theory, did not exist in reality and was hence imagined. To grasp the reality of remnants from the colonial era, the starting point should be to call a figment of the imagination what it truly is.