제주 4･3 구술에 나타난 ‘죽음’의 애도 정치 연구 = The Politics of Mourning “Death” in Jeju 4⸳3 Oral Narratives

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The oral narratives of the Jeju 4⸳3 Incident (1948–1949) more frequently convey “who died” rather than “who killed them.” This phenomenon might originate from the Red Complex, a fear of communism; however, it can also be interpreted as part of the politics of mourning—an attempt to offer consolation for the wrongful deaths of 4⸳3 by meticulously transmitting the details of who died and how during the indiscriminate and suppressed massacres of Korean-style genocide. The 4⸳3 massacre was conducted during curfew hours, making it impossible to immediately locate the bodies, thereby rendering the entire process of recovering and burying the remains a politics of mourning the dead. Identity confirmation was crucial when recovering the bodies; importantly, the oral narrators claim to have recognized the “faces” of the dead in the remains. In the 4⸳3 oral narratives (i.e., testimonies), the face issues a command to “find me.” This is because, if the face were not recognized from the skull, the owner of that face would cease to have existed in this world. The bodies were buried in false/provisional graves (가묘, gamyo), relocation graves (천묘, cheonmyo), joint graves (합묘, hapmyo), and empty graves (헛묘, heotmyo), revealing the relentless effort to fully inter the deceased, as only through burial could a tombstone be erected before the grave, allowing the living to visit the dead. Nevertheless, burial does not guarantee the finality of the deceased’s death. Occasionally, the deceased returns to life through possession (빙의, bing-ui), spiritual revelations (공수, gongsu), or dreams (꿈, kkum). Therefore, the politics of mourning death in the 4⸳3 oral narratives can never be fully concluded. It is a process that is suspended and delayed, yet gradually and slowly progresses forward. It is a realization that the loss of “you” evokes the loss of “I,” thus making the recognition that “you” and “I” are fundamentally and inevitably dependent upon one another.