Earticle

The purpose of this paper is to study the language of Goguryeo, which was established around A.D. 0, dominated the northern part of Korean Peninsula as well as the Manchuria, stood against Chinese dynasties such as Sui and Tang, and was finally overthrown by Silla-Tang alliance. This paper tries to be faithful to the actual data, and to seek a comparative study based on linguistic theory. The data of this study are the place names in Goguryeo from Samguk Sagi, Samguk Yusa, Goryeosa as well as Chinese history book. Based on the data, this paper reconstructs the language of Goguryeo and interprets the meaning of the language. Among many theories on the origin of Japanese language, one of the most plausible one is that Japanese language is branched from Korean language. Where Japanese language originated and what language family it belongs to are still highly controversial issues. Up to now, many studies have tried to figure out the origin of Japanese language. As the idea of Goguryeo language becomes more and more concrete, more studies purpose to find out cognitive words from Goguryeo and Japanese language. As a result, the hypothetical Japanese-Goguryeo family of languages is gaining its power. The corpus of Goguryeo language from the ancient history books of Korea and neighboring nations consists of words and grammatical morphemes with clear annotations. There are total 139 entries, which can be proven to be the language of Goguryeo including some of known borrowed words. Most of the entries have the same etymological origin as Japanese words. However, the data of Goguryeo language are mostly composed of fragmentary vocabulary, which makes it difficult to reconstruct the Japanese-Goguryeo family of languages. Unless more supplementary data are discovered in the future, the reconstruction of the Japanese-Goguryeo family of languages will never be as simple as that of Germanic family of languages. This study criticizes the previous studies which interprets the Chinese characters that transcribed Goguryeo language based on the reconstructed ancient Chinese. Instead, this study concludes that the interpretation of Chinese transcription of Goguryeo’s place names in Samguk Sagi, the Geography Book, and Chinese ancient history books should be based on the ancient and medieval Chinese, especially the northern-eastern accent of Chinese of Tang. This accent is proven to be connected with the language of Silla, as well as the ancient Japanese language. This calls for further research, since it is necessary to find out whether the similarity between the languages of Silla and Goguryeo is due to etymology or convergence, or the language contact.

DPRK has a chance to enlarge its geopolitical advantages as China promotes a long-term strategic developmental plan on the Northeastern 3 provinces which have a close relationship with DPRK through the cross-border trade and investment. However, the developmental plan on the Northeastern 3 provinces that China now promotes as a national policy is not always beneficial to the revival of DPRK economy or to the inter-Korean economic cooperation. Especially China’s efforts to restructure the heavy and chemical industry of the old industrial complex in the Northeastern 3 provinces and invite the foreign investment can influence on the inducement of foreign capital or the economic revival of DPRK. If the projects that can promote the local economic cooperation between DPRK and the Northeastern 3 provinces, such as transport, connection among distributive infras, cooperative development and application of resources, are more activated, the DPRK cities on the border area will experience changes in their economic situation and industrial production. The modernization of the distributive infras as well as the promotion of trade and investment will reorganize some DPRK cities, such as Sinuiju, Cheongjin, Naseon, into transit bases of export and distribution. These changes will also influence on the structure of the inter-Korean economic cooperation and the investment of the South enterprises toward the North. There is few possibilities of DPRK’s repeating the Chinese reformative, developmental plan. However, it is evident that DPRK government is concerned about the economic pragmatism that China has chosen in the course of its reforming, especially about the special economic zones, and the stratal promoting policy on the strategic industries. Therefore, China should inform DPRK of the need to reform and support the industrialization of the border cities and the railroading between two Koreas and China which enables the DPRK to open doors. DPRK also should consider the significance of the economic cooperation with China and the connection of infras regarding the development of border cities such as Sinuiju, Ganggye, Naseon. Therefore, DPRK should try to obtain active support from Chinese government and direct investment from Chinese enterprises and overseas Chinese.

