ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

Traditional political history has been described around ideological and organizational power politics. As a result, political history has a limitation that assessments vary depending on researchers. Civil politics emphasizes the free discussion and participation of citizens at all stages of political decision-making. Therefore, adopting the perspective of civil politics in political history descriptions will enable objective evaluation and overcome the relativistic limitations of existing political history descriptions. This paper was written to analyze whether Seo Jae-Pil, who first introduced and practiced civil politics at the end of the Joseon Dynasty, maintained and developed his original civil politics ideals when he later launched the independence movement in the United States. The descriptions so far are as follows. First, despite the changed conditions after the loss of national sovereignty, Seo continued to practice the ideals of civic politics in his youth. After the March 1 Independence Movement in 1919, Seo Jae-Pil organized the first Korean Congress to revitalize the independence movement, which was held in a democratic manner in accordance with the principles of civil politics. Rhee Seung-man expressed dissatisfaction with Seo Jae-Pil’s way of proceeding, which stems not from a personal emotional clash between them, but from a difference in perspective of recognizing politics. Seo Jae-Pil’s idealistic civil politics and Rhee Syng-man’s power politics with strong reality orientation were forced to collide inevitablely due to differences in direction and process. Second, Seo Jae-Pil retired from the front line of the independence movement in the late 1920s and changed his status as an elder. In particular, in the late 1930s, international clashes between the totalitarian and democratic camps became visible, and Seo Jae-Pil called for the integration of independence movement forces. In this process, Seo Jae-Pil was able to develop his democratic civic political theory to cover specific national liberation issues.

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