In Goryeosa, the chapter of ‘shik-hwa-ji’ shows the social circumstances of Goryeo Dynasty. Based on this chapter, I examined the relief actions of the aged in Goryeo society. In the reign of Hyeon-jong(顯宗), he commanded officials in charge not to slight relief operations of the alienated, handicapped and disabled old people, ‘Hwan-gwa-dok’. I verified the record of his endeavor to display his political commitment by relief action. Men and women in their eighties who were patients or disabled were provided liquor, meal, green tea and linen. This action is comparable to today’s ‘home-helper social service program’ which helps the aged‘Hwan-gwa-dok’ by providing commodities. I also verified the records of issuing the command that the aged over age of 90 should be provided food by district officers and the aged‘Hwangwa-dok’ over age of 70 should be cared by ‘shi-jeong’, a carer, and carers are exempted from military service’. These carers were supporters of the solitude elderly, elderly patients and disable old people‘Hwan-gwa-dok’. This action is comparable to dispatching public service staff to social welfare community fields of today. In addition to practicing administration of saving storage system such as Eui-chang and Sang-pyeong-chang, there were asylums operated for the aged‘Hwan-gwa-dok’. An example of this facility was called ‘Dae-bi-won’ in the record. Based on above records, one aspect of national welfare policy plan such as ‘shi-jeong’: caring service for the aged, which served social service to the elderly‘Hwan-gwa-dok’ could be grasped.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tendency of the research on the issue of ‘comfort women’ in Korea. The issue of ‘comfort women’ has started to be studied since 1990s. Before 1990s was no proper study on the issue even though some literary works on the period under the rule of Japanese Imperialism, such as novels or essays, briefly mentioned it. In 1980s, the labor movement and the feminist movement started to develop along with the vigorous pro-democracy movement, which brought up the issue of ‘comfort women’ as civic movements in the late 1980s. Studies on the issue as well as the feminist movement were also vitalized in 1990s, as a result of the open testimonies from the victims of ‘comfort women’ including Ms. Kim Hak-Sun. Early studies concentrated on defining the detailed facts around the issue, starting from recording testimonies in the fields of gender study and sociology. The multi-stratal characteristics of the issue of ‘comfort women’, including the problems around ‘gender’ and ‘nation’ left the studies in this area with divergent perspectives. Along with the studies, another research was conducted on the notion of ‘comfort women’, the historic backgrounds, Japanese policies, and the actual realities of the ‘comfort women’ and the brothels run by Japanese military. In 2000, The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery was held in Tokyo, which made the research more serious through the topic of overcoming the actual reality. The issue of ‘comfort women’, which was discussed mainly in gender study and sociology, now enlarges its area into history, politics, medicine, education, and cultural anthropology. This paper purports to examine the trend of the studies on ‘comfort women’ in Korea, especially the ones after 1990s.

In the process of the chance of the relationship between two Koreas, South Korean government needs the public supports, leading to the frequent surveys on the public idea about the reunification. These surveys are carried out by several political parties, the press, social organizations in order to facilitate their own policy making as well as to obtain the public approval. Since the surveys on the public idea about the reunification has been carried out constantly after the inter-Korean summit meeting, it has now become possible to understand the flow of public opinion not from a temporary point of view, but a long-term point of view. This study examines the previous public surveys according to their themes, aiming to understand the shift of public opinion after 1995, the year of the food assistance toward the North. Seen from the flow of the public opinion, South Korean people will be likely to continue the support the engagement policy with the North. However, the South Korean are discontent with the concrete ways of applying the policy, wanting the government to respond in a more flexible way according to the attitude of the North. Therefore, in order for the South government to obtain a dynamic support from its people, more ‘practical results’ are to be induced. The South Korean government should recognize the point that a majority of its people support the ‘flexible engagement policy’ in promoting the policy toward the North in the future. Consequently, it is more desirable for the South Korean government to promote the policy toward the North in the way to obtain the concrete ‘certain result’ of its engagement policy. This will lessen the internal conflicts in South Korean society, and enable a more sustainable inter-Korean economic cooperation in the long run